Tag Archives: Germany

German Is Getting Sexy Again. Again.

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The controverse reaction to Edward’s use of a French block quote in a blog that claims to be the place for intelligent English language coverage of European affairs, made me remember my first blogging conversation. It was a discussion about Germans not publishing in English and the stipulation by the Norwegian blogger Bj?rn St?rk that ??nothing beautiful or sensible should ever be written in Norwegian, if it could be written in English.? So after speaking French all evening, and in light of the above mentioned comments as well as my imminent visit to the Frankfurt International Book Fair (link in English) I felt compelled to recycle my defence of linguistic diversity as a virtue of its own right, which was first published in a slightly different version in almost a diary on February 2nd, 2003.

Bj?rn St?rk had a look around the web and was astonished by the fact that he could find relatively few European, particularly German and French, (particularly political) blogs published in English. Contemplating the deeper issue at hand – the relation of national cultures and supra-national languages – in this case English – in an age of global interaction – Bj?rn made an interesting argument concerning cultural imperialism, linguistic protectionism, linguistic economies of scale and scope as well as the advantages of publishing in English instead of one?s native language.

No doubt about it – English has become some sort lingua franca in many respects.

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Shoes, Other Feet, Fits

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EU unilaterally blocking Russia’s entry into the very very multilateral WTO.

How many poles is this multipolar thing going to have, anyway?

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Putin Doesn’t Like EU Terms for Entry
October 9, 2003
By Natalya Shurmina

YEKATERINBURG, Russia (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin sharply
criticized European Union “bureaucrats” on Thursday for pressing the
country to raise domestic energy prices as a condition for joining the
World Trade Organization.

“We cannot move to world energy prices in a single day. It will ruin the
country’s economy. Eurobureaucrats either do not understand this or are
trying to impose conditions which are unacceptable for Russia’s entry to
WTO,” Putin told a Russian-German summit meeting in the Urals.

“Such a tough position toward Russia is unjustified and dishonest. We view
this as an attempt at arm-twisting.”
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Europe as an economic irrelevancy

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By 2050 Western Europe could be an economic irrelevancy, with its four leading economies, the UK, Germany, France and Italy (note the order?) enjoying a combined output of less than half India?s and a third of China?s. Both Brazil and Russia will be twice as large as any single Western European economy.
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He Who Pays the Piper

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My Bulgarian ‘assistant’ still won’t let me forget Chirac’s last faux pas: that the biggest favour the candidate countries could do for themselves was to stay quiet. It looks like we’re going down the same road one more time. I really don’t think it is possible to effectively ‘buy’ opinions. I mean in the short term it may work as a tactic, but long term this will lead to more, not less, resentment and tension. I already feel that the Swedish euro vote was more a political statement than an economic one. The Netherlands are getting louder and louder in their denunciation of stability pact ‘flexibility’, and now the aid-recipients are effectively being told to put up and shut up. This is not a very auspicious start for a new constitution, nor does it offer a very encouraging insight into how it might work.
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Sturm, Drang and Laetitia Casta’s breasts – or – Why France bashing is a feminist issue

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[Nota Bene: Due to the deeply inane nature of JavaScript, clicking the “continue reading” link may not display images linked to posts. It doesn’t work for me in Mozilla or IE. If you click on the permalink, you will see all the content.]

Reader Christophe Kotowski sends a link to today’s International Herald-Tribune (a.k.a. The New York Times in Paris), in which New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein offers an solution to my earlier confusion about American policy towards France and Germany:

Meet Mr. Germany and Ms. France

It was on display again last week, that old double standard. On camera, Germany’s chancellor got a muscular handshake from America’s president and a meeting that let bygones be bygones. France’s president got the official cold shoulder and columnists’ heated denunciations.

Yet France and Germany had taken the same position on the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. Both were offering to help train Iraqi security forces, but not to send soldiers. Both argued that only accelerated Iraqi sovereignty and a larger UN role could secure peace.

Apparently, it sounded different in French. Somehow, to American ears, it always does. At this point in strained trans-Atlantic relations, an obvious explanation comes to mind: In the American imagination, France is a woman, and Germany is just another guy.

The French themselves depict La Belle France as a bare-breasted “Marianne” on the barricades. They export high fashion, cosmetics, fine food – delicacies traditionally linked to a woman’s pleasure. And French has always been Hollywood’s language of love.

Germany, meanwhile, is the Fatherland, its spike helmets retooled into the sleek insignia of cars like the Mercedes and the BMW. It also exports heavy machinery and strong beer – products associated with manliness. Notwithstanding Goethe, Schiller and Franka Potente, German is Hollywood’s language of war, barked to the beat of combat boots in half a century of movies.

Such images simply overpower facts that do not fit the picture – like decades of German pacifism and French militarism since World War II. So what if France was fighting in Vietnam, Algeria and elsewhere in Africa and deploying a force of 36,000 troops around the world, while Germans held peace vigils and invented Berlin’s Love Parade. For Americans, it seems, World War II permanently inoculated Germans against “the wimp factor” and branded the French indelibly as sissies. […]

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A Fistful of Analyses, or

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A shameless plug:

The Center for Applied Policy Research, a think tank attached to the University of Munich does good work on the nuts and bolts of a large number of EU issues. In particular, their Bertelsmann Group for Policy Research will be covering the IGC as thoroughly as it covered the Convention and the previous summits. Their analyses – usually also available in English – get into the inner workings of the machinery and tell who will benefit from, for example, adapting different forms of qualified majority voting in post-enlargement Unions of 25, 27 or more. Their staff advises the German government fairly regularly, so if you want to see where the main stream of German debate on EU is flowing, this is a good place to look.

Plus, they’re outside the Brussels beltway, and indeed outside the occasionally fevered atmosphere in most national capitals. The distance tends to lend a cool, analytical slant to their writing on the EU.

If you happen to read German, their main page follows key developments on constitutional reform, defense policy and enlargement closely. The summary of the convention, Mutige Einschnitte und verzagte Kompromisse – das institutionelle Reformpaket des EU-Konvents, is a good example.

(Full disclosure: Some years back, I worked full time for the Center’s Research Group on the Global Future, and I continue to write, edit and translate for them. Take a look, and form your own opinion.)

The continuing Franco-American mess

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Today’s Le Monde points out the odd dichotomy in American policy towards “Old Europe.” It seems that the US has been playing nice with Germany and giving the French government the cold shoulder.
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The UK as number one

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Since the 1960s Germany has had the largest economy in the EU but Nigel Griffiths, the UK trade minister, thinks all that might change :

“I think that construction and manufacturing alone as sectors could ensure that within 10 years we [the UK] overtake the German economy. We’ve got to see whether we cannot become the third biggest economy in the world* in terms of gross domestic product. I think that is feasible.”

Now before our British readers start singing ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and waving their Union flags, an important point. He’s talking rubbish.
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