I would not be surprised, if this was just meant to get subsidies for EVs. The none Chinese competition outside the EU is mostly pretty weak. Hyundai is doing well, but the Japanese do not have good EVs and the Americans only Tesla. In China the EV market is a blood bath. The companies surviving that will be strong, but who cares if the competition is called BYD or Toyota.

Oh and most of the chaos is getting rid of combustion engine related stuff. It seems stupid to me to close those factories now, when you expect the market to be open until 2040.

The article is from Saturday, but it seems like none of the large EU news source have managed to confirm it with their own sources.

Yeah obviously. You can pass decent laws with the center right EPP, but not with the far right. So nobody should vote with them. If they did not vote with the EPP, then the EPP probably needs right wing votes to pass things. Obviously that should not mean, that the Greens should vote for the EPP all the time, but cooperating on passing good laws is clearly in the interest of the Greens.

Ukraine has a population decline since 1993. The war makes the situation worse, but even returning refugees and a likely baby boom still means that they are in structural decline.

The bigger issue for Russia is honestly Central Asia. With the Russian economy in trouble the income gap is closing. At the same time they are looking for alternatives. South Korea for example is an obvious choice given the situation in the country and the Korean diaspora in Central Asia.

The other big problem for Russia might just be independence movements.

Another huge part will be the many Ukrainians, who moved to the Western parts of the country. Especially in combination with the destruction of the war, we likely see the east loosing a lot more population when it is all done.

Also it will be intressting to see what happens to Russia. Their problem is not on the same scale, but imho it is much more likely that the Russians who fleed the war will never return, while there also is a good chance that if Russia looses, the economy will be a complete disaster, whereas Ukraine getting at least some help from the West. So it seems likely to me that a lot of Russians leave the country at that point as well.

China does not have the problem of a massive war killing a lot of people and creating a massive refugee wave. Ukraine is down to 36million people from 42million in 2022. That is like China loosing 200million people over three years. The natural decline to 600million is the UN estimate for the end of the decade so an annual decline of about 10million.

The only country with somewhat similar issues is Russia, but they do not have as big of a refugee crisis.

That is why I mentioned the US. Last quarter 27% of EU gas imports came from the US. To be fair Norway is even worse in theory, but Norway is also fairly dependend on the EU(certainly more then the US).

For oil the US is also the bigges supplier at 14%, but it should be easier to replace that oil if need be, as it is not that much.

Finally! Now the next step is to decouple from the US by lowering gas consumption.

In a way Europe has been preparing for the post US age for decades in form of the EU. It provides its members a large secure market, is a massive security alliance and is a useful tool for geopolitics. But probably most important, the EU is afraid of Russia, where the US can potentially be very helpful. If Russia is beaten, then it is not a threat for years. Other then that Turkey might be a problem, but that can be dealt with more easily and then you have the US, which is an ocean away and China, which is on the other site of the planet. Canada meanwhile has to listen to Trump openly talking about annexing their country.

I really hope Russia collapses soon. It would mean Europe being able to much more easily chart its future with much less fear of Trump.

That is dead, if FCAS dies. Neither Nexter nor KMW are willing to cooperate on anything besides the new mbt project. However Rheinmetall has the Panther, which is a pretty good tank and seems to enter production soon. So if FCAS fails, the Bundeswehr might well go for that as well leaving France in a pretty bad position.

The EU has frozen funds for Hungary. The economy has some serious problems, which makes people angry. So angry in fact, that according to current polls Orban is going to loose the next election. The next election is in April, so not too far away.

Why? Just invite him to Duisburg or so. That would be an easy 3hour trip to the Hague.

Great to see that Merz wants to piss of Israel…

Ariane6 can compete with Falcon9, but the German start up rockets are much smaller. They also have not had a successfull launch, although Isar Aerospaces Spectrum has had a lift off.

There is nothing about workers rights in there as far as I can tell. Certainly nothing about 60h work week. The union letter is basically just complaining about workers rights, without specifying which rights specifically and effected by what exactly.

Any sort of source for that law? I can not find anything…

In the first nine months petrol cars saw a 18.3% drop in registrations in the EU and diesel a 24.5% drop. At the same time BEVs are up 25.7%. Hybrids are up as well, but the trend should be clear.

That btw used to be much larger. Opel, which was owned by GM for ages, was competing for the number one position in Germany for decades. Similar story for Vauxhall in the UK. Ford was also a pretty decent for a long time.

The German car industry is transitioning from ICE to EV and that means building up factories for EVs hiring a lot of people and then firing the ICE workers, when those car sales are going down. That is what is happening right now. They just cry for subsidies and obviously the oil industry is pissed off as well.

It is really intressting that the Chinese seem to replace the Americans and Japnese, but not the European manufacturers.