Europe

Will small nationalisms remake Europe? The continent’s frontiers are never fixed

San Candido is Italy — if only someone would tell the locals. Even before you arrive, past needle peaks and pine trees, you’ll notice the road signs: “Innichen” defiantly above, “S. Candido” almost a nickname below. Once you reach the centre, the houses are all Alpine shutters, and the villagers cry “Grüss Gott” (God bless) for hello. In the cafés, you can sip on schnapps, or gorge on strudels the size of your fist. Spend long enough here, where Italy nuzzles Austria, and even the cows seem to moo for Mitteleuropa.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope

Putin knows we are spreadsheet warriors and Europe is in no position to fight

The European Union has experienced quite a few shocks over the past two decades. The most significant one was not Covid, or Brexit, or the Ukraine war. It was the sovereign debt crisis. The fairytale story is that Mario Draghi single-handedly ended the crisis when he told the world that he would do “whatever it takes” to save the euro. He was the president of the European Central Bank when he announced a backstop. It is a convenient explanation because it assumes that the crisis is over.

I am going to put my head on the block to predict that this crisis could come back sooner than we think. Last time, it was the southern Europeans who triggered it. This time, it is the northern Europeans with their relentless push for an increase in defence spending to 5% of GDP.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEU, Europe, European Union, NATO, Russia

The Outbreak of Migrant-Related Crime and Rape in the EU

Various EU nations have endured an outbreak of sexual assault and violent crime as a result of compliance with EU migration policies.

On June 9th 2025, two migrants were arrested and charged with the attempted rape of a 14-year old Irish girl in the town of Ballymena.

In response, scores of beleaguered Irish people have now, for days, cascaded throughout the streets of Ballymena, in an effort to decry and protest the hyper-liberal migration policies that have decimated public safety in their hometown and transformed the once-noble Irish nation into a morass of violent crime and sexual assault.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCamp Of The Saints, Europe

Canada to join major European rearmament deal as early as June 23: sources

Prime Minister Mark Carney plans on joining a sweeping European plan in Belgium this month to rearm the continent and provide more military aid to Ukraine, CBC News has learned.

Last month, Carney signalled to CBC’s Power & Politics that he hopes to sign on to the new defence initiative by Canada Day as he tries to move away from relying on the United States for weapons and munitions.

Now sources with knowledge of the matter say Carney is expected to join the rearmament deal as early as June 23, when he meets with European leaders in Brussels at the EU-Canada summit.

I guess this will grant all the NATO deadbeats a new forum in which to make grandiose defence promises that will never be kept. Medals for everyone!

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"CAF - Canadian Armed Forces", Canada, Europe, USA

Canada-Europe defence ties can link ‘club of countries, with shitty armies and shitty governments’ says German envoy

If Canada decides to buy submarines from Germany, it would mean tightening ties with a “club of countries” in Europe as it looks to meet NATO defence spending goals and face an uncertain world, Germany’s ambassador says.

Matthias Lüttenberg, Germany’s ambassador to Canada, sat down with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson in an interview airing on Sunday and emphasized the value of working more closely together.

“It’s up to the Canadian government to decide which direction they want to go,” said Lüttenberg.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"CAF - Canadian Armed Forces", Canada, Europe

Postcard From Brussels: My Day in the Capital of Declining Europe

Last week at an event at the European Parliament, an MEP asked me a question that I hear often: “Does JD Vance hate Europe?”

My guess is that he does not hate the Europe of tête de veau in a Rive Gauche brasserie in Paris, of Sunday mass at the Duomo in Milan, of Alpine lakes in Switzerland, or of paintings at the Alte Pinothek in Munich. What he hates is Brussels, or rather, “Brussels”—the symbol of official, bureaucratic Europe, and the dictatorship of managerial liberalism administered from there. He hates the Europe of decrees from the European Commission, of the Digital Services Act circumscribing the access of EU citizens to knowledge and information, and of the EU ruling class refusing to face the overwhelming problem of mass migration, and act to stop it.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union

‘Tyranny in Disguise’: Will Democracy Survive in Europe?

February 14, 2025. U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance delivers remarks in Germany, at the Munich Security Conference. The audience expects him to talk about foreign policy, geopolitics, and threats facing the world.

Instead, he says that the most worrying threat today is “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” He adds that European countries and institutions are undermining democracy and freedom of speech — and gives examples.

“A former European commissioner,” Vance states, “went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEU, Europe, European Union

Trump threatens 50% tariffs on EU and 25% on iPhones

US President Donald Trump has said he is recommending a 50% tariff on all goods from the European Union being imported to the United States.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” he wrote in a post on social media on Friday. He said the new tariffs would kick in on 1 June.

The announcement marks an escalation of Trump’s trade war with the EU. He initially proposed a 20% tariff on most EU goods, but halved it to 10% until 8 July to allow time for talks.

The president also threatened to impose a 25% import tax “at least” on iPhones not manufactured in America.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

Why are Europeans so untroubled by their ignorance of America?

Americans are infamous on the eastern side of the Atlantic for knowing little or nothing about European culture, history and politics – and for being proud of the fact, as Richard Hofstadter, the late Columbia historian, described in them in Anti-intellectualism in American Life, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1964.

Much less widely recognized is how little Europeans know about America, Americans and their own civilization – an ignorance that troubles them not at all, perhaps because they seem to be unaware of the fact.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

EU offers Trump removal of all industrial tariffs

BRUSSELS — The EU has offered the United States a “zero-for-zero” tariff scheme, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday, seeking to avoid a tit-for-tat trade war.

“We have offered zero-for-zero tariffs for industrial goods as we have successfully done with many other trading partners. Because Europe is always ready for a good deal. So we keep it on the table,” she told a press conference alongside Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Liberation Day", EU, Europe, USA

Disentangle from Europe

Marine Le Pen was just banned from running for president of France for five years. That’s more like forever. Le Pen is deemed a criminal and sentenced to wear an electronic tag for a couple years. A French court claims she embezzled. But why would we believe a French court any more than we believe a Manhattan or D.C. district court? Trump’s been through those wringers.

Macron and his mates did to Le Pen what Romanian elites did to Calin Georgescu, the populist candidate for president there. Reportedly, he was the frontrunner. If you smell a rat, you’re right.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA

After Trump’s broad tariffs, Europe reels from the loss of an old ally

ROME — In announcing plans to rebuild post-World War II Europe, then-U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall linked security with economics. Without the United States doing whatever it could to promote “normal economic health in the world,” he said, “there can be no political stability and no assured peace.”

Nearly 80 years later, America’s closest allies in Europe see President Donald Trump’s tariffs as another blow to a fast-fracturing Western alliance that had stood as the most successful peace project of modern times — one whose pillars included shared democratic values, a strategic goal to contain Moscow as well as flourishing flows of trade and investment.

I don’t think anyone expected the Marshall Plan to be a permanent US financial obligation.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, European Union, USA

Lies, The Spirit of Munich, and JD Vance

In Washington this week, Vice President JD Vance introduced the documentary series based on my 2020 bestseller Live Not By Lies, which is about the lessons anti-communist dissidents of the Soviet bloc have for us today. In the book (which has been translated into most European languages), I talk about the “soft totalitarianism” of wokeness and left-wing illiberalism, and feature interviews with former dissidents who warn that we are facing a new form of oppression in the West—one with striking similarities to what they endured under the Soviets.

Some of these people—Czechs, Slovaks, Romanians, and others—appear in the four-part documentary, telling their stories and warning contemporary people to wake up while there is still time.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope

Europe Is No Longer Worth Defending

Since we no longer share the same ideals of freedom and democracy, we should no long shoulder their burdens.

Monday morning’s edition of the RealClear Politics news aggregator contained a very interesting manifestation of their usual juxtaposition of left vs. right thought pieces. It looked like this…

The articles themselves were no less notable in their approach to the dissipating relationship between a MAGA Revivalist America and a globalist declining Europe.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inEurope, USA