The Duran Podcast - Germany dismantles Schengen. Draghi reports EU in TATTERS

Episode Date: September 14, 2024

Germany dismantles Schengen. Draghi reports EU in TATTERS

All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is going on in Germany, and let's talk about the effective suspension of Schengen, which is what Germany has basically done, and the reasons behind this decision that Olaf Schultz has made to impose border controls entering Germany. And then we can also discuss, because it is connected to everything that's happening with with this decision that Schultz has made with the borders in Schengen. We can talk about the terrible state of the EU economy. And Draghi actually commissioned to commissioned by Ursula, she told Draghi to, to big surprise there, to come out with a report and to try and figure out why is the EU economy in such a bad state.

Draghi trying to figure out where did things go wrong. and Draghi has issued his report, his statement as to what has happened to the EU. And he's also talked about his solution, which is more EU actually is his solution to fixing the problems of the EU. Anyway, so let's start with Germany and Schengen, and then we can move into the report from Draghi and the economy and the European Union. This is actually important news. this is really important news and it shows actually the extent to which the IFD are changing the weather in Germany. Because to be absolutely clear, if the IFDA had not won the vote in Thuringia last week and had come almost within a whisker of winning the vote in Saxony and if they weren't the rising party

and if they weren't gaining ground even in West Germany itself, then it's most unlikely that we would have had a decision like this, because of what the Germans have done is that they've now suspended Schengen, in effect, for six months, imposed border control, strict border controls, or so they say, things which when the IFTA proposed it was all outrageous, unacceptable. Or the R word and the F word were thrown around all over the place, you know, that he can't possibly do this, violates all, you know, the humanitarian principles. And of course, it is wholly contrary to EU rules and EU laws. But anyway, faced with a political challenge from the IFDA,

one that looks like it might expand in the next parliamentary election, the German political class had basically in a state of political, panic, and this isn't just Schultz. The CDU are also apparently agitating to do this. They've rushed unilaterally and without any parent real consultation and without even consulting the EU centre. They've rushed to impose border controls. Now they're saying they're only going to do it for six months and that's probably true. That's probably what they intend to do. If, of course, it continues and Schengen starts to collapse and without Germany, I mean, you know, it's difficult to see how Schengen can continue to work, then, I mean, it would be a colossal blow to the EU centre.

And if Schengen starts to break down, you start to see other things break down as well. But to be clear, this is a cynical move because the Sbedere, the Traffic Light Coalition, the CDU, all of them, they still remain wholly committed to the EU project. They don't really mean to undo Schengen. They don't really mean to dismantle the whole system of EU controls. They've done this as a maneuver, an electoral maneuver, in advance of the elections in Germany next year. But the fact that they've done it is nonetheless a big step,

and it's one that is already sending, you know, shockwaves across the EU. entire EU and which the EU centre itself is extremely unhappy about. And of course, other countries, Poland, for example, Donald Tusk government in Poland, they're already criticising. Notice, of course, that the previous government in Poland, the government, the law and justice party government, the government that Donald Tusk defeated in the elections a year or so ago, the government, of course they tried to impose controls on movement and to defend borders. And they were relentlessly criticised for doing that, including by the Traffic Light Coalition in Germany.

So you can understand by Donald Tusk, who was the great defender of the EU and of the EU Centre and Schengen and EU rules and all of that feels particularly exposed. by this German move and feels that the rug is to some extent being pulled under his feet. And of course, the other political leader in Europe who feels vindicated at the moment, as he's not delayed in pointing out, is Viktor Orban. And of course, where Germany leads, why would say Maloney in Italy hold back? So, you know, the EU, the people in Brussels are going to be,

worried about this. And there'll be lots of telephone calls to Berlin. And they'll be telling people there, what are you doing? This is extremely dangerous to our whole project. We can't allow it. Maybe we'll have some kind of EU summit meeting to discuss the way forward. Let's agree on more border controls on the EU's borders rather than internal controls. And they'll try and persuade everybody to sign up to something like that. And perhaps in six months' time, that's what will happen. And everything will go back to normal. Because as I say, I don't believe that Schultz, Mouths,

Lintner, all of these politicians from the traffic light coalition and the CDU are really serious about it. No, it's a reaction to the election results, the EU parliament elections, the election results in Thuringia Saxony and the rise of the IFTA. But can you make the argument that by doing this, even if it is for only six months, Germany has effectively canceled Schengen, I mean, even if they have a meeting in six months, an EU-Brussels meeting, and they get Germany to reinstate Schengen, whatever they come up with, whatever mechanisms they decide to put in place. It has exposed Schengen as being non-enforceable, really.

I mean, you know, Germany could come back in a year or two or France or Netherlands, whatever country can decide, you know, I want to impose border controls. And there's nothing really that the EU can do. Or, I mean, this is exposed a weakness. It has. In Brussels, in the center of Europe, they thrive for power. They want things to be more centralized. They want control of all of the EU member states.

But now we've seen that they still can't get that control. I mean, this is big news. This is very big news. You're absolutely right because, of course, Schengen is only one of these things. Provided you're big enough, if you're Germany, you can carry, you can do this. If you're France, you can do this. At least you can, you can't, the EU can't do to you what they can do to Hungary or Greece or even Italy or Spain. So the big core countries, what this episode has demonstrated, still have power if they decide to exercise it.

And they have now exercised it. And it has caused a shock in the system. And the major political beneficiary of this, by the way, is going to be the IFTA. Because the IFTA will come along and say, look, what you said that we have advocated, what you've always said is outrageous. You see that you yourself are prepared to do. So it can't be that outrageous. And you say that it's against EU law, but you're prepared yourself to take steps. which suggests that you're not actually that bothered with that.

So why do this for only six months? Why not follow what we are saying and make it permanent? So I think the IFDA actually have a major, you know, they come out, they have a major advantage out of this. And I think that some of the IFDA leaders that I've been following are clever enough to understand this and to make use of it. So this is a shock.

It does demonstrate the continuing fragility of the EU system. It does show that the centre, the EU centre, can only dominate, provided the Germans support it. The Germans first and foremost, but the French are important as well. Schengen is flexible if Germany says it says it is. Yeah, so that brings us to the state of the economies of the European Union, the EU economy as a whole, all the all the member states. And things are looking very bad. And of course, you go back to Germany. If the German economy is deindustrialized, industrializing and is collapsing, well, then all of the European Union economies, the European Union economy as a whole. is going to collapse along with it. And that brings us to Draghi's report. And Draghi talks about Eurobonds. That's the solution, getting countries to borrow as one EU.

And that's the way that Europe is going to solve their economic troubles, which Draghi, to his credit, I guess you could say, if you want to credit Draghi with anything, he basically said that the EU for many, many decades to come is screwed. Yes. Whether it comes to innovation, competing with the U.S., competing with China, whether it comes to birth rates, across the board. Industry, inflation, losing, he said, losing Russian energy, though he didn't get into any details. The EU is screwed, he said, and his solution was to borrow more and to borrow as a collective, as an EU collective, which takes us once again right back to the never-ending story of Europe.

So what are your thoughts on the EU economy as a whole? And it is connected to Germany. It is connected to Germany. It is connected to the whole malaise that has been gripping Europe for some time, which we've been discussing in program after program. It's interesting that Draghi has finally come round again to our point of view. I'm just saying we don't have all of the massive resources at our disposal that Mario Draghi has had.

We don't have the teams of accountants and proven notaries and economists and statisticians and computer power. No doubt, Draghi had to use in order to produce this report. But nonetheless, let's be kind to him. He has stated the obvious. It was obvious to us. It's obvious to many other people. But he's finally understood that things are not good in Europe. What he's not prepared to admit to,

This is the key problem is that the reason the situation in Europe is so bad, the reason the European economy is in decline. I mean, Maloney made a very interesting point that in 1990, Europe, the EU, which remember was much smaller in 1990 than it is today. It was the Western countries. It had not expanded to the extent that it has now. Anyway, in 1990, it accounted for around a quarter of world GDP. And by the way, a more solid GDP at that time than the GDP we have now, that according to Maloney has fallen to 16%. I've actually heard that it's fallen below that. I've heard that if you really do the figures in a different way,

it's fallen below 15%. So it's come down. What happened in 1990? We started moving towards Maastricht, towards economic monetary union. we started to have all of these things happen, the whole convergence, so-called, of the European economies, the expansion of the EU,

and its redefinition from what was essentially a trading bloc into a sort of proto-state with its own currency and its own central bank and its own pseudo government, which is, of course, the commission, and its own parliament, of course, and its own set of laws, the acquies, and all of that. So that's what happened. And the interesting thing is, Draghi can't join up the dots, just as he doesn't really want to join the dots up about the disastrous results of cutting yourself off from,

cheap energy from Russia. So he says, we got this malaise. We haven't innovated. We don't know how to innovate. We're far behind the Americans. We're far behind the Chinese. He gives all kinds of figures here, which I'm not going to get into because to my mind, the figures that are given are skewed in favour of the US, but they show a terrible situation in Europe, which is true. Europe hasn't produced a single significant social media platform. It's way behind on AI. It's way behind on digital technologies. It's way behind on pretty much everything that matters.

So what is Draghi's solution? Since he cannot admit to the original problem, which is to transform a trading block into a business, into a proto-superstate, his only answer is to continue to develop the proto-superstate, to make it even more like a state. And that, of course, means mutual debt issuance, in other words, Eurobonds, a massive spending program. He's talking about Eurobonds, but of course, if you're starting to issue Eurobonds, you're starting to issue euro bonds, then you need essentially a Treasury department at the centre, the EU centre, a finance ministry, if you prefer. And the finance ministry then has to issue the euro bonds,

and the euro bonds have to be repaid. And that brings you to the topic of taxation, centralised taxation. He doesn't go there. But that's the, the direction that he wants to take us towards. So his solution to the problem of centralisation, which is the underlying problem that afflicts the EU is more centralisation. You centralise even more. You control things even more from the EU centre. You convert it even further. You convert it even further. into an actual government structure. You subordinate the EU states, which is where historically,

over millennia economic activity and enterprise in Europe has been concentrated. You rob them of even more power and ultimately even more political vitality. And you try to do everything from Brussels. That's really what his plan amounts to. And of course he comes up with this massive plan 800, was it, billion euros a year spent on a massive program of economic and industrial

innovation. It's the only way you can do that is if you set up centralized planning agencies as well, because how else is such a thing, such vast sums of money going to be administered. And, well, planning agencies, when they're set up at an EU level, have not. nor had a particularly good record. They've had a terrible record. But Draghi doesn't want to talk about that either. Yeah.

More EU. More EU. Of course. What else to expect from Draghi, though? Anyway, all right. We will... Can I just say it's an astonishing thing. The EU works to make the situation worse,

which it does, made one decision after another since 1990, which has made the situation in Europe worse and worse and worse. So stagnating living standards, declining industry, reducing innovation, problems for business. So what its solution always is that this institution that's making the situation worse should be given more power to make them worse still.

It's a sort of negative feedback loop. that no one in Europe, no government in Europe, none of the major governments in Europe, seem to be prepared to break. I find it incredible that just a couple of months ago, Ursula was reappointed. I was going to say re-elected, re-appointed as commission president. And she's two months into her reappointment. And she basically tells Draghi, you know, I need you to do a study because the EU economy is just in tatters, for lack of a better word. I mean, it's incredible. You know, you did this,

Ursula. I mean, you didn't do all of it. Obviously, like you said, it's been happening over many decades, but over the past three, four years, Ursula has really sped up the decline of the European Union. And two months into her, her second term, she goes to Draghi and she wants Draghi to figure out why things are so bad. Exactly. Can I just say it's all but inconceivable. The Draghi's plan will ever be implemented in the way that he says it will. But assuming it is, it's not going to solve the problems in Europe. It's only going to make them even worse. It's going to add another massive burden of debt on top of all of the other problems that Europe already has. And it's going to produce nothing. Nothing good. Well, more money.

to the center, though, at the expense of the people? More money to the center, more opportunities for many people to make lots of money themselves. It's going to create a, I mean, we already have a parasitic class of people in Europe. We know about them. One of the member states, we can see them. But, I mean, there's going to be even more of that. But if we're talking about the underlying problems of the EU economy, they're just going to go and get significantly worse if what Draghi is proposing is ever put into effect.

I wonder if they even care. All right. We will end it there. The durand. Dot locals.com. We are on Rumble odyssey, bitch, your telegram,

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