Luckily, nowadays they pretty much got rid of their fundamentalist/leftwing arm. They kinda turned "conservative", but in a positive sense.
In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.
Its an officially extremist party (observed by the "Verfassungsschutz" [or: "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution"], that traditionally kind of ignored the far-right), one of their leaders can officially be called a fascist (court ruling), and another leader says the 3rd Reich was kind of not that big of a deal.
Figured since we can observe the same phenomena everywhere in EU.
Regardless, by this point I think it is inevitable some of the hardcore right wing politics will enter mainstream; we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them.
Lest anyone try to throw the nazi card my way it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU which does not even remotely have the flexibility required to manage external shock events like this. Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.
> we (as in Europe as a whole) took too many immigrants without any consideration of how to manage them
So in Germany, we are actually quite successful in managing the million that came in 2015. Most got a job and pay taxes. Actually quite awesome, fiveteen years ago everyone in Germany was afraid we'll run out of young workers.
> it should be stated that this is a failure born from rigid top-down management structure of the EU
As far as I remember, the problem was that it was actually not possible to do a top-down decision, because each national government did whatever they wanted to do? I guess the only thing we did end up doing on a EU-wide level was border protection. Not sure though.
> Same reason why the joint debt mechanism being forced on the excuse of COVID is a horrible idea and will end in tears for many.
Funny, I strongly believe its the reason the EU will not just survive but strive. Finally, the excuse of "all the money we have to give to the EU" is gone. Soon, the EU will have some taxes that only make sense on the EU level (financial transactions, or a tax on digital goods) and we're good. Besides, no national government would get the low interest rates when taking up debt that the EU combined will get, right?
> Funny, I strongly believe its the reason the EU will not just survive but strive. Finally, the excuse of "all the money we have to give to the EU" is gone. Soon, the EU will have some taxes that only make sense on the EU level (financial transactions, or a tax on digital goods) and we're good. Besides, no national government would get the low interest rates when taking up debt that the EU combined will get, right?
We paid in 6 billion into the relief fund and are projected to get less than 3 out of it wrapped in some pre-determined financial instruments. It's like paying 10€ for a gift card that's worth 4€ and only works for some specific shops. People would call that a rubbish deal but what do I know.
In addition, our politicians lied very intentionally to us that this is a one-time fund, just for COVID purposes. Less than 2 weeks later after passing the vote in parliament, Governor of the Bank of Italy Ignazia Visco is already marketing the fund as permanent and the future of a joint monetary EU strategy.
Excuse me if I don't share your optimism on this swindle, but then again unlike us, Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this. Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies and insane amounts of bureaucracy.
Well, the EU is pretty heterogeneous, so I would expect different politicians saying and wanting different things. Still seems like its worth it, though, on an economical level at least.
England, for example, did only join the EU back then for economical reasons. Them leaving the EU now doesn't seem like an economical win (and it was probably not an decision made based on economics, I guess).
So I agree that
> Germany is a very likely benefactor from all of this.
but I would argue that all countries in the EU are.
> Because let's call it what it is - it's a redistribution of wealth into the power centers of EU obscured by lies (...)
Which lies do you mean, for example?
> (...) and insane amounts of bureaucracy.
Well yeah. But if the EU would not manage these things, each country would have to manage them with each of the other countries, leading to much much more bureaucracy.
In my opinion, them being a possible choice for conservative voters keeps our conservative party from doing too much rightwing crap, as they will know they'll loose voters to the Greens. We'll see how stuff goes in September (national elections). Under the hood, there's still lots of rightwing tendencies in our conservative party, unfortunately.