| Scisca said: I know it's the politicians, but if you keep supporting this government, you'll get the blame as well. I know Merkel is losing support, but the support is still huge and she'll probably keep power after the upcoming elections, despite holding on to her current policies. Merkel was getting the job done for a long time, even we were respecting her, but the last couple of years it all changed. To us it seems like, yet again, you've reached the point in which you (as a country, not individual people) no longer want to be "one of the European countries", but you want to be in charge of Europe. To dominate and govern it. The immigration policy is terrible and shows clear signs of that. You keep messing up, violating the law left and right and are forcing others to deal with the outcome. The way the crisis in Greece is being dealt with is again a terrifying display of your power over other countries. Poor Greeks. Your developing cooperation with Russia that's harmful for Central European members of the EU is another burning point. It totally killed any hopes for a united and solidary Europe over here. We see countries only have to show solidarity, when Germany needs it (eg. immigrants), but when it's time for Germany to show it (eg. Nord Stream I and II), you're nowhere to be seen, doing your business as usual and showing other member states the middle finger. At this point, if we ever want the dream of a happy and united Europe to return, Germany has to take a huge step back. You need to tame your ambitions, cause it's starting to get toxic. But I somehow can't see it happening. With great power comes great responsibility, you seem to want the first one, but don't want to have nothing to do with the second one. I don't think a new form of the European Parliament would change much. We're not one country and blind pushing for stronger integration in current times of huge unrest is a recipe for disaster. I think what we need right now is the contrary - give countries some more space to breathe and respect the diversity and sovereignity of member nations. We're not a federation and never will become one, the sooner the politicians in Brussels accept that, the better. |
I feel you, man. I totally get where you're coming from. Some points:
1) I'm not supportive of our current government and most people over here are very cirtical towards it. The problem is this: There's almost no way to elect a new government because the two largest german parties (Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU)) formed a "Grand Coalition". There's no viable political alternative, with two exceptions: The AfD (which is more and more becoming a far-right party) and the Greens who actually won the federal state elections in south-west Germany earlier this year (SPD and CDU together lost more than 20% of votes compared to 2011 in those elections). So yeah, you're probably right: Merkel might very well still be chancellor after next year's general elections even if her party loses lots of support.
2) I agree about germany steamrolling other european nations right now. But I'm not sure where the "cooperation with Russia" idea comes from. German media has been very anti-Russia for years now and the general media consensus is that Putin is undemocratic. Whenever Russia hosts a sports even there are discussions about boycotting it and our secretary of state is opposed to getting Russia back into G7 meetings. It probably looks different from your point of view (naturally, considering the german-russian "track record" when it comes to Poland).
3) At the bolded part: Totally agree. This is something that has bugged me for years. German politicians have been very power-averse for decades because of WWII and now they have no idea how to balance the influential position germany has in european politics.
4) I guess we agree to disagree on the EU part, then. In my opion there are two ways out of the current situation: A real democratic european reform or a strong scale-back of all things EU. Just not the current bureaucracy.
