The same happened with communist parties funded by URSS at the time, and it is still happening with some parties openly supporting Putin.
In the end the blame goes to thee people for being so gullible to vote for parties that do the interests of foreign powers. US, Russia, (China?), doesn’t really matter.
I don’t think so. We imported Halloween and lots of movies, but bigotry is 100% original. After all, aren’t the biggest bigots all right wing nationalist proposing a true European nazi-fascist model?
It could have been Ukraine as the current investigation suggests. I would not be surprised of EU support either.
You mentioned that I may want to deflect the responsibility from Biden. -> I don’t have such interests.
I doubt that it would have been politically acceptable to switch to more expensive gas without blowing up the Nordstream. Whoever did it knew that it was essential to steer the EU against Russia.
Can you mention past American politics that affected the EU, excluding wars? Anything that sparkled debates and concerns at the level of Trump’s tariffs or declarations about NATO?
That’s very surprising. Why would Germans be interested in US internal politics?
Was there a serial or a movie about it? I can’t imagine how people in the EU would know about that stuff (unless interested in the matter for specific reasons)
Why would I want to deflect blame from Biden? I’m telling you that I’m a European and I don’t care who’s in charge in the US or which president did what. Do you know or care about who is in charge in the EU?
Current US politics, that happens to be Trump’s, is hostile to us and it is alienating the European sympathies. There will be a little nuance in EU response to Trump’s tariff to damage red states more than blue states, but for most people it will be a big f-off to US as a whole.
About the Nordstream I don’t know what to believe because that sabotage was very convenient for every part, also within the EU, and I’d rather have no opinion than a wrong one.
Indeed maybe the readers of a catholic newspaper are obsessed enough with abortion to know the reference.
There is no contradiction. The relationship is not worse because republicans are in charge but because of what they decided.
Of course, also in the EU there are far right groups like ECR and Patriots. It doesn’t mean that they rule though.
BTW, I struggle to imagine Germans discussing certain topics using American terms.
One characteristic of the European politics is that it’s slow. Painfully slow. With 27 countries with veto power and different interests it is certain that at any time you will have any possibility on the table together with its opposite.
Making an EU independent from the US has been certainly a dream for several groups since decades. The idea never got much traction because it seemed more convenient to go in the direction of a single market with the US for some kind of goods.
That was true until Trump’s second term with the tariffs, the NATO power play, and the BS around Greenland. Now there is no doubt that the EU should seek independence from the US and seek agreements with Canada and China first. The only question is how quickly it should be done because some countries (like Germany, Italy and Greece) have more to lose than others and there is the issue with Ukraine.
That said, you are free to think that with Biden it was all the same (or even worse).
FYI: in the EU we don’t play the “it was Biden vs it was Trump” game. We stop at “it was the US”. Besides marginal sympathy for some presidents or over the top ridiculous facts, US politics is not that visible or interesting here.
It made it painfully clear to the public opinion how much society relies on gas.
Unfortunately the general public doesn’t understand long term reasoning: nor climate change, nor energy independence. If it doesn’t happen right now, it’s ignored by most people. The high spike in price worked really well to open a debate to support more renewables or nuclear power.
Consider that even now, after all that happened, the EU has a noisy minority trying to shoot down alternatives to gas.
I don’t know what to believe about Nordstream, but I’m not even mad if that accelerates the transition out of fossil fuel.
No man, sorry. European here and before this last Trump term nobody cared about the US, nor knew what people did over there.
Now we see all the craziness from Harvard to ICE, and the nonsense of vaccines and Medicare. Some people and companies are actively seeking alternatives to American products, we are talking about an European tech stack for the first time, a multi billion program just started to replace US in defence, there are funds specifically designed to attract American scientists, the EU is coming for startups too, and intense chats with Canada, China and others try to replace the US market.
You are free to believe that Dem were the same, but I can assure you that nothing like the last 6 months pushed the EU to break up with the US and stand up alone. Which is great for us in the old continent.
To tell the full story though, there are some EU groups that still try to tighten the bonds with the US. I’m talking about ECR and the Patriots with leaders such as Meloni and Wilders. They are the far right xenophobic homophobic nazi-fascist area that are basically a noisy minority that a few years ago was all for Putin.
Another difference. Republicans just convinced Europe that the USA cannot be trusted anymore as a commercial and defence party, and new deals should be made with the rest of the world to move away from the Dollar.
I say that, before Trump’s mess, in the EU we didn’t care much about what happened in the US or the decision that were taken there, except for wars or exceptional events like 9/11. Am I wrong?