{"id":4478,"date":"2025-04-04T11:02:04","date_gmt":"2025-04-04T09:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/?p=4478"},"modified":"2025-04-04T11:02:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T09:02:04","slug":"spring-of-challenge-spring-of-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/spring-of-challenge-spring-of-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring of Challenge, Spring of Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear friends,<\/p>\n

spring is in the air here in Strasbourg this week \u2013 and that goes for politics as well. \u00a0Some things have happened this week that make me rather hopeful for the future. And some that feel like we\u2019re still stuck in a dark, cold period. But as always, I try to be as positive and constructive as possible. Here\u2019s what has been happening in Strasbourg, Europe and the World.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

HOW LE PEN BECAME A SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For someone, this week really didn\u2019t start as planned. Marine Le Pen has to bury her ambitions to become the next French President. The court ruled that she is guilty of massively embezzling millions of public money when she was a Member of the European Parliament. She now faces prison, fines and an\u00a0immediate ban to run for a public mandate<\/strong>. Amazing news! Not because I personally don\u2019t like Le Pen and her views. Sure, I wouldn\u2019t want to see her anywhere near actual power. But this is about something bigger, it\u2019s about the law.<\/p>\n

You\u00a0can\u2019t just take taxpayer\u2019s money meant to be spent for your work in Brussels\u00a0<\/strong>and then spend it on your friends back home in France. Seriously, she even hired her personal body guard as a Parliamentary Assistant. Did she really think she would get away with that? Apparently, the far right think that the EU that they hate so much is their personal piggy bank. It is important\u00a0that the court has condemned her for her actions. They just applied the rules \u2013 and they made clear that someone who has misbehaved badly while in public office shouldn\u2019t get the chance to run for such an office again. Keep that in mind when the far right now come wailing that this is a witch hunt and undemocratic. The opposite is true:\u00a0This is democracy actually at work<\/strong>. I know she will appeal, but let\u2019s hope that the judges stay firm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

WHY FRIEDRICH MERZ IS CHEATING EUROPE<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Someone else will soon be legally in power: Germany\u2019s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz. His party and the Social Democrats are closing in on a coalition agreement. I\u2019ve seen the drafts. From a European perspective, I\u2019m more than disappointed. Didn\u2019t Merz want to become a European Chancellor? Looks like he\u2019s turning into a\u00a0Cheating Chancellor<\/strong>\u00a0instead. Both parties had promised in their campaigns to strengthen Europe, but what they put down on paper reads like they have forgotten all about it.<\/p>\n

Their concepts for a stronger and more unified Europe would have been visionary 15 years ago. But they find no proper answers to Europe\u2019s challenges of today. Sure, they mention some sort of treaty change. And they want to work around the constant vetoes in the European Council. But how? There they stop halfway. Europe needs much more, and it needs it fast.\u00a0If Germany refuses to take the lead on thoroughly reforming the EU<\/strong>, we\u2019re going to be stuck for the next four years. And we really cannot afford that.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

HOW TO REACT TO TARIFF-TRUMP<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Especially not after America\u2019s so-called \u201cLiberation Day\u201d. Trump is slapping tariffs on everything and everyone that he doesn\u2019t like. 20 % on all EU imports, even 25 % on cars. How should Europe react? We can, of course, respond with similar tariffs and enter into a full-blown trade war. But that\u2019s not how we are. The EU Commission is now preparing more targeted answers, like extra tariffs on certain products \u2013 think of Whisky or Harley Davidsons.\u00a0These are measures that hurt Republican run states the most<\/strong>. I think that\u2019s brilliant, because it lets them taste their own medicine and will put pressure on the governors.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know where this is going, but it will severely harm free trade and our European economy. This is why it is more important than ever to break free from encrusted structures. Stop protecting the old dinosaur industries,\u00a0start to fund European innovation<\/strong>! We have to scale up now. And we have to find new partners around the world \u2013 let\u2019s team up with Canada, Mexico or the Mercosur countries. We\u2019re all in this together.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

TALENT, COME HOME!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I want to end with a positive note. Something good that may come out of this. Have you seen the new billboards in New York, San Francisco and L.A.? Those asking highly skilled professionals and academics to leave the US chaos behind and come back to Europe? They are, of course, not real (yet). It was our stunt for April\u2019s fools.<\/p>\n

But the idea behind that is very real indeed:\u00a0Europe should now try and attract talent from the US<\/strong>. Polls show that 75 % of academics don\u2019t trust the US anymore and think about migrating. This is great news for Europe! We need these talents, and we should do everything we can to welcome them here. If we manage to do this properly, it could indeed become a new spring of hope for Europe!<\/p>\n

Yours
\nDamian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear friends, spring is in the air here in Strasbourg this week \u2013 and that goes for politics as well. \u00a0Some things have happened this week that make me rather hopeful for the future. And some that feel like we\u2019re still stuck in a dark, cold period. But as always, I try to be as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-unkategorisiert"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4479,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4478\/revisions\/4479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damianboeselager.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}