[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to a Couple of Europhiles where we discuss cultural realities. We're here on Lake Garda, two hours from Venice and one hour from Europe's most romantic balcony in Verona. So, hey, we're heading into the German elections. It's February 23rd. It's about 2:00. Our time closes in about four hours. And amid all the media spin, it's time to break down the reality of what kind of German coalition will come out of the Bundestag. And Francis is a great guy. He's here with us today. He's a great guy to ask because he speaks the language and worked in Frankfurt for many years. So, Francis, where do we start? How do we break this down?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Well, I think the first thing to know is how the German elections actually work.
There are two votes. Everyone gets two votes. One vote for a party and one vote for an individual.
In the end, it's the second vote, the vote for the party that counts, because that's how the votes are going to get distributed. In the Bundestag, there's a threshold, which is 5%. So if a party does not get 5% or more, then they get no seats, zero seats. So what is really going to change the results of the elections are the three or four little parties. They're all hovering around 4%, 4.5% if they match and actually get over 5% by some, you know, that's not a very big shift in the polls compared to reality. That will change the composition of the Bundestag and then that will then affect who the lead candidate, the Spitzenkandidat, which is likely to be Friedrich Merz of the cdu.
He will have to make a coalition because he will not get 50% of the vote. So the partners that he can pick in order to establish a majority in the Bundestagra, which he needs to govern, will change depending on whether the parties make the 5% Erdil or not. So it's impossible today, as we sit here, to predict what the coalition is going to look like.
What we know is that coalitions that have three or more parties last long.
Ideally, coalitions have two parties.
Germany almost always has coalitions.
So two parties generally form a coalition, and that's relatively stable because they can figure out how they can keep each other happy. Once you have three people in the mix, it's quite difficult to actually coordinate and herd the cats. At least it is for the Germans.
[00:02:45] Speaker A: So, Francis, let's look at some of the candidates individually. I don't think we need to go into detail regarding Schultz, because he has been on the international stage.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Not a very successful one.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: And not, not, not well respected at all. A former accountant, a very.
He's certainly not a strong leader, never has been. Let's discuss merits because he, he comes from. He was a CEO of BlackRock, right?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: No, he was a director of Black. An international director of BlackRock. He wasn't really the CEO, but he is affiliated with BlackRock. And a lot of people are saying that's one of the reasons why he is supportive of the Ukraine conflict, because blackrock stands to lose an awful lot of money if the Russians win. BlackRock essentially bought all of the Ukrainian farmland and everything else for peanuts because the Ukrainians were desperate. And so they have the land rights over a lot of Ukraine, and they won't have that if Russia wins, because Russia will not honor that.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: And oftentimes it's about resources. In fact, we had a Russian couple over here for dinner about eight, nine months ago. And Arkady's argument was this war was all about resources, and that was his perspective. But let's now go into Alice Weigel, who Elon Musk supports, and whether or not AFD is so far right, as they like to say.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: Well, AFD is, is pretty far right.
What is far right? I mean, it's hard to say. She might be a little bit right wing of Maloney, for example, but she's not anywhere near the threat that the hysterical people are making out in the media.
What she's about is she wants to put Germany first, much like Donald Trump puts America first.
She wants to eliminate the Schengen Agreement so that Germany controls its own borders.
She wants to potentially discuss withdrawing from the European Union and from the euro because she wants to be able to control Germany for the Germans, basically.
So she doesn't like being dictated to by Brussels in any way. But she was in a very interesting interview not long ago where she said she doesn't see any reason why you can't have the four freedoms that are the foundation of the European Union without having to listen to all these people and unelected people in Brussels dictating to you what you should do about the Green New Deal and where you should spend your money and this, that, and the other. So she's like, we could still agree with the rest of the European Union to have free movement of labor and people and money and all the things that make the European Union great without having the negative side of having a whole bunch of school teachers in Brussels telling us what to do so. That's her position. And it's quite popular, especially among the young people.
Merz, the CDU candidate, has a majority of people who are over 60. There's a lot of them in Germany, but he doesn't have the young people. Everybody older than 20 and younger than 40 or 49 are majority headed towards the AfD. And I think I read this morning.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: That there are 2.5 million new voters in Germany, which I assume that meant.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: The younger voters that could be now, the very young voters, the ones that have just turned 18, they tend to go for the left wing parties like Linke and that. But if you're older than 25 or 28, I think, you know, the majority is, is headed towards the AFD until you get to plus over 50s and then, you know, over 60. Meots has got a large majority of everybody old.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: So what about Baerbock? Because I think one could argue that Baerbock and Schultz were arguably two of the most economically illiterate politicians who happened to run what was once the economic engine of Europe. So how will the Greens do?
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Because in fairness, Robert Habeck, who's the co leader of the Greens, was the economics minister and Baerbock was the foreign minister.
So Baerbock is an idiot. And she has gone around the world basically doing very, very foolish things and essentially dragging Germany's name through the mud. She went to China and like, nobody met with her because nobody thought she was worth meeting with.
She went to Syria and decided to lecture the Syrians who are essentially, you know, Al Qaeda terrorists who've been chopping people's heads off. She wanted to lecture them on women's rights and rights for gay people and basically thought that this was. They thought this was a joke, right? They couldn't believe anybody would actually go to Syria and start lecturing them about this sort of thing.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: Because if I were to say the following, few people would argue what was so surprising in the last couple of years and specifically when the war broke out, was how much that the American neocons had infiltrated the Green Party. I mean, Blinken was constantly with Baerbock. And it's a strange thing, you know, because I remember we spent a lot of time in Germany and you worked there obviously for many years. But the Germans always wanted to figure out how they could do, you know, elections on some level the way the Americans do, because in Europe it's so different. But I think, you know, when you look at Baerbock, they just wanted to be part of the club. I think that was part of the issue.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Well, it's interesting, you may have a point about the subversion of the Green Party from its roots, because the Green Party was always about nuclear disarmament, peace at all costs. Joshka Fischer famously disagreed with Rumsfeld.
You know, he was also agreeing, and he was totally against war. So the Greens have essentially been worked on by whoever to make them more amenable to war than they were before. Okay. I don't agree that the Germans in any way want to emulate the Americans on how to run elections. The Germans are quite proud of their electoral system. It's different than how the Americans work, but it is also a democratic way of selecting things. And it gives everybody proportional representation, which the Americans don't really have.
And it's good. They like coalitions because coalitions force people to negotiate. Whereas in America and in England, if you get one more vote than the other guy, you get 100% and the other guy gets to basically make protests outside of the Department of Education. Right. They got no power. Right. So in Germany, coalition partners can have a minority, but they're still represented in the coalition and they can influence what actually happens. And the Germans like that system.
They don't have a problem with their system. They have a problem with the idiots that they elected last time who have totally driven their economy into the dirt and are still doing things that are contrary to the best interests of the German voters.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: I think it gets very complicated because Putin famously said last year, he said, well, I think the Germans are still occupied by the US Ever since the war. And you could, you could argue because that a couple of days ago, all the rage on Twitter was going after Germany and the censorship, because, as you know, it's against the. It's in the constitution.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah, the Germans have a. Well, it's in the American constitution, freedom of speech, but it's not in the German constitution because in the German constitution, they wrote specifically that. That you cannot be a Nazi or that you cannot be a far right leaning person. So Scholz has reprimanded the vice president of the Americans for interfering in their system, which allows them to censor Nazi speech on the grounds that 80 years ago, Nazi speech basically caused a huge problem in the world and was a bad thing. Right. Now what is interesting about the dynamic between the Americans and Schultz is that Schultz thinks that if he gets on his knees and bounces a ball on his nose and does what he's told, that the Americans are going to like him. But the truth is that the Donald Trump People don't like him because they think that he's a weakling. They prefer people who stand up and are strong and defend their own interests. Like Vital, who is not pro American. Right. She's got the support of Elon Musk and to some extent Donald Trump, but she wants Germany first, not America first. And if we want to disagree with America, we have the right to do that. Meloni is the same. She's going to fight Italy's corner. She's not always going to fight America's corner. Whereas, you know, Schultz and Baerbock are like, oh no, we have to basically support whatever the Americans tell us to do. They told us we had to go and support Ukraine, so let's go support Ukraine and cut off our own energy and cut off our nose to spite our face and basically drive the economy into the ground.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: And it was interesting though, because I remember a few weeks before the war broke out and I remember my Italian neighbors and friends telling me that war was in the air because as you and I know, the Italians get their news from the bar down the street and they don't get it from the newspapers and they certainly don't trust their government. But what the Italians did that was interesting was the day after the war broke out, the president of eni, eni, which is our major power company here in Italy, he flew down to Algeria and secured contracts with the Transmed pipeline, ensuring that our prices, our gas prices would not increase. And you and I can validate that. For the last year they've increased some, but not that much. Not like in Germany and certainly not.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Like they could see right away that we were going to be in trouble because Italy is very dependent on gas. They have a lot of gas. They heat their houses with gas. They're not so dependent on other things, coal or, you know, nuclear. So what they needed was a reliable supply of gas. And they could see that they weren't going to get it through Germany and the Nord Stream pipeline because, you know, there was going to be trouble. So Meloni and the chairman of ENI went down to the North African countries and negotiated long term contracts through what's called the Transmed pipeline, which links Tunisia with Italy.
And they basically managed to get all the other North African countries, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia to pipe the gas through and Libya to pipe the gas through. And they've quadrupled the amount of gas that went through there so that we secured that supply without major damage to the Italian economy, which was a smart move.
Interestingly, when any went to Algeria, the Algerians remembered that the founder of any who is a guy named Matteo, I can't remember his last name now, but he basically supported the Algerian independence movement when they got their independence from France in the 60s. So they felt that they owed the Italians a favor, and they negotiated a very good deal. And it just goes to show you that, you know, people don't forget when you, when you do favors for them, even tens of years later, they will negotiate with you in a good way, because they remember that you helped them back when they needed it.
[00:15:31] Speaker A: Speaking of, I mean, you think of Meloni, who was her mentor. Her mentor was Silvio Berlusconi. And I remember back in 2003, because we left. That's when we left the States and sailed across the pond to here. But I remember Silvio Berlusconi went to. He was at the White House with George W. Bush, and Bush Jr. Said, okay, Silvio, what are you going to do for the coral, the coalition here and for the Iraq war? And he said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to play the piano and I'm going to sing you songs. So he did. And famously, Laura Bush was asked, who was your favorite world leader? And she answered, Silvio Berlusconi. And the reporter said, why? And she said, silvio Berlusconi was the only world leader that ever came to the White House and never asked George for anything. And this just goes to show you, you know, Italy often stays under the radar and it is against their constitution to go to war. So let's, let's discuss Maloney a little bit. She's got this close relationship with Elon Musk. She's obviously close with me. She's following Trump's lead. Why don't, why don't you talk a little bit about that?
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Yeah, she just yesterday, in fact, she was teleconferenced into CPAC and gave a firebrand speech.
A few days ago, J.D. vance at the Munich Security Conference, basically tore into Europe about freedom of speech and the fact that they need to support themselves instead of always milking the Americans, which caused great controversy. And everybody got all excited. And Macron held an emergency meeting of some of the European leaders in the Elysee palace because he decided that he was the leader of Europe. You know, he auto elected himself, and Meloni went to that meeting and didn't say anything at the meeting. And the Italian political establishment was very curious to find out where she stood on this, because Europe is taking a different stance from the United States, although Europe really doesn't have a leg to stand on. Right. They don't have the troops to send. They don't have the money to send.
And without the United States, the whole thing is going to go sideways.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: And can I also say, just interject here. You know, there's a hundred thousand US troops in Europe, and I can't tell you, and of course, I'm just speaking to our audience, I can't tell you how many times I've spoken with both Germans and Italians. And they would love to see the backside of these bases, like, for example, where we sit here on lake Garda arrived 40 clicks from where we sit right now. There was something called the Cavallese Massacre, which what happened was an American fighter pilot took the plane out and the Italians had begged him, said, please use Italian maps. The Americans, you know, said, no, our maps are much better. And what happened is he took his, the fighter pilot out and he clipped a cable car wire and 20 Europeans plummeted to their death. I mean, they weren't all Italians.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: It was a long time ago, but.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Yes, it was in 99, but still. I'm just saying the bases, I'm not sure who pays for them. I think America might pay, but there's.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: A lot of bases. And the Americans like the Italian bases because they're in Italy. Sure, of course they do, but.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: But anyway, that's open for discussion and maybe that will be. You know, this is about navy.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: The interesting point is, you're right, there's about 100,000 troops. There were many more before in the Cold War, but there's about 100,000 troops. But the English have an army of about 50,000. Okay, so the American army in Europe is already twice as big as the entire English army.
And the English are the ones who are pushing the hardest for supporting Ukraine. And it just came out. At least it's a rumor. I can't substantiate it, but apparently Stamer went and negotiated a deal with Zelensky for the minerals. And it was a secret clause that gave the Brits first right of refusal on the minerals, which is why Zelensky couldn't sign the deal with the Americans. So, you know, they're always in there.
No wonder he doesn't want to give up on Ukraine because he's got all these mineral rights. So, I mean, that's a theory, right?
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Energy and resources.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: It's probably going to get negated because Zelensky is willing to sell the same thing four times over as long as he gets support, because he needs everything he can get. Anyway, the point is that the. The Europeans, French, English, and to some extent the Germans all think that we should continue to support the Ukraine. Meloni typically, has gone along with that. But last night, she basically said she was going to take Donald Trump's lead, which means the European.
We want to see the European solidarity is broken because Orban and Fico are against it. And, you know, everyone thinks, well, they're the rebels. Who cares about them? But Italy is a founding member of the. Of the European Union, and a lot of nations like Romania and several others will follow Italy's lead if Italy decides to diverge from this thing. So van der Leyen is in some difficulty right now, and it remains to be seen what's going to happen. I suggest everybody buys popcorn.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Well, she's the secretary, and her job is to go around and get consensus what she does. And she does this down in places like Estonia, places that hate Russia have Poland, of course, pathological hatred towards Russia. But von der Leyen, I think there will be much debate as to Brussels and the role Brussels will play moving forward because it is hurting Europe at this point. And as we see the elections and.
[00:21:47] Speaker B: These leaders change, as you know, we've basically been big supporters of Europe and the European Union for some time.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: And why? It's because they've lifted up so many member states. Right?
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Well, we're really supportive of the four freedoms, okay? The four freedoms are what make Europe a really great thing, right? We have freedom of movement, of services, meaning that we can start companies in any European country and sell our goods and services to any other country with no problems. We can bank wherever we want. We can basically go wherever we want. We can work in any of the European Union countries, and those are great things for the citizens, and we support them. However, okay, the underlying infrastructure that was supposed to be the guardian of the treaties has morphed into an organization that dictates, like a school teacher, you know, you have to do this, you have to do that. They're telling Orban he has to do the green deal. He can't do this. He can't oppose migration policies, and otherwise we're going to withhold European Union funds. Now, the Commission has no right to do that. The Commission is supposed to be neutral and basically let the member states decide what's supposed to happen. But that's not what's been happening. The Commission has tried to arrogate more and more power to itself, and it is toxic. And in hindsight, it looks like the British were right with their brexit ideology, they mishandled the actual implementation quite badly. But fundamentally, they are right that the European Union has become an unelected dictatorship that is trying to impose its will on the States.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: But we did. We just was never supposed to, but we did. We have lived in a lot of countries, and we lived in Prague, and I remember, you know, friends specifically saying they were happy with the things they could buy. The standard of living had gone way up. And you had a company in Romania for several years. And we can talk about Romania. We lived in Bucharest when the European Union built all those roads, combined with a disproportionate amount of engineers. And what the Romanian government did in the late 70s and early 80s, giving engineers a tax break, individuals a tax break, not necessarily corporations. But what this did. What this. This. This allowed the Romanian standard of living to go through the roof?
[00:24:17] Speaker B: No, first of all, the Romanians started all that after 1989 when they overthrew the Communists. So it was in the 90s. Oh, it was the 90s, okay. But the. The Romanians essentially managed their economy really well, and they took advantage of the things that the European Union brought. They had to work very hard to align their national legal systems and everything else to European norms to get accepted into the European Union. And they have managed to increase their gross domestic product per capita tenfold since they joined.
So for them, it's been a fantastic success story, as it has for the rest of Eastern Europe.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: And Poland. Poland has taken more money out of the EU than any other member state. And Italy, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and France have not taken out any money from the eu, but they have benefited through trade. So the EU was a very powerful force. And between Germany and Italy, the export numbers were absolutely fantastic. But now we look, for example, with the Romanian election, with Georgescu, it's getting complicated. They're imposing, they're getting in the way.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Trump just recently sent a rocket in Romania and said that he would be very upset if Colin Georgescu doesn't get to run in the rerun of the elections, because they're essentially excluding him because they don't like him. And that is not how you run a democracy. So we'll see what happens, because he.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Specifically says he wants to get George Soros and all those NGOs.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: Yeah, he is an extremist. He's much more. He's more extreme than Orban, and he will shake things up a lot more than Orban does if he does win the election.
But, you know, democracy is democracy, and JD Vance had a very Good point. In Munich, which is if you ignore what the people are telling you, okay, you have only yourself to blame when things go south.
You know, the people. There was some. I think it was a CBS reporter, Margaret Brennan. She said free speech caused the Nazis. The truth is that it's not like that. If you suppress free speech, you will end up with things like the Nazis.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: Like, I was shocked when the. When the war broke out and when we couldn't watch rt. Now, I was never that impressed with rt. Russian, Russia today, they have Larry King and a bunch of clowns on there, but they also had some, you know, their own commentary. But I was just surprised that. That Europe was absolutely paralyzed with propaganda and cut off from Russia in that way, because at least in the beginning, I wanted to hear what Russia had to say.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: So the European Union doesn't take into consideration the Streisand effect.
Right.
If you sit there and say, I'm going to ban this picture or I'm going to ban this speech or this website, the first thing everybody's going to do is figure out how to access that thing. You know, you can use a vpn. If you don't have a vpn, one of your friends will send you a copy of it in an email and the whole thing will get distributed anyway. There's no such thing as actually banning speech. The Brazilians tried to do that with Starlink and they failed. So, you know, that was their Supreme Court trying to ban Starlink.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: So, Francis, let's try to bring this full circle and leave. Leave with a high note about Germany, because we live in Italy. And what's so fascinating about this fluid world in which we live is that Italy actually does thrive under chaos. And people would be surprised. Italy is doing fairly well, but Germany is completely different. They move in this sort of homogenous glob, and they're very cautious. The largest difference I have found as an American is that we take huge risks and we're fun. But the Europeans in general, specifically the Germans, do not take risks. And they move very methodically. This is historically a country of engineers, and I can't remember what the phrase is, but the globalists have traditionally always tried to keep Germany and Russia apart because if they united, it would be the most powerful force. But that. That's in the past. But let's. Let's conclude with Germany and how they. Like. For instance, you often like to talk about how they took in the East. I mean, they can actually recover.
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I find it amusing to read all these commentators and podcasts and talking heads and they all say Germany is over. You know, they're such idiots. They basically screwed up their energy policy. They got rid of their nuclear, they put in windmills which don't work. So what they should have done was not become dependent on completely on Russian energy. That's fair enough, but blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines really damaged the German economy, made all of their manufacturing uncompetitive. And so a lot of businesses are leaving and it's all a tragedy. However, what you have to remember about Germany is that in 1945, there wasn't a brick left standing on another brick. So they got their little wheelbarrows out and their brooms and they cleaned up the rubble and then they built Germany. Okay? Back in 1989, they joined the East Germans into West Germany and everybody said it was impossible to absorb East Germany into West Germany successfully because the East Germans had nothing. They were. The industry was all completely shot. They didn't even have telephone lines. So, you know, it was, it was just a tragedy. And I was there when the Berlin Wall fell in Berlin, and Cole said, thank you for allowing us to do this and thank you for your opinion, but we're going to do this anyway. And they did. In a remarkably short period of time. They basically absorbed East Germany, they spent a lot of money and they basically turned it into a place that is economically just the same as West Germany. So the Germans historically, for thousands of years, have actually had most of the European wars fought on their territory. And they are experts at picking up the rubble and pieces of what's left after the war passes by and rebuilding. So I think they're going to rebuild. They just have to get rid of Scholz and Baerbock and these other idiots, get somebody competent in and then they will recover. There is no doubt in my mind that deep inside the German character is a degree of competence and hard work that is going to see them through and recover the prosperity that they did have not very long ago. And they will see it again. There's no doubt they need to solve the energy problem, but that is top of the line and it's not that hard. If they would get rid of the Greens and implement nuclear within 5, 10 years, they can basically be energy independent with natrium thorium reactors and they will be another powerhouse. Again, no doubt that they can do it. It's just that they have to have people who are not mentally deficient running their country. And I think they've learned their lesson. We're going to find out today But I doubt very much that Scholz and Baerbolk are going to win this election.
So I think we're going to see the results. The AFD may or may not get in. Merz may or may not violate his promise of a coalition, but I was watching this with great interest. If the smaller parties hit the 5% threshold, then it will be difficult for me to create a coalition of only two parties that will be able to govern without the AfD. So he may go back on his promise not to talk to the AFD because they agree on a lot of policies and, you know, he will clearly be the Chancellor because he will have more votes than the AfD. But cutting them out and freezing them out means he has to go into coalition with Schultz, who's a moron, or with Baerbock, who's a worse moron. So I doubt that's going to be very good for his own prospects of being the Chancellor for very long, because he won't be able to hold the parties together. So that's my take on the German elections. We're going to find out in just a few short hours.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: And I am very pro eu. They are a very powerful trading bloc. In fact, Italy. It could be argued that Italy is an agricultural powerhouse. And I have just finished a book writing about this very topic. It's called the Personal Legends of Piemonte. And you can find it on my
[email protected] and it includes 12 interviews with 12 Piemontese and these. This is about the Piemonte region up in northwest Italy. So you can, you can enter the lives of the Italians, winemakers, cheese makers, herbalists, a teacher, a bureaucrat, and of course, a car mechanic, because this is Italy. So it's a. It's a fantastic read. It's getting good reviews. I've got, like I said, 12 interviews and I've wrapped 12 stories around those documenting the seven years we spent living in Piemonte because Francis is half Piemontese. It's also quite fun because I had it professionally translated and it's available in the same book in both English and Italian. So, hey, listen, thank you for listening to a couple of your files. Arrivederci.
[00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah, arrivederci.
Hola.
