Monday, June 04, 2018

SLOVENIAN ELECTION: The anti-immigration Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), led by Janez Janša, emerged victorious from Slovenia’s election on Sunday, winning 25 percent of the vote. Janša, a one-time liberal dissident who transformed himself into an anti-immigration conservative, modeled his campaign on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s political playbook. Janša acknowledged his party will face an uphill battle attempting to form a governing coalition. More results here.

ORBÀN’S NEMESIS: No, not George Soros. The Dutch EPP member party, the CDA, on Saturday adopted a motion calling for Hungary’s Fidesz to be excluded from the Christian Democratic Party family should Orbán not “return to the way in which Fidesz was previously a valued member of the EPP family.” The CDA wants the EPP to develop “red lines” and, if they continue to be crossed, to provide “the ultimate remedy by requesting the (temporary) suspension of membership.”

That’s the harshest stance we’ve seen among EPP members. It’s a party position that will have to be dealt with by EPP big-wigs Joseph Daul and Manfred Weber.

HIS MASTER’S VOICE: U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell told, for some reason, the far-right Breitbart media that his job is to spread the gospel of Trumpism and “empower other conservatives” — anti-establishment ones — “throughout Europe.” Et voilà, German Health Minister Jens Spahn, CDU MEP Sven Schulze “and other friends across the country” had such a good time with him this weekend.

Meanwhile, over in the AfD: “Hitler and the Nazis are just bird shit in more than 1,000 years of successful German history,” AfD co-leader Alexander Gauland told a youth conference.

GOOD MONDAY MORNING. June 3 of the year 2771 ab urbe condita, or of the year 229 after the Revolution, may mark the rebirth of Europe from the spirit of Franco-German friendship; the reconquista led by liberal bigwigs against an illiberal sentiment in parts of the empire; or perhaps just the day Chancellor Angela Merkel decided it was time to say something in public to get that French guy, as lovely as he is annoying, off her back. Who knows. However it pans out, it’s intriguing.

MERKEL’S ANSWER

GERMANY CALLING: The fact that Italy has a government again (and the brand of government it has cobbled together) is already bearing fruit and raising the stakes, the temperature and also the sense of urgency in Germany to do something to reform the eurozone.

In a (rather rare, for her) newspaper interview dedicated to EU affairs with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded to French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for reforming the eurozone.

In fact, Merkel took a position more detailed than Macron himself — he never really explained what he meant by a “common budget” or an “EU finance minister.” Merkel made concrete proposals that she said were to be agreed on by the EU election next year; she also aired some ideas for the future. And she detailed her conditions and moved to downsize Macron’s ambition. Yet make no mistake: She could have made a much, much lower starting offer (as the eight months since the German election painfully showed). There is now at least something on the table to discuss.

Macron may not like everything he’ll read. But perhaps the new Italian government is also a wake-up call for Paris — in the EU leaders’ choir, there aren’t many others who sing along with Macron’s tune of faster, deeper, better integration.

— ‘Investment budget’ for the eurozone: Merkel said it “will be in the lower two-digit billion range,” rather than at some points of Europe’s GDP, as Macron has suggested.

— European Monetary Fund: Merkel wants the ESM to be transformed into a European Monetary Fund with the power to evaluate EU countries’ economies, controlled by national parliaments and not by the European Commission. And she’s ready to consider giving the bailout fund the capacity to extend short-term loans to countries under stress. “This would allow us to help countries that are in difficulties due to external circumstances,” she said. (Read: It’s pointedly not to be used in self-inflicted crises; hence it’s not for Italy.)

— A multiannual financial framework, and fast: “I would urge that we make the effort and decide on the next financial framework before the European election. In today’s uncertain times, Europe must be able to act at all times,” Merkel said. Repeat: “We need the budget for the period after 2021 before the European election.” And the eurozone reforms, too: “We should now clarify this in one go: what the future budget of the entire EU should look like and what the structure of the eurozone is like.” That’s a commitment from the biggest net contributor.

Memo to Italy, France and others: You’re givers, too. “Germany is not the only country to contribute more to the budget; this applies to all net contributors.”

— A European intervention force: “I am in favor of President Macron’s proposal for an intervention initiative,” Merkel said, and that’s news indeed — Merkel’s not covered by the coalition agreement here. It could happen on the condition that such a force with a “common military-strategic culture” is created within the structure of the EU’s brand new defense union, or PESCO (and that the Bundestag makes the decisions about the Bundeswehr’s deployment).

Memo to post-Brexit Britain: “We can open up such an initiative to a country like Great Britain.”

— Common asylum management: “In the final stage of development, we need a common European refugee authority to carry out all asylum procedures at the external borders, on the basis of a uniform European asylum law.”

That’s a long-term plan, but one with significant budgetary implications that could affect the next MFF. And it’s quite a commitment also vis-à-vis German right-wingers among the electorate and party members who are obsessed with taking back control of national borders rather than European ones.

— Spitzenkandidaten: Merkel opened up to Macron’s idea of transnational lists for European elections (eventually), noting that the Spitzenkandidaten system will only work once “the top candidate is on a transnational list and can therefore really be elected in all countries. Only then will he not be dependent on the government of his home country ultimately nominating him for the office of president of the Commission.”

That’s also a warning to any Spitzenkandidat to be elected this fall by Merkel’s own EPP: We’re not there yet. And read this as a strike against Michel Barnier: “It may happen that the winner of the European election belongs to a party other than his head of government at home — and then it will be difficult.”

REACTIONS: Brussels notes — and not without some pleasure — that Merkel’s proposals are closer to Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s than Macron’s. “The chancellor sets important new accents that significantly increase the intersection between Macron, Juncker and the German federal government,” an EU official said. Merkel’s “reviving the European reform process,” the official said, with the call for the EU to get its act together “in an increasingly uncertain world, whether in foreign and security, economic and innovation or asylum and refugee policies.”

The Elysée is less enthusiastic: A French government source sees Merkel’s intervention as “a positive movement that demonstrates the European commitment of the chancellor and her government.” (Indeed, Merkel’s coalition partner, SPD leader Andrea Nahles, told ARD TV she’s on board.) On all issues of Macron’s concept of European sovereignty, Merkel is “moving closer to French views,” but in that French view, there’s more work to be done, in particular on the banking union and a common deposit insurance scheme — as well as on Macron’s eurozone budget.

BACK TO THE EUROPEAN ELECTION: Euroskeptics in the European Parliament have a plan to blow up the assembly’s politics in 2019, and radically change the EU in the process, reports Maïa de la Baume.

GOVERNMENTS’ FIRST STEPS

ITALY: Three days old today, and welcomed by both Merkel and Macron in telephone conversations, Italy’s new government has neither quit the eurozone nor cut politicians’ pay checks (as announced in March by the 5Stars’ Luigi Di Maio, but that must have been campaigning excitement).

The first Cabinet meeting on Friday started at 5:38 p.m. and lasted 17 minutes — just enough time to make some junior ministers’ nominations official, deal with a landslide near Sondrio in Lombardy and prolong the dissolution of a communal council in Calabria (a common measure to wrest municipalities from the mafia).

First international and European appointments: For PM Giuseppe Conte, it’s the G7 leaders’ meeting in Canada at the end of the week. For Matteo Salvini, the Lega leader, interior minister and (formally) deputy PM, it’s a meeting with colleagues in Luxembourg on Tuesday to talk migration.

SPAIN: Merely two hours after being sworn in on Saturday, one day after Catalan separatists helped him oust Mariano Rajoy, new Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez got an urgent invitation from the Catalan regional government. “Pedro Sánchez, let us talk, take risks, both you and I, let us sit down at a table and talk, government to government,” Catalan chief Quim Torra demanded from Barcelona, according to AP. Diego Torres has takeaways from the big change in Spain. Side note: For Brussels, the Spanish change is nowhere near the magnitude of the Italian turmoil. Exhibit A: Compare — or Jacopo Barigazzi did it for you — the two congratulatory letters sent by European Council President Donald Tusk.

GOVERNMENT’S LAST STEPS? You thought the Novartis bribery scandal in Greece was dying down? You don’t know the half of it. Our own Simon Marks got his hands on the bombshell testimony from three anonymous whistleblowers accusing the Swiss drugmaker of bribing Greek politicians to keep prices high in the wake of the financial crisis. And there’s more.

IN OTHER NEWS

BREXIT STATE OF PLAY IN A TWEET: What progress should we expect from the June summit on Brexit (you Continentals may have forgotten it after the trade war frenzy)?  “My personal impression: Not many are expecting very much now. If this is so, October would then have to solve ALL problems (withdrawal, NI, governance, future …) in one go. Odds still unclear,” tweeted Peter Ptassek, the German foreign ministry’s Brexit point man.

Case in point: The U.K.’s latest proposal to buy yet more time before a post-Brexit customs regime is dead-on-arrival — again — in Brussels, EU officials and diplomats say. David Herszenhorn nonetheless tells you what it comprises, and why it won’t fly for the EU.

GHOSTS OF LITHUANIA’S PAST: Lithuania is embroiled in a spat over freedom of speech, Russian propaganda and the Holocaust — over a children’s toy, reports Joanna Plucinska.

MEANWHILE, ON A DIFFERENT FRONT: Ben Hodges, a retired lieutenant general in the U.S. Army, argues in an op-ed that U.S. bases shouldn’t be located in Poland.