Free Republic

National crime figures released on Tuesday show that crime dropped significantly last year, but attacks on emergency service workers is one of several types of crime on the rise. Last year, the authorities recorded 5.76 million crimes — the lowest number since 1992 — and in relation to the population, the recorded crime rate is lower than at any point in the past 30 years, the Interior Ministry announced in Berlin on Tuesday. For every 100,000 inhabitants, less than 7,000 crimes were recorded last year. “Germany has become safer, but there is no reason to sound the all-clear,” Interior Minister...

French President Emmanuel Macron warned on Sunday that war could ensue if U.S. President Donald Trump withdraws from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, Reuters reported. “We would open the Pandora’s box. There could be war,” Macron was quoted as having told German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. At the same time he added, “I don’t think that Donald Trump wants war.” Trump has imposed a May 12 deadline to reimpose sanctions on Iran unless the flaws in the existing agreement are fixed. …

As Europe’s biggest exporter to the United States and with more than 1 million German jobs at stake, Germany is desperate to avoid a European Union trade war with the United States. In the run-up to a June 1 deadline for U.S. President Donald Trump to impose steel and aluminum tariffs on the EU, Berlin is urging its European partners to show some flexibility and pursue a broad trade deal that benefits both sides. But that puts Germany at odds with European peers such as France. Paris, the other half of the motor driving European integration, resents Germany’s big trade...

France’s economy minister Bruno Le Maire said Sunday that Air France employees must resume dialogue with bosses and restart efforts to improve the company’s competitiveness, otherwise the airline “will disappear”. “I appeal to the sense of responsibility of everyone involved: flight crew, ground staff, the pilots asking for unjustified pay increases,” he said on French TV news channel BFMTV. “Take responsibility — Air France’s survival is at stake.” Le Maire added that “the state is not there to pay off the company’s debts”. …

Britain is backing a French plan to create a European military intervention force as a way to maintain strong defense ties with the EU after Brexit, a minister told AFP on Saturday. The British junior defense minister, Frederick Curzon, said London was “very keen to support” French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan for a force that could be deployed rapidly to deal with crises. The force, known as the European Intervention Initiative, would be separate from other EU defense cooperation, meaning there would be no obstacle to Britain taking part after it leaves the bloc. […] Twenty-five EU countries signed a...

After a large group of migrants aggressively tried to prevent the deportation of a Togolese man this week, right-wing politicians called for mass deportations. But a senior Christian Democrat (CDU) figure said on Friday that deportations can have a bad impact on families. “Deportations often hit the wrong people — families who have lived in Germany for an eternity and who are well integrated,” Daniel Günther, the Minister-President of Schleswig-Holstein told the Funke Media Group. Günther, who is a key figure in Angela Merkel’s CDU made the comments in reaction to calls for more deportations of migrants after ugly scenes...

Ahead of Karl Marx’s 200th birthday on Saturday, Xi Jinping referred to the German philosopher as “the greatest thinker of modern times,” calling his theories on communism a tool for China to “win the future.” According to the official Xinhua News Agency, he said Marx’s name was “still respected all over the world” and that “his theory shines with the brilliant light of truth.” He also claimed that putting “Marxism onto the flag of the Chinese Communist party was totally correct.” […] Xi has instructed all party members to read Marxist works and to adopt Marxist theories as a “way...

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has opened a series of exhibitions in Karl Marx’s hometown of Trier. They include a huge bronze statue of Marx donated by China. It’s to be officially unveiled on Saturday; the 200th anniversary of the birth of the philosopher. The sculpture of Marx has proved somewhat controversial but Jean-Claude Juncker spoke in positive terms about him. "Karl Marx was a philosopher, who thought into the future had creative aspirations," he said. "Today he stands for things, which he is not responsible for and which he didn't cause, because many of the things he wrote down...

BERLIN - Police raided a migrant shelter in southern Germany on Thursday three days after officers clashed with residents over the deportation of an asylum seeker from Togo. The unrest at the shelter in the southern town of Ellwangen has been seized upon by politicians from across the spectrum to highlight the difficulties Germany faces in integrating the more than 1.6 million migrants who have arrived since 2014 and that the influx poses a security risk. Police said it arrested a handful of individuals suspected of drugs offences during Thursday’s raid and moved 17 residents of the hostel, home to...

US whistleblower and transgender rights advocate Chelsea Manning on Wednesday warned that she is deeply troubled about the way in which governments and large companies collect and use people’s data. The former US Army soldier said that search engines and social media firms were helping an “accelerated progress towards totalitarianism.” “I do not think Google or Facebook are accidentally storing data,” Manning told delegates on the opening day of the “Re: publica” internet forum in Berlin. The 30-year-old added that “algorithms are not neutral,” and urged those who develop the high-tech instruments and machine learning tools to closely consider their...

France said on Tuesday that new claims about Iran’s nuclear program from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reinforced the importance of a the 2015 deal. In an elaborate televised presentation on Monday, the hawkish Israeli leader claimed he had new “proof” via captured documents that Iran had developed a nuclear weapons plan which could be activated at any time. The French foreign ministry said the details needed to be “studied and evaluated”, but a spokesperson added that the evidence appeared to confirm what European powers had known for more than a decade and half. “At first sight, they (the details)...

A police operation took place in Baden-Württemberg after about 200 migrants used force to prevent the deportation of a Congolese man on Tuesday. The 23-year-old man was to be deported from where he was staying, a refugee accommodation in the small town of Ellwangen. But the police decided to withdraw after some 200 migrants attempted to prevent the detention, with some of them threatening violence. The three patrols cars saw themselves as outnumbered. Support from other police forces was nowhere in sight; it would have taken several hours for other forces to organize and arrive on the scene. […] The...

As Germany prepares to mark Karl Marx’s 200th birth anniversary, the revolutionary philosopher’s legacy remains divisive more than a quarter century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. With scars from the Cold War still fresh, people from capitalist former West Germany and the once communist East are of two minds about the 19th-century philosopher. Some hail Marx as a visionary scholar who foretold the ills of the market economy, while others revile him for inspiring Stalinist regimes. In the western town of Trier, the icon’s birthplace which is planning 600 events for his bicentenary, it is not lost on...

Germany on Tuesday called for a “permanent exemption” on steel and aluminium tariffs, after the US decided to postpone a decision on the issue. “The German government has taken note” of the decision by US President Donald Trump to hold off on imposing controversial tariffs on steel and aluminium from the EU, Canada and Mexico, a government spokeswoman said. But Germany “is still waiting for a permanent exemption” from the tariffs and wants the European Commission to “continue dialogue with the United States”. Germany’s call came as the European Union accused the United States of prolonging “market uncertainty” with its...

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier on Sunday warned the European Union against sparking a trade war with the US in the dispute over US tariffs on steel and aluminum. “I’m of the opinion that neither the US nor the Europeans should risk a trade war,” said Altmaier during a talk show on German public broadcaster ARD. He warned that the trans-Atlantic relationship was at stake. […] Altmaier, who is a member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives (CDU/CSU), said the EU should try to solve the tariff dispute, along with other trade disagreements, in a comprehensive US-EU deal. Earlier, the...

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked Shiite Muslims representatives on Monday how they were handling growing anti-Semitism in Germany. In a meeting with leaders from the Islamic Association of Shiite Congregations in Germany (IGS) at the Bellevue Palace in Berlin, Steinmeier expressed his concerns over rising hostility toward Jews from all aspects of society, including Muslims. “Anti-Semitism in Germany isn’t primarily a Muslim problem, but it is also seen more strongly among Muslims,” the president said, according to those present at the meeting. His statement was part of a broader conversation focused on concerns over rising anti-Semitism in Germany and to...

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has put in a request for an increase to the military budget of €12 billion ($14.6 billion) over the current term of parliament, an amount greatly in excess of present budget plans, a newspaper reported on Sunday. The Bild am Sonntag said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz had so far foreseen an increase in defense spending of just €5.5 billion over the four years to 2021. The Defense Ministry had already criticized Scholz’s plan on Friday as “inadequate in view of the huge accumulated needs and required modernization, particularly in the medium term.” According...

The leaders of Britain, France and Germany reaffirmed their support for the existing nuclear deal with Iran, which is “the best way of neutralizing the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran,” according to a statement released Sunday by the prime minister’s office in London. Prime Minister Theresa May spoke by phone with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the weekend, and the three leaders agreed that the best way forward was to maintain the existing agreement, which was signed in 2015. But US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to scupper the deal and his next chance...

A proposal to set up a welcome center for newly arrived migrants in Paris’s iconic Bois de Boulogne park has been met with mixed reactions by residents of the upmarket neighborhood. Elected representatives of French communist parties PCF and the Left Front proposed on Thursday that the matter be discussed at the Paris Council, a month after the closure of the city’s oversaturated Porte de la Chapelle migrant center. They’re suggesting the 1,500 evacuated migrants, who are currently being housed in a makeshift camp at Porte de la Villette, be soon rehoused in a much more central and desirable part...

Germany has the second-highest tax burden for single earners among high-income countries, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said on Thursday. The news has come amid a large budget surplus in Germany and no plans under the new coalition government to drastically change personal income taxes. […] In its “Taxing Wages” report, the OECD calculated the “net personal average tax rate” (NPATR) to determine a country’s tax burden. The NPATR equals the sum of personal income tax plus social security contributions minus cash benefits as a percentage of gross earnings. Single earners in Germany who have no children...