A thread to talk about news and politics affecting Europe as a whole, rather than just politics within specific European countries.
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Edited by Mrph1 on Jan 9th 2024 at 3:24:05 PM
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Not if those 4 imports are actually partly or completely produced in your own country.
Stop Killing My Titles
Looks like the police is using tear gas against the populace.
In yet another protest against pushed laws that will invalidate the judiciary and make it PIS's toy (over 40 protests yesterday in various Polish towns), the protest in Warsaw was treated with tear gas. According to the police, it was in response to the protesters using their own tear gas, but nobody seems to believe the notion. Naturally, the gov sees nothing particularly wrong with that.
grah
Georgia became the first nation today to fully legalize the personal use of marijuana (in Uruguay it's only legal for residents). I, uh, what? Totally unexpected and the fact that a post-soviet state was the one to achieve this hallmark and not a western nation is hilarious.
Edited by Grafite on Jul 30th 2018 at 12:15:33 PM
Life is unfair...
The law in the night
Cue the dumbshits in the state of Georgia going full 420 in front of the police because they don't know Georgia is also a country.
Inter arma enim silent leges
I distinctly recall that Georgia was facing some internal crisis which was in part about whether pot should be legal.
Crossposting from the racism thread: Something from Europe: Italy is having a wave of racist assaults towards coloured people. Among the reasons given are the long economic crisis but also the rhetoric used by certain politicians that identifies immigrants as "problems".
Aww, those poor Italians must be dealing with a lot of socio-economic anxiety for them to assault those coloured people!
Quite right, after-all who else doesn't feel the urge to form a hate mob when they're facing unemployment? 
Well, now, it looks like one Leghist minister has proposed to scrap anti-racism and anti-fascism laws. The premier Conti has said that this isn't happening however.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Italy’s Catholics flock to the right
In the home of the Vatican, believers are increasingly attracted by the hard-line stance of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
Francis and Salvini espouse radically different approaches to migration. Where the pope has called on countries to take care of the less fortunate, Salvini has turned his close-the-borders approach to immigration into an electoral warhorse.
The trouble for Francis is that Salvini seems to be winning — even among Catholic voters.
I'm hoping (vainly?) that Salvini's popularity is partially just his honeymoon period combined with novelty value. There's already some slight cracks showing in the coalition in that many of the Five Star Movement's voters don't seem that thrilled about Salvini, and I'm hoping that'll eventually come back to bite him.
So, Italy is now playing the old "Blame the EU" game over Genua.
I wonder if they will get away with it...I mean, it certainly strikes a cord with their voters, but in cases like collapsing bridges, the first direction people tend to look is local corruption.
I must confess, I am getting more and more worried about the future of the EU. This kind of rhetoric led eventual to Brexit, and Italy is particulary vulnerable.
Perhaps the consequences of Brexit will serve as a warning, but I still fear for the political culture of certain countries in Southern and Eastern Europe.
I'm not. At least not regarding Italia.
So, why isn't Spain seen on the same terms as France and the UK (whenever somebody talks about Europe, they mention France and the UK first then everyone else)? They were the second biggest European colonial empire next to the UK, and had a huge impact on the Americas. Is it because they don't have nukes and their economy isn't as good?
Edited by CookingCat on Aug 17th 2018 at 2:57:35 AM
Oh, bother.
Spain just hasn't been the same ever since they lost their Armada.
Disgusted, but not surprised
x4 Southern Europe has always had the political stability of a house of cards in a wind tunnel since the Roman Empire ended. Why do you think World War I started there, fascism came from there, they had the largest amount of fascist countries in Europe and they are the only region in Europe to have a major war (The Yugoslav Wars) since the end of World War II? Pirates of the Caribbean sums up their politics pretty well:
Edited by CookingCat on Aug 17th 2018 at 3:07:18 AM
It's basically because of Franco. While the rest of middle Europe recovered from fascism, Spain fell head-first into it after WWII. They really lucked out with their prince back then, because Juan Carlos was basically laying in wait until Franco died, seized power and then lead the country into a proper democracy. But it takes some time to shake off fascism and its impact completely, so Spain is a little bit behind, especially in terms of industrial development.
Edited by Swanpride on Aug 17th 2018 at 2:40:16 AM
There is a big gap between Spain and the "Top tier" European countries in terms of population size and even bigger in terms of GDP (only roughly 1/2 of France). And arguably its' geographic location is an disadvantage as well, because it is in near proximity to larger countries like Italy and France. Whereas Poland which is of sinilar size can act as a leader of its' close neighbours, Spain is unable to do so (though it does coordinate closely with Portugal). Of course, this is all relatively speaking. Spain is still an important European country, and I am sure many Spaniards appreciate its' geographic location ;).
That being said, I'd struggle to rank countries according to their influence. Many of them are simply punching well below their class due to their (often populistic) governments.
Edited by Zarastro on Aug 17th 2018 at 9:00:25 PM
Yeah, if Poland had a more sane government it could be the leader of Eastern Europe based on size alone. As it is, it undersells itself. France is now stepping up again that it has a leader which actually manages to impress on the international stage, but it is not like anything else truly changed, it is more like it is finally taking a firm stance again. Germany is in this odd position that it doesn't really want to lead for obvious reasons, but it is constantly pushed in the leadership role nevertheless. You would think that Denmark or the Netherlands don't have a lot influence, being so small, but they are both actually very pushy and really good in getting their way. During the crisis in Greece the Netherlands basically used Germany as a front to push through what they wanted.
Basically, it is complicated, but what gives you say in the EU is a combination of seize, economic stability (the higher the GDP and the lower the debt, the better) and above all engagement. The more you are ready to do for the EU, the more you get back in terms of influence.
Measles cases hit record high in Europe
Naturally, Italy's upper house recently abolished a law that makes vaccination for children mandatory.
Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.
Gonna get those flagellants roaming around in no time!
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
I don't think it's correct to attribute Spain's less influential status compared to Britain, France and Germany just to Franco. Franco and the civil war were more the symptoms of Spain's decline. Spain had had a loooong and gradual fall from grace from its golden age, when it was the world's foremost colonial power. Things started going wrong when Spain lost first against Britain with the defeat of the Spanish armada, and then against the French in the battle of Rocoi. The next two centuries became a pretty steady loss of influence.
A procrastination in of itself
Yeah the comment about the Amanda was pretty much on the money, Spain simply declined earlier. Its empire never made it into the modern era, it became a punching bag for the French and Austrians (first under the war of Spanish succession, then the Hapsburgs, then Napoleon), it was done for as a great power by the time world war 1 rolled around, with the Spanish Civil War and Franco just continuing the decline.
Spain was a Renaissance power with some power in the Age of Enlightenment, it never sustained itself into the modern era like France and the UK, it’s power declined the same as that of Portugal, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Keep in mind that Spain’s relative positon doesn’t mean it isn’t a solid middle power, it’s no world power, but as a modern developed Western European nation it still has mroe politics, ecenomic and military power than most nations in the world.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Spain was a global power in the first half of the 16th century, and was already declining by the second half.
Its reliance on the resources of its New World empire, the neglect of its domestic economy and society, made it weaker internally.
I remember a Spanish-language author (not sure if he was himself a Spaniard) bemoaning that in the 17th century, while France was building a canal to connect the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, Spain was locking up people for being curious about the natural sciences (I may have gotten some details wrong). Cervantes obviously made a mockery of the regressivism of his contemporaries, so infatuated with past knightly greatness that they were plunging into decline to everyone’s disdain, including the Moors.
Having the rest of Europe fighting over Spain’s crown should have been a wake up call but it wasn’t. Much like the Ottoman Empire, Spain was a washed out has-been, and the loss of its last New World and Asian colonies to the US circa 1900 was the last nail to that sad case of vino.
Throughout the 19th century and most of the 20th, Spanish thinkers and artists were struggling with Spain’s lagging behind or retraso, not only in power politics but more so in the cultural and technological areas, while much of the rest of Europe was dismissing Spain by saying “Africa begins at the Pyrenees.”
After WWII Spain was coasting along the postwar prosperity of Western Europe and the support of the US via NATO. By The '60s though, it was becoming more exposed to its far more advanced and wealthier neighbours, while Franco was quietly dismissing many Falangist ideologues and blowahards to be replaced by younger disciples of the Opus Dei trying to square the circle of economic development along the retrograde traditionalist values of the Caudillo.
Old friends of mine used to tell me how they knew shit was going on in Spain when foreign newspapers couldn’t be had for a while.
The post-Franco democratisation was a truly surprising process and very positively so, the involvement of King Juan Carlos I in that process also being instrumental in my own abandonment of primitive anti-monarchism.
It’s when Spain had let go of its delusions of past greatness that it could really climb back up again, becoming a respectably developed mid-size country where there are more people who want in than out.
Damn that wall of text, sorry to have bored you with.
Edited by AlityrosThePhilosopher on Aug 20th 2018 at 10:00:47 AM
Just as my freedom ends where yours begins my tolerance of you ends where your intolerance toward me begins. As told by an old friend
Spain has the potential to be more, though. Catalan, that could be the whole of Spain (in terms of wealth, not in terms of short-sighted political movements). But a process like this takes time.
It's btw surprising that there isn't a proper high budget movie about the relationship between Franco and Juan Carlos yet. Frankly, it is a truly fascinating story...can you imagine to be forced to be the puppet for a dictator for years, patiently waiting for him to die in order to then "betray" everything he stands for?
Edited by Swanpride on Aug 20th 2018 at 3:20:45 AM
