Europe

In my 16 November press review, I looked at the seemingly inevitable rise of far-right ideas in many EU Member States. However, two recent events merit our full attention for highlighting the extent to which civil society is mobilising to counter this trend, three and a half months ahead of crucial European elections. In Germany, massive demonstrations in response to the rise of the far right indicate that the tolerance threshold for the actions of far-right political parties has been exceeded. Tens of thousands of people marched over several days in cities throughout the country, and continue to do so at weekends, to denounce the racist ideology of the extreme right. The demonstrations follow revelations by Correctiv on 10 January of a secret meeting organised last November by the AfD and neo-Nazis to discuss a plan to deport millions of non-Germans and Germans of immigrant origin. In another noteworthy development, on 23 January the German Constitutional Court issued an unprecedented ruling which bans the neo-Nazi party Die Heimat (Fatherland, formerly the NPD) from receiving public funding for the next six years, as reported in the Berlin daily Die Tageszeitung. Reporting on the debate that has begun across the Rhine about...

Katalin Novák: “We’re safe and dry”. Is the reign of Hungary's all-powerful ruling party, Fidesz, beginning to crack? The scandal now gripping Viktor Orbán's self-proclaimed "illiberal democracy" might suggest so. On 10 February, the President of the Republic, Katalin Novák, announced her resignation in a televised address, followed by the former Minister of Justice and head of the Fidesz list for the European elections, Judit Varga. The two women had been in the spotlight for several days after the independent Hungarian media outlet 444.hu revealed Katalin Novák's decision - with Varga’s approval - to pardon a man convicted of covering up for a pedophile. The affair dates back to April 2023. On the occasion of the visit of Pope Francis, Novák granted a presidential pardon to 22 convicts, including the man at the heart of the scandal. Following the publication of 444.hu's revelations, several thousand people gathered in Budapest to demand the President's resignation. While the revelations have shaken the Orbán government, the long-term consequences remain unclear. Nevertheless, the affair puts the spotlight on the two familiar realities: the hypocrisy of the government’s two-tier moral crusade, and the cynicism of its readiness to cast off loyalists for the slightest misstep....

Miranda Bryant in The Guardian calls it “one of the worst environmental disasters in the country’s history”: a landslide consisting of two million tonnes of contaminated soil is slowly advancing on the village of Ølst in Denmark’s Jutland region, threatening to devastate the local ecosystem, including the Alling Å river. Local residents fear that their village, as Rasmus Karkov puts it in Danish daily Berlingske, “risks being buried in sludge, slag, contaminated soil and sand, permeated with the rot of dead mink”. The landslide originated from a plant run by Nordic Waste, which, as The Local explains, processes waste coming “mainly from Denmark's mink farms, which were ordered to shut down during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as some imported waste from Norway.” So far, so scandalous, but what comes next is perhaps the real reason this affair has come to be known as “The Nordic Waste Scandal”. Following injunctions from the Ministry of the Environment in January, Nordic Waste promptly declared bankruptcy, leaving Danish taxpayers with an initial bill of around 27 million euro. The Danish consultancy firm COWI estimates that cleanup could in fact end up costing over two billion kroner (over 268 million euro). This has led...

This article is reserved for our subscribers Receive the best of European journalism straight to your inbox every Thursday “This is where saving the Oder begins,” says hydrobiologist Robert Czerniawski pointing at an inconspicuous rivulet which falls first into the Drawa river and then into the Oder. The Polish basin of Oder is supplied by ten thousand streams and rivulets like this one. Just a few years back, concrete rings in the now meandering rivulet made sure that "water flowed quickly and freely, without the possibility of creating any living conditions, like in a canal", Czerniawski explains. Since the removal of the concrete elements and restoration, the water in the rivulet can clean itself and trout has returned to spawn. “Nature uses something immediately,” Czerniawski does not hide his fascination. “Besides, now the water flow is much slower because of the bends”. This means that it stays longer in the environment instead of just rushing towards the Baltic Sea. The Oder river and its main contributors. | ©​​Marek Kowalczyk The Oder catchment area covers one third of Poland. What happens in Drawa river or in any place in Upper or Lower Silesia, has an impact on the condition of the...