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Something that always bothered me about the Motte is that while massive cultural/political events are going on in Europe, one needs to dive deep into the roundup thread to find any discussion of it at all. Meanwhile the latest trans-people-in-school or outrageous-nytimes-oped controversy (which nobody will remember in a week) will have 500 comment threads dedicated to extreme nitpicking.
Anyway sorry for the rant. It looks like the far-right (of the quite openly far-right, even post-fascist variety) has just won the Italian elections and will very likely going to provide the prime minister to a cabinet that will include a 85 year old Berlusconi among others. Italy is the 3rd most populous and wealthy country in the EU. It also acts as a perennial threat to the stability of the Brussels-led order and the euro, since an Italian default or currency exit would almost definitely trigger the collapse of the euro with who knows what consequences. The EU looks determined to fight. Meloni herself does not sound like the type of politician who will accept to be crushed as easily as her predecessors. Here is a French interview with a 19 years old activist Meloni. She still sounds like a true believer to me. To get the gist of just how radical (from the EU-norm) she is willing to be with regard to cultural issues, I recommend this speech from 3 years ago (with English subs).
What are your expectations? Are we coming near a grand showdown? How is this going to interact with the looming threat of grid collapse in Europe? Russia sanctions and the European willingness to keep Ukrainian army in the field? NATO expansions? Is her family and God rhetoric just fluff or do you expect some real moves in this regard? When the ECB will have to start increasing interest rates substantially and Italy has to choose between bankruptcy or euro-exit, how will this go under this government?
P.S. Italy was one of the most anal countries with regard to vaccine oppression and corona measures in Europe. Does anyone know what the position of the Fratelli was back then? And how they talk about these things now?
This is mostly the result of Germany using their "refugees welcome" strategy to attract hordes of migrants with sometimes also questionable motives, and then completely refusing to actually take responsibility, stranding all of these refugees in Italy and Greece. Then the EU kept nagging Italy about the refugee camps, while at the same time nagging them about their economy and refusing to help them much at all. It doesn't really surprise me that right wing sentiments across Europe are surging, with the refugee crisis as the embers, and then the corona crisis as a catalysator we had two crisis in succession where the popular opinion is identical with the right wing opinion (the majority of Europeans in most countries is both against taking in more refugees and against corona restrictions).
I don't think Italy will be the Fulcrum, France is. The population wants a right wing government, it is just that Le Pen and Zemmour split the right under them, and Macron has more charisma than all of the competition combined. If a charismatic young right wing leader emerges, France will get a far right government aswell. The only real left wing anchor in Europe right now is Germany, and it itself is firmly left-leaning or at least moderate, with a very recent historic victory of the SPD over the CDU, but it is running out of allies in Europe.
However the current Russia Crisis will most likely be a force in the opposite direction, and weld the EU stronger together against a common enemy. I think it will end in a victory for the West, which will rally unity in the Western world and symbollically show the superiority of the Western ways, it's drawbacks in globohomo, critical race theory and especially complete hypersensitation to human deaths which lead to complete lockdowns just to prevent miniscule increases in mortality rates nonwithstanding it crushes other systems into the dust when push comes to shove.
What makes you think they were against those restrictions? That doesn't sound true to me at all.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/08/11/partisanship-colors-views-of-covid-19-handling-across-advanced-economies/, huh I guess I was fooled by my filter bubble. I am a German law student, and most law related discussion unequivocally opposes the corona handling as it is plainly unconstitutional.
That did not come through at all. Politicians, the media, and some, no doubt hand-picked lawyers, would casually brush off the unconstitutional objection, as if it were a meaningless piece of paper, red tape you can jettison whenever you feel like it. I refused to get tested daily when paragraph 28a went into force, sent an email referring to the grundgesetz , got fired. The direct result of government interference in my supposedly guaranteed rights. The lawyers I talked to said there was nothing to be done, it was all fine.
Not only did the lawyers failed to stop egregious violations of the constitution (and lockdowns are imo even worse), they failed to even communicate their opposition( if there was one) in the public square. Do you have some sources for the claim that lawyers unequivocally opposed the corona handling, was there an official pronouncement we all missed?
If you want to you can get digging in the NJW (Neue Juristische Wochenzeitschrift) archives, given that that is the premier magazine that every law related academic reads and wants to be published in irregardless of field. It usually has a strong libertarian slant, although there are a few CDU and Greens aspected articles aswell. Be warned however, the magazine is entirely formulated within technical jargon and is thus near incrompehensible for a layman, and it carries a pricetag of 25€/month at least.
If you want some work alleviated here is an univeristy website which has also an article by a professor who published one of his NJW articles about the constitutionality of the Corona regulations freely accessible in pdf format, it is "Der demokratische Rechtsstaat in der Corona-Pandemie, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift (NJW) 2021, 2766-2771". I scanned that one and it seemed very archetypical for the stance of the NJW towards the constitutionality of the corona regulations, the other articles linked on that website, judging from the headlines, share similar stances.
Also since I just realised that technically does not answer your question of "why can my rights be reduced despite the lawyers saying this is unconstitutional", that is because in Germany lawyers do not actually hold any political power. The power of the lawyers can be summed up as the "Herschende Meinung in der Literatur". The only way the literature opinion has actual effect on the interpretation of the law is when the courts take it over, and make it "Rechtsprechung", thus entering the judicative. As long as the courts disagree with the common lawyers opinion in the literature, that opinion is mostly worthless, all political power is with judicative, executive and legislative in Germany. And the courts were extremely loyal to the state in the corona pandemic, the BVerfG, the constitutional court and technically the highest court in the country routinely sides with the state in these decisions.
You’re lawyering here, by pointing to formal powers. If farmers or postmen were ‘unequivocally opposed’ to a government decision, I would expect to at least hear about it, despite them not having the formal power to overturn anything. Lawyers, as one of the priestly classes of civil society , possess far more power, prestige and verbal ability, yet nothing was heard from them. And the highest courts, their elite, those who actually did something instead of sending a memo in a technical journal, were completely on board with the program.
Let's make a distinction here. Are you arguing that lawyers were not opposed to the corona regulations, or that the lawyers opposed to the decision had a moral duty to make themselves heard more?
Both.
How do you explain the courts siding with the state every time, otherwise? And the silence.
Definitely.
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