Author: Christine Schier

Like the man who leaps from the top of a building and insists, being in mid-air, that he is still doing quite well and has nothing to worry about, the governing council of the European Central Bank decided April 14 that inflation is not so high as to justify a change in monetary policy yet. (A reminder: the average inflation […]

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is under intense pressure, both at home and internationally, to send more military equipment to Ukraine, including heavy weapons, and to end all oil and gas imports from Russia. Until now, he has resisted, despite the pressure exerted by his coalition partners, the Greens and the FDP, as well as the CDU. Scholz told Der Spiegel […]

The SonntagsZeitung of Switzerland reported April 24 that that the Swiss government has vetoed the request from Germany to re-export to Ukraine Swiss-made ammunition used in Marder infantry fighting vehicles that Kyiv would like to obtain. Without the ammunition, the tanks, manufactured by Germany’s Rheinmetall company, will likely not be delivered. The Sunday paper quoted a spokesman for the Swiss […]

As expected, Emmanuel Macron won the second round of the French presidential election on April 24, receiving 58.5% of the votes, against Marine Le Pen who came in at 41.5%. While Le Pen did make considerable gains compared to her results in the 2017 race against Macron, neither candidate did spectacularly well. The abstention rate (28%) was the highest recorded […]

On April 20, a court in the United Kingdom ruled that Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States, where prosecutors are eager to sentence him to 175 years in prison. His crime? Having exposed on Wikileaks Anglo-American war crimes and dirty operations in Iraq and elsewhere. So much for the freedom of the press and human rights of […]

A major clash is now out in the open, opposing those nations that are backing measures to produce more food to prevent famine, to those financial and political interests, centered in the Trans-Atlantic region, that insist on protecting neoliberal, “free market” trade rules no matter what the consequences. To schematize things, those committed to improving food supplies range from China […]

The visit to Ukraine by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and foreign affairs head Josep Borrell on April 8 marked a major step in putting the European Union on a permanent war footing. Against the backdrop of the ban on imports of Russian coal announced two days earlier by Brussels, von der Leyen hinted that a total embargo […]

The Schiller Institute (SI) was honored to have Anatoly Antonov, the ambassador of the Russian Federation to the United States, as a major speaker at its international video-conference of April 9 (cf. a report on the event here). In his speech, the ambassador thanked the SI for offering this opportunity, in the midst of the near-total breakdown in relations, to […]

The results of the first round of the French presidential elections, held on April 9, seem to be a remake of the 2017 script: Emmanuel Macron versus Marine Le Pen. While the actors are the same (which Solidarité et Progrès as well as 2/3 of the voters hoped to prevent), the context is very different. Macron’s result of 27,6 % is […]

According to a reconstruction by the Financial Times, two persons were key in Europe to force through the decision to freeze the Bank of Russia’s central bank reserves on the third day of the military intervention in Ukraine: Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff, Björn Seibert. Whereas the former was able to convince […]