Good morning dear readers,
Have you already decided where you want to go on vacation this year? Should it be a dream holiday in Bali, a trip through New Zealand in a mobile home, or is it a classic trip to Mallorca? In any case, I have bad news for you. Holidays will be significantly more expensive this year.
Many once popular travel destinations are no longer interested in mass tourism and instead rely on luxury holidaymakers with bulging wallets. The social gradient is also becoming more and more relevant at the hotel reception. Because the rapidly rising prices mean that many Germans can no longer afford vacation trips that go beyond their own balcony. Only those who earn a lot can still dream of a pool and sandy beach.
At today’s start of the world’s largest tourism trade fair, ITB, it is clear that the corona pandemic has thrown the travel market upside down – and that the industry first has to find itself again. Because it is not yet clear whether the trend towards luxury holidays can compensate for the financial losses caused by the lack of bookings by normal earners.
It doesn’t look like it at the moment. According to new figures, the industry recorded almost 46 percent fewer bookings and 15.2 percent less sales at the economically important start of the year than in 2019, the last year before the Covid era.
(Photo: Stone/Getty Images)
Do you remember that at the end of last week we reported about Chinese surveillance cameras for Germany’s critical infrastructure? It was about George Orwell and the question on whose screens our videos actually end up.
Now the federal government has announced a far-reaching decision on Chinese technology that is likely to plunge mobile phone providers in this country into deep despair. Because Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica have to be prepared to remove components from the Chinese manufacturers Huawei and ZTE that are already installed in their systems, which are part of the critical infrastructure. The companies bear the costs themselves.
And these costs should not be too tight, because Huawei is an extremely important partner for German mobile network operators. It is estimated that almost 60 percent of the components installed in the German network come from the Chinese company.
For years, the federal government has been discussing the participation of Chinese technology providers in the 5G mobile networks, weighing warnings from the secret services against economic interests.
The fact that the decision is now being made so clearly indicates that the balancing of interests is clearly moving in the direction of information protection. Because apparently the federal government has knowledge that “security-relevant” components from Huawei and ZTE are installed on a large scale in the German networks. A high-ranking official sums up the consequences of this: It is about technology “that could enable a state to exercise political power”.
In Turkey, the motto is “if six argue, the seventh is happy”. The opposition parties had actually planned to pose a threat to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a joint candidate. So far, however, the opposition six-party alliance has primarily attracted attention because of personnel disputes and less because of concrete political content.
Erdogan himself can have a bag of popcorn and watch the dissent from the outside in a relaxed manner. After all, he is the one who has benefited the most from his opponents’ discord two months before the election.
Read the commentary by our Turkey correspondent Ozan Demircan here.
After all, the six opposition parties have now been able to agree on a common candidate: Kemal Kilicdaroglu will challenge Erdogan. He is a member of Atatürk’s social democratic party, CHP. The opposition candidate is expected to have a chance of winning – also because Erdogan’s poor crisis management after the devastating earthquake disappointed the Turks immensely.
(Photo: IMAGO/NICOLAS MAETERLINCK, dpa (M))
In Israel, meanwhile, the author and historian Yuval Noah Harari is trying to rouse his compatriots. It is about a planned judicial reform that would give politicians far-reaching power over judges and the judiciary. A break with the democratic principle of separation of powers.
“Today we have excellent reason to be afraid and we have excellent reason to act,” Harari said at a rally in Tel Aviv. His speech there was published as a guest article in the Handelsblatt. “What this government is initiating is not judicial reform – it is an anti-democratic coup d’état,” Harari says, among other things.
The fact that people in Israel have to take to the streets to protest against an enabling law by the political leadership gives food for thought, especially from a German perspective. So it is hardly surprising that a historian like Harari vehemently warns against such a reform. The history books have warned posterity of what could happen in the worst case.
Finally, I would like to wish myself and all other women in paid work a Happy New Year. Because statistically, we still had to work to this day to catch up on the salary gap compared to our male colleagues from 2022. It was 18 percent, and 18 percent of the new year has been completed today.
In any case, I open myself a champagne to celebrate the day – even if it tastes rather bitter in the end.
I wish you a good day on which you will be adequately rewarded for the work you have done.
It greets you cordially
Her
Teresa Stiens
Editor of the Handelsblatt
hp: The FDP is fighting against an end for new cars with internal combustion engines in the EU from 2035. The federal government had actually already agreed to this with the support of the FDP. How do you feel about the Liberals’ recent move? Is it fundamentally correct that from 2035 all new cars in the EU must be emission-free? Should combustion engines remain permitted after 2035 as long as they are powered by e-fuels? How will the German auto industry have to change? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected]. We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.
