in the Ukraine a people is fighting for their country and their freedom – and in Brussels Hungary is fighting for EU financial commitments of 550 million euros. At the current EU summit, Prime Minister Viktor Orban calculated how much it would cost to convert the refinery plants to oil that does not come from Russia.
However, the original plan of a total oil embargo against Russia is off the table for the time being. And the EU is giving Ukraine further financial aid of up to nine billion euros – for running costs such as pension payments and the operation of hospitals.
President Volodymyr Zelensky found the hesitation, hesitation and hesitation in Brussels strange: “Why can Russia still make almost a billion euros a day selling energy?” And Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas made a remark to be repeated: “So long If Ukraine didn’t win this war, we didn’t do enough.”
Inflation is a predatory attack on average earners. With the current price increase of 7.9 percent, real wages are therefore falling further and further. In the first quarter they had already fallen by 1.8 percent. The institute for macroeconomics and economic research, which is close to the trade unions, believes that the decline in purchasing power will continue until the end of the year – which would indicate strong wage demands.
While finance minister Christian Lindner (FDP) calls fighting inflation the “top priority”, SPD labor minister Hubertus Heil calls for “social climate money” for low earners and the middle class.
Everyone should agree that the interest rate turnaround announced by the European Central Bank for July comes too late – and that the consequences of the tighter monetary policy are serious. “If the central bank hesitates too long and inflation expectations have taken root, then the fight against price increases can only be waged at the price of a recession,” commented our opinion leader Jens Münchrath.
In 1987 he was State Secretary in his home country of Hesse for the first time. His life for politics culminated in 2010 with the office of Prime Minister. A veteran of the CDU proved himself here, one who managed the change from a more right-wing “sheriff” to a liberal bridge builder – as the creator of a black-green government.
When Volker Bouffier, 70, resigns in Wiesbaden this Tuesday and Interior Minister Boris Rhein, 50, who has been singled out as his successor, is to be elected with the one vote of the coalition majority, there will be sentimentality in the air.
Bouffier deserved all the praise, but had to recognize for himself that his farewell came a little too late and that his eager hammering for chancellor candidate Armin Laschet left a few crooked nails too many.
Yesterday, Monday, 600 guests said goodbye to the Christian Democrats at a festive serenade in the Biebrich Castle. At Bouffier’s request, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” could be heard: “I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried / I’ve had my fill, my share of losing / And now, as tears subside / I find it all so amusing.”
There is no lack of money, says Deutsche Bahn boss Richard Lutz. Perhaps there is a lack of good management, good supervisory boards and a separation of the state-owned company into a public welfare subsidiary for infrastructure and a profit-oriented subsidiary for operations, which unions and the SPD are preventing? We don’t know, we only guess.
But what we do know: It is embarrassing when the Bahn CEO has to confirm a quasi-collapse in freight transport: “We didn’t expect the situation like this. We have to be careful not to lose customers in freight transport.”
Construction sites are now to be bundled and important routes to be renovated into “high-performance corridors”. The railway has never lacked nice words – but unfortunately for punctuality values. Every third ICE and Intercity train is now late. Japan’s obstinate railway employees would not leave the apartment with such numbers.
The fact that their ancestors could have helped the Nazi dictatorship is an explosive and uncomfortable topic for the Hohenzollerns. Then they would no longer be in possession of their goods confiscated by the Soviets after the Second World War.
The historian Stephan Malinowski is investigating exactly this question – and can look forward to the “German Non-Fiction Prize of the Year” for his opus “The Hohenzollern and the Nazis – History of a Collaboration” as well as 25,000 euros in prize money.
The jury for the Book Culture Foundation selected it from eight nominated books. The title combines social and political contemporary history with a family portrait and is also a milieu study of conservative and right-wing hostility to the republic, the statement says.
There had been a number of legal skirmishes between the Hohenzollerns, media companies and scientists, including Malinowski. Tania Martini, spokeswoman for the jury, identified a correlation: “The louder the appeal to culture, the greater the social crisis.”
When club football takes a break, the club economy runs hot. The drama about the exceptional striker Robert Lewandowski, 33, is developing into a lead story par excellence at FC Bayern Munich. who still has a year’s contract but wants to go to FC Barcelona. “My story at Bayern is over,” said the Polish international at a press conference, “I don’t see any more opportunities to play for this club.”
This contrasts greatly with the thunder of FC Bayern CEO Oliver Kahn, who had observed Basta Chancellor Schröder too often: “He has a contract, he will fulfill it. Basta!” The public dialogue can also be seen as part of a price poker game in which, from Munich’s point of view, Barcelona’s offer of 34 million euros must contain a “4” as the first digit.
And then there is the Louvre in Paris, a national monument in front of which Emmanuel Macron posed as the new president years ago. In room six, a young man disguised as an old woman had little noble in mind.
He jumped out of his wheelchair and threw a cream cake onto the bulletproof glass display case in which Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is hanging – a slightly smiling masterpiece, a “signature painting”. The cake thrower, who was immediately arrested, called out in French that one should think about the future of the planet.
Incidentally, Jean-Claude Martinez, once director of the Louvre, who was also recently arrested, did not orientate himself ecologically, only purely economically. He is said to have brokered stolen works of art to Abu Dhabi for 50 million euros.
The town of nabobs and petrodollars also happens to have a branch of the Louvre. Because it’s so nice, here’s a piece of wisdom from the creator of “Mona Lisa” Leonardo, which is very useful in political Berlin: “Anyone who invokes their authority in a discussion does not use their intellect, but their memory.”
I wish you a successful day with a lot of debate stability.
It greets you cordially
Her
Hans Jürgen Jakobs
Senior editor
PS: This applies from tomorrow Wednesday Nine euro ticket. Do you already have travel plans? Is that the first step in switching to bus and train for everyone? Or do you fear overcrowded trains and delays? Write us your opinion in five sentences [email protected]. We will publish selected articles with attribution on Thursday in print and online.