Review 2023: It's finally here, the long-awaited crisis!
In my view, 2023 was characterised by three very negative developments within the EU, the disastrous effects of which will only be felt slowly and over many years.
Firstly, there is the push for what is commonly being sold to us under the title "energy transition". At the COP28-UN climate conference in Dubai, it recently emerged that Brussels and Berlin are doing everything they can to drive the European economy into the ground. While other regions of the world continue to rely on carbon-based energy sources as a matter of course, Europe no longer wants to know anything about it - and is also paying for the environmental damage caused by others.
Secondly, in 2023, further steps were taken to establish a centralised, authoritarian EU surveillance state. The victims are companies and citizens, while the technostructure, whose surveillance would actually be worthwhile, repeatedly evades control - after all, the technostructure itself has the digital tools.
Thirdly, 2023 will go down in history as a dark year for European diplomacy - Brussels is nothing more than a vicarious agent of US and NATO interests, and is on the verge of losing its credibility on the international stage once and for all.
Nevertheless - in keeping with the motto "humour is when you laugh anyway", at the beginning of the year I take the liberty of taking a sarcastic look at those political leaders whose actions have often and frequently worried and annoyed me during the past year. A look back, mocking in tone but serious in intention.
Category 1: Straight into the wall
An important milestone of the past year: the crisis we have been working on for so long is finally here! Although we were unfortunately unable to maintain the 11.5% inflation rate of October 2022 this year, we are comforted by the fact that at least food was still significantly more expensive this year at 10%.
The rising cost of living, rising energy costs and a deepening recession mean that life on Germany's roads is finally becoming a little more varied again. There are strikes, and lots of them. Railways, air traffic, pharmacies, clinics, retail. Life is finally awakening! However, this comes at a price, because a full-blown economic crisis like this doesn't just happen on its own. You have to put together one sanctions package after another, tighten the bureaucratic thumbscrews ever tighter and let your own infrastructure rot. Slowly, you get the feeling that these endeavours actually seem to be bearing fruit.
This is not least thanks to Germany's "Trio Infernal": Olaf Scholz, Robert Habeck and Christian Lindner surprised us in 2023 not only with unconventional economic policies but also with a tangible budget crisis! You have to come up with this stroke of genius first! Olaf Scholz, the savvy chancellor, wanted to pull the wool over our eyes when he talked about wanting to "unleash" the economy with the help of lots of laws. Or Robert Habeck, who only ever has his green energy transition in mind, subsidising the steel industry with billions in order to produce "climate-neutral steel" and drive forward the expansion of a "hydrogen economy". All deceptive manoeuvres!
If you're going to hit the wall, then go full throttle! Cleverly organised with a non-constitutional supplementary budget for 2021, with which the "Trio Infernal" put all their eggs in one basket shortly after coming to power! How ingenious is that? And it worked! In November, the Federal Constitutional Court overturned the postponement of 60 billion euros in Covid aid to the climate fund, thereby triggering the budget crisis. Germany is thus back on the European stage as the "crisis champion 2023". We can only hope that Scholz, Habeck and Lindner will maintain this course in the coming year - because only a lasting recession is a good recession!
Category 2: I'm the champion of bureaucracy
Ursula von der Leyen cannot be thanked enough: under her presidency, the Commission is well on the way to breaking the sound barrier and establishing a European superstate. It is testament to her visionary will to shape the future that she is not dwelling on minor details such as the rule of law or the reservation of sovereignty of the Member States. The Commission has discovered the state of emergency, and that is a good thing! Pandemic emergency, Ukraine emergency, energy emergency, climate emergency... only those who courageously and systematically abuse the emergency clause will be able to prevail in the end.
It's hard to decide which of the Commission's good deeds should be crowned "good deed of the year": perhaps the "Digital Services Act", this daring feat of surveillance 2.0, which relies on spies and reporting chains from the bottom up in the tried and tested manner?
Or the EU's action plan to combat money laundering and terrorist financing? This sophisticated and elegant camouflage of a further massive encroachment of the technostructure on the sovereignty of states? How else could the financial industry - supported by the ECB and the Commission - have degraded the states into compliant agents of their own power and financial interests? We agree, it has charm!
However, I can't help but admit it, my favourite of this year is the European Peace Facility, and my unreserved respect goes to the "dynamic duo" Josep Borrell and Thierry Breton. Borrell sees the Peace Facility as a "game changer" - not only in Ukraine, but also in Africa, the Balkans and the Caucasus - and the 12 billion he has at his disposal as play money is just the beginning. Luckily, there is Thierry Breton, this tycoon who knows all the tricks of the trade, who is managing the joint procurement of ammunition in a two-way game with Borrell - with a mechanism similar to that used during the COVID-19 pandemic for the joint procurement of vaccines. What courageous hotshots! Men like these move us forward! They deserve our unreserved admiration for heroic achievements in 2023.
Category 3: The American rag
In this category, too, we cannot fail to recognise Ursula von der Leyen's commitment, which borders on self-sacrifice. Who, if not this woman, brings Brussels and Berlin into line? The Americans just need to threaten a little, as the Council on Foreign Relations think tank [1] , and call on Europe "to step up its engagement if they don't want criticism of Europe's limited support for Ukraine to become a significant burden on transatlantic relations." A quick shout - and Ursula gets going: it was only in November that the Commission disbursed a further 1.5 billion euros. This means that Ukraine has so far received around 85 billion euros from the EU, including military equipment. And let's not forget the special facility for the years 2024 to 2027, with a total volume of up to 50 billion euros! The Americans criticise, the Europeans pay - that's what I call self-determination!
But that's not enough! Money alone does not make people happy, so Ukraine needs to join the EU as soon as possible. Ursula can also be relied on in this respect, as she let us know during her visit to the Rada in Kiev at the beginning of November:
"And you have made great progress, much greater than can be expected from a country at war. You are carrying out far-reaching reforms while fighting a full-blown war! The goal really is within reach."[2]
This woman puts even hardened Brussels lobbyists in the shade! With an iron will, she is bringing Washington, Brussels and Berlin into line with the agricultural and financial groups in order to get grain out of Ukraine. Who, if not she, knows the importance of Ukraine's membership, where investment funds and banks have been positioning themselves since the Ukrainian land reform to do agricultural business on the ruins of the war and the economic crisis in Europe! For her tireless efforts for the benefit of the technostructure and the transatlantic alliance partner, she deserves all our respect and thanks for her efforts in 2023.
However, my favourite of the year - literally at the last minute - was Annalena Baerbock, this admirably naive young politician who pursues foreign policy with the impetus of a class spokesperson. In a guest commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, she recently spoke out "against Putin's world order of violence" and got carried away with the following statement: "Several times, the deaths on the front were to be stopped by ceasefires. Germany was involved in these negotiations for seven years as a mediator through the Minsk process. But instead of peace, Russia was concerned with preparing a brutal war of aggression."[3]
Oh, how wonderful and refreshing this youthful impetuosity is - if only you had kept quiet, Annalena! Perhaps you could ask around in your ministry what was agreed at the Minsk process. I'm just saying, to be on the safe side. Not that you'll be surprised by what happens in 2024. It would be a shame for you!
This article was first published in: Le Courrier des Stratèges on January 2nd, 2024
[1] https://www.cfr.org/article/europe-has-step-ukraine-keep-us-stepping-back
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/fr/speech_23_5561
[3] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/baerbock-gegen-putins-weltordnung-der-gewalt-19374864.ht...