Berlin:

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday condemned an attack on one of his party’s European Parliament deputies as a “threat” to democracy after investigators said a political motive was suspected.

Police said four unknown attackers beat up Matthias Ecke, an MEP for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), as he put up EU election posters in the eastern city of Dresden on Friday night.

Ecke, 41, was “seriously injured” and required an operation after the attack, his party said. Police confirmed he needed hospital treatment.

“Democracy is threatened by this kind of act,” Scholz told a congress of European socialist parties in Berlin, saying such attacks result from “discourse, the atmosphere created from pitting people against each other”.

“We must never accept such acts of violence… we must oppose it together.”

The investigation is being led by the state protection services, highlighting the political link suspected by police.

“If an attack with a political motive… is confirmed just a few weeks from the European elections, this serious act of violence would also be a serious act against democracy,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.

This would be “a new dimension of anti-democratic violence”, she added.

Series of attacks

Ecke, who is head of the SPD’s EU election list in the Saxony region, was just the latest political target to be attacked in Germany.

Police added that a 28-year-old man putting up posters for the Greens had earlier been “punched” and “kicked” in the same Dresden street. The same attackers were suspected.

Faeser said “extremists and populists are stirring up a climate of increasing violence”.

The SPD highlighted the role of the far-right “AfD party and other right-wing extremists” in increased tensions.

“Their supporters are now completely uninhibited and clearly view us democrats as game,” said Henning Homann and Kathrin Michel, regional SPD leaders. 

Armin Schuster, interior minister in Saxony, where an important regional vote is due to be held in September, said 112 acts of political violence linked to the elections have been recorded there since the beginning of the year.

Of that number, 30 were directed against people holding political office of one kind or another.

“What is really worrying is the intensity with which these attacks are currently increasing,” he said on Saturday.

On Thursday two Greens deputies were abused while campaigning in Essen in western Germany and one was hit in the face, police said.

Last Saturday, dozens of demonstrators surrounded parliament deputy speaker Katrin Goering-Eckardt, also a Greens lawmaker, in her car in eastern Germany. Police reinforcements had to clear a route for her to get away.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

(from left) Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Donald Tusk at a press conference at the Chancellery in Berlin on March 15.
| Photo Credit: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published on March 16 evening that Western ground operations in Ukraine might be necessary “at some point”, days after meeting with German and Polish leaders.

Last month Mr. Macron refused to rule out putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, which prompted a stern response from Berlin and other European partners.

But the French President has not recanted from his position, but stressed that Western allies would not take the initiative.

“Maybe at some point — I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative — we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” Mr. Macron told newspaper Le Parisien in an interview conducted on March 15.

“France’s strength is that we can do it”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reacted angrily to Mr. Macron’s earlier refusal to rule out sending troops to Ukraine and his pointed comments urging allies not to be “cowards”.

Mr. Macron met his German and Polish counterparts in Berlin on Friday, in a show of solidarity behind Kyiv.

After the meeting, Mr. Macron said the three countries of the so-called Weimar Triangle were “united” in their aim to “never let Russia win”.

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen speaks during a news conference with the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama in Tirana, Albania, on Sept. 28, 2021. Leaders from the European Union and the Western Balkans are holding an annual summit in Albania’s capital to discuss the six countries’ path to membership in the bloc. fight.
| Photo Credit: AP

Leaders from the European Union and the Western Balkans will hold a summit in Albania’s capital on October 16 to discuss the path to membership in the bloc for the six countries of the region.

The main topics at the annual talks — called the Berlin Process — are integrating the Western Balkans into a single market and supporting their green and digital transformation. The nations in the region are Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia.

The senior EU officials attending the summit in Tirana are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and European Council President Charles Michel. They will be joined by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The six Western Balkan countries are at different stages of integration into the bloc. Serbia and Montenegro were the first Western Balkan countries to launch membership negotiations a few years ago, followed by Albania and Macedonia last year, while Bosnia and Kosovo have only begun the first step of the integration process.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has put integration of the Western Balkans into the EU at the top of the 27-nation bloc’s agenda. The EU is trying to reinvigorate the whole enlargement process, which has been stalled since 2013, when the last country to become a member was Croatia.

The EU had made it a requirement for Western Balkans to reform their economies and political institutions before joining the bloc.

Ms. Von der Leyen mentioned a new growth plan for the Western Balkan countries that she will make public at the summit: opening new trade routes in seven specific areas of the EU’s common market for the Balkan countries, which need to implement quick reforms that in turn will be accompanied by investment.

Ms. Von der Leyen, speaking at a news conference on October 15 after meeting with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, gave no further details.

A bitter dispute between Serbia and Kosovo, a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008, remains a great concern for the EU before the summit. A recent shootout between masked Serb gunmen and Kosovo police that left four people dead and sent tensions soaring in the region seems to have suspended the EU-facilitated dialogue to normalize their ties.

EU officials have called on the Balkan countries to overcome regional conflicts and stand together as Russia wages war in Ukraine.

The summit, which is being held for the first time in a non-EU member country, takes place at a pharaonic landmark, known as the Pyramid. It was built in 1988 as a posthumous museum for Albania’s communist-era strongman, Enver Hoxha.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
| Photo Credit: AFP

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s beleaguered coalition was counting the cost on October 9 of heavy losses at two State elections halfway into its term, which also saw the far right make strong gains.

All three parties in the coalition— Mr. Scholz’s centre-left SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP— saw support fall on October 8 in the southern region of Bavaria, the country’s biggest State, and Hesse in the west.

The main conservative opposition won in both polls, as expected, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained more ground, causing fresh concern about their growing appeal.

Nearly 14 million people were eligible to vote in the States, almost one in five of Germany’s electorate. The polls were seen as a crucial indicator of the population’s mood, with surging immigration and economic woes among key topics.

“It is clear who won the vote: populism,” said news weekly Der Spiegel while the top-selling Bild said a whopping 80 percent of Sunday’s voters were calling for a change in migration policy, citing polling institute Infratest dimap.

Two years after coming to power, the polls were a kind of “interim report card” for Mr. Scholz’s coalition, Der Spiegel said.

“The results are disastrous,” it went on. “The coalition needs a reset if it wants to be re-elected in two years.”

For the anti-immigration AfD, the votes were the latest sign of growing momentum and showed their appeal was extending beyond their traditional strongholds in the ex-communist east.

The elections came after a torrid two years for Scholz’s government, which has had to contend with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and an ensuing energy crisis that plunged Germany into recession.

Adding to the problems, the chancellor’s coalition has been consumed by bitter infighting on issues ranging from climate laws to spending cuts.

However, Mr. Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit sought to play down the vote setbacks, saying the government was on course to tackle the most pressing issues facing the country.

“The Chancellor is convinced that the government is doing a good job, that it has the right positions and is charting the right course for the longer term,” he told reporters.

Not helping the cause of the SPD and its coalition partners, both states are conservative strongholds. Hesse had been ruled for 24 years by the main opposition CDU and Bavaria since 1957 by the CSU, headed by Markus Soeder.

The SPD had sought to gain ground in Hesse by fielding a heavyweight to run for state premier, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

But the party won just 15% of the vote, almost five percentage points below its last result in 2018.

The CDU maintained its first place in Hesse and extended its lead by over seven points to 34.6%.

State premier Boris Rhein is thus set to retain his job, while Ms. Faeser is left facing questions about her political future.

SPD party leader Saskia Esken said the poor showing underlined that the government in Berlin must speed up its response on migration in particular.

“We have got to seal migration agreements with the main countries of origin now,” she told public broadcaster ARD.

The AfD looked to have gained about five percentage points in both Bavaria and Hesse, building on recent local poll wins, although the mainstreams parties have ruled out cooperation with it in government.

Immigration was a central theme at the polls as Germany— like elsewhere in Europe— faces a surge of new arrivals, reviving memories of a major influx in 2015.

The victory of the CSU— the sister party of the CDU— in Bavaria was widely expected and State Premier Mr. Soeder will retain his post.

But with vote projections showing the party’s worst result for decades, it could deal a blow to his ambitions to one day stand as a Chancellor candidate.