This sounds insane.

I would disagree vigorously if the minister said they wanted to build coal power plants, but at least you can make the case for it under the guise of domestic energy security. But methane gas power plants? It doesn’t help with climate goals, it’s not cheap to purchase LNG and it doesn’t help with energy security either.

Is she double dipping from US and Russian oil lobby?

Merz has also created a new Ministry for Digitalization, choosing physicist and tech executive Karsten Wildberger to push overdue digital reforms in government.

Germany needs to adopt an Euro Stack for digital sovereignty.

I’m curious what the final draft will look like.

I’m on the fence about this. UK is a good ally and partner to the EU (even with Brexit), but I’m scared about the UK Reform Party (the far right) winning the next election.

Unless the Brits are buying British made solar panels (and there aren’t any) or European manufactured solar panel (not very many), then they should just buy the cheapest and save themselves the tax dollar and lower the cost of energy.

Trade with China.

But handing your critical infrastructure to China is not the way to go.

I wonder why Ukraine doesn’t want to reward Russia for invading their country.

It’s important to recognize an individual can not move a mountain, so it’s important not to get discouraged because you do not see tangible progress nationally. All politics is a grinding trench fight to wait for an opportunity to enact laws.

With that said, the very minimum thing any citizen should do is vote. Vote in local election, vote in federal election, vote in EU election.

Next is attend your local party meeting of your preference. Just showing up and listening shows that there is interest to the politicians. You have opportunity to meet like minded people which is important for networking.

So there’s still a 10% tariff across the board. It’s not going to kill the economy like the previous tariff, but it will still increase inflation and slow growth. Let’s see what happens.

Probably start with energy security for EU. I see that as the biggest vulnerability, and the greatest return on public investment.

Wind, solar, nuclear, energy storage, heat pumps, electric vehicles, etc. Anything to reduce import of foreign hydrocarbons that’s vulnerable to supply shock like what we witnessed after Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Might not be a bad idea to collaborate with China, while also not being dependent on them.

Go read what Russians have said about hybrid warfare stretching back 20 years. Anything to destabilize perceived enemies are seen as legitimate.

https://european-alternatives.eu/

And I know Germany won’t be able to resist cheaper gas.

Highly contentious question, but Germany should bring conscription for everyone (including women) with the option of doing volunteer/civil service.

If EU really wants to hurt the US economy, then they need to start taxing/fining US tech service like Whatsapp, Netflix, Youtube, AWS, Microsoft Azure, etc.

Russians will be back if they think they can win.

Still too many Tesla is sold in the EU.

I expect a bump in cars sold in the next few months as the new Model Y Juniper starts getting produced. You’ll know exactly who bought a Tesla in 2025.

EU really needs to at least get off of American tech in government service. Our tax shouldn’t be going into their pockets.

Thank you for the source. Just need to use DeepL for translation. Seems like the CDU tax cut is 89 billion euros but I’m not sure if that is every year or over 10 years (which is the standard accounting rule for government budget).

Do you have a source on that? CDU is talking about 500B debt over 10 year. That’s a lot of tax cuts.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/04/cdus-friedrich-merz-secures-billion-euro-deal-for-germanys-military-and-infrastructure

Maybe get an agreement that debt can only be used for hard infrastructure like rail, electrical grid, etc. and defense spending on weapons and military staffing.