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The newly promoted First Secretary of State, speaking in Berlin, hailed the euro as a saviour that had brought stability to the European Union during financial turmoil. "It is perfectly clear that the euro has been a great success in anchoring its eurozone members during this financial crisis," he said.

EU's Mandelson lashes U.S. lawmakers for rejecting plan LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers have "taken leave of their senses" by rejecting a $700 billion (388 billion pound) financial bailout plan, European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said on Monday. The U.S. House of Representatives earlier voted against the plan to help the financial industry in a shock vote that sent global markets sliding and led to recriminations between Republicans and Democrats. "I feel they've taken leave of their senses and I hope that in Europe we will not see politicians and parliamentarians replicating the sort of irresponsibility and political partisanship...

“When I think about the trip today, I wouldn’t do it again – it was so dangerous. What I remember is that many people died, they drowned … there were too many people on that boat.” Anas Modamani, who as a teenager fled Syria’s brutal civil war for the safety of Europe in 2015, is one of many who ended up in Germany, where he still lives and now holds a passport. Sitting in a Syrian cafe in Neukölln, a culturally diverse district of the German capital, Modamani is smiling and well-groomed. He works in IT and in his own...

A decade ago today, on 31 August 2015, Angela Merkel made the unilateral decision to open Europe’s borders. The rallying cry of the German Chancellor has gone down in history: ‘Wir schaffen das’ – ‘We can do this’. If we can’t, she added, ‘if Europe fails on the question of refugees, then it won’t be the Europe we wished for’. Merkel was motivated by conflict in the Middle East, notably in Syria and Iraq, but her invitation to seek refuge in Europe was seized on by many others. Of the estimated 1.3 million people who flooded into Europe in 2015,...

The EU Parliament has lifted the immunity of AfD foreign policy spokesman Petr Bystron because he shared a photo of Angela Merkel on Twitter in 2022. The reason? Bizarre: since Merkel is seen raising her arm in the image, it’s being interpreted as a Nazi salute – but only because Bystron posted it. Prosecutor: Waving is not a Nazi salute This farce has a backstory: In 2022, during a protest against COVID-19 measures, Bystron waved to the crowd. The public prosecutor immediately launched an investigation: “Nazi salute!” In response, hundreds of AfD supporters filed complaints against Angela Merkel, who had...

Residents of the Greek island of Samos strongly opposed a proposition by the Greek Migration ministry to build a new refugee camp on their island. The residents gave a thundering “no” to the proposal. The heads of the local community in Mitilinious called an open community on the village square to discuss building a new refugee camp on the grounds of a local army camp. The local Syriza MP was invited to the gathering but he never appeared. Mr Michalis Aggelopoulos, declared their opposition on behalf of the local community, and their heads, including the mayor. Their opinion was cheered...

A dispute over ancient German treasure looted by Soviet troops at the end of the Second World War has overshadowed a visit by Angela Merkel to Russia.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told the BBC the gas deals she made with Russia were intended to help German firms and kept the peace with Moscow. She also insisted the war with Ukraine would have started earlier if she hadn’t blocked Kyiv’s entry into Nato in 2008. "We would have seen military conflict even earlier. It was completely clear to me that President Putin would not have stood idly by and watched Ukraine join Nato. In a rare interview since she stepped down from politics three years ago, Mrs Merkel expresses concern about Vladimir Putin’s renewed threats of...

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel is lamenting President-elect Donald Trump’s runaway win in the 2024 election race left her feeling “sad.” In an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel published on Friday – and first reported by Reuters ahead of the release of her memoir – Merkel said his victory had tugged at her heart strings. “If someone in politics does not allow for win-win situations, but only ever recognises winners and losers, then that is a very difficult task for multilateralism,” she said while explaining to Spiegel how his victory had filled her with sadness, continuing a...

It turns out that the people and government of Germany “can’t do this.”... In 2015, then-Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany swung open wide the gates to her country, and welcomed more than a million Muslim migrants with her famous — now infamous — remark that “Wir schaffen das!” “We can do this.” But in the nearly decade since, it turns out that the people and government of German “can’t do this.” They cannot integrate successfully millions of Muslim economic migrants. The government cannot turn them into loyal and productive citizens. Many of them continue to avoid employment, and instead batten...

Russian president Vladimir Putin over the weekend celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Soviet defeat of Nazi Germany with a military parade on Red Square and a series of smaller events. But while standing next to German chancellor Angela Merkel, he appeared to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which the Soviet Union signed with the Nazi regime in 1939. “This pact made sense in terms of guaranteeing the Soviet Union’s security,” he said on Sunday (10 May). Putin noted that Moscow, in the 1930s, had tried to stop Nazi Germany, but felt isolated after Germany, France, and the UK signed the...

Now it's time for our new feature, Loathe Island. It's a bit like Love Island except it's for people we hate and basically what you're going to do is banish them to an island where they all have to slither around together until they all die.

At the beginning of her third term, Merkel has more power in Germany and Europe than any chancellor before her. There hasn’t been such a strong majority behind a government in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, since the first grand coalition half a century ago. In the midst of the European crisis, Germany has become the undisputed dominant power in Europe. The grand coalition will hand Merkel a majority she could use to shape Germany and Europe and address major issues, including constitutional reforms in Germany and the reform of European Union institutions. … (O)fficials at the Chancellery are forging plans...

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says it was a "grave mistake" for Germany to allow so many migrants in, warning that it creates a "pressure group" in a country — just as Germany has seen pro-Hamas celebrations in the streets. "It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that," the 100-year-old former U.S. diplomat said in an interview with Germany’s Welt TV. He was responding to a question about scenes in Germany where Arab protesters in Berlin...

Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, has been disappointed by the statement of German ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, where she claimed that the Minsk agreements of 2014 enabled Ukraine to prepare for war with Russia. For me, it was completely unexpected. It is disappointing. I did not expect to hear something like that from the ex-Chancellor. I always hoped that the German leadership was genuine. Yes, she was on Ukraine’s side, supporting it. But nevertheless, I genuinely hoped that German leadership expected a settlement based on the principles achieved, among other things, during the Minsk negotiations." "It appears to me that...

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that she no longer saw any possibility of influencing Russian President Vladimir Putin toward the end of her term in office. In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, Merkel talked about her final encounters with Putin, saying that throughout her farewell visit to Moscow in August 2021 she felt “in terms of power politics, you’re done,” adding that “for Putin, only power counts.” She cited the fact that Putin brought Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov along to this last visit as another sign of her crumbling power, as previously they met “often in...

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser dismissed Arne Schoenbohm as head of the BSI agency, following reports which "damaged the necessary confidence of the public in the neutrality and impartiality" of his management, the ministry said on Tuesday.... The Cyber Security Council Germany, which Mr Schoenbohm chaired until he became the head of the BSI in 2016, was prone to influence from Russian companies and even the Kremlin’s intelligence agencies, the report said. German media have reported that one of its members was a German company that is a subsidiary of a Russian cybersecurity firm founded by a former KGB agent, which...

The German newspaper Der Spiegel over the weekend revealed that not only did the U.S. monitor the cellphone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, it also allegedly utilized the American embassy in Berlin as a listening station by means of a windowless structure filled with hi-tech gadgetry on the roof to monitor cellphone and other sensitive communications.An Israeli intelligence analyst has now discovered similar mysterious white structures positioned on the rooftops of many key American embassies including in Beijing, Moscow, and Tel Aviv and published the photos to support his claims. While the structures appear to have a solid exterior, they...

Residents express anger at Angela Merkel’s open border policy.. Some have expressed anger at former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open border migrant policy after a Syrian national was arrested for the murder of a teenage girl whose body was found at a sewage treatment plant. 17-year-old Tabitha E. left an apartment in Asperg, southern Germany, on Tuesday afternoon last week, but the alarm was raised after she didn’t return home that evening. After an extensive police search, the girl’s body was found on Sunday at the Leudelsbach sewage treatment plant. After the home of a suspect was search and investigators...

Thirty years since German reunification, the “new states” from the former East still suffer the effects of mass deindustrialization and emigration. But if reunification hasn't delivered the promises of 1990, socialists should recognize why most East Germans didn't defend the old system — and why welfare and public services aren’t enough to build a viable socialist society. Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of German reunification — a decisive event in the end of state socialism in Eastern Europe. On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), formerly one of the most enthusiastic members of the Warsaw Pact, was annexed...