s blatantly unfair Spain has learned the hard way that designing a federal system of government to accomplish equity goals is exceedingly difficult. And countries wrestling with how to fund various levels of governance – which is to say most of them – should take heed. Only 35 years ago, Spain emerged from one of the 20th century's most enduring dictatorships and created a strong democracy. Today,...
out of touch with reality' after urging him to back down from Crimea occupation Vladimir Putin has lost the plot over Ukraine, according to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. US reports said Merkel phoned Barack Obama on Sunday evening after speaking to the Russian president to press him to back down from his invasion of Ukraine and occupation of the Crimean peninsula. "She was not sure he was in...
s fastest-selling show to open in Berlin – a city that has had a profound effect on the singer's music and thinking It was the fastest-selling show the Victoria and Albert Museum has ever staged . But when the David Bowie Is exhibition moves to Berlin this summer, there will be a few notable tweaks. Bowie's cathartic years in the chrysalis of divided Berlin are counted as among the singer's most innovative....
s plans for marking the 1914-18 war amount to events costing less than €4m – a fraction of the budgets put aside by other key actors in the conflict. Britain and France have promised to spend about €60m each . Australia has set aside €50m, and even New Zealand has promised to devote €10m to commemorative events to mark the war, which left 37 million people dead or wounded. Details of Germany's plans...
t have done more to suck up to Angela Merkel . The German chancellor was treated to tea at Buckingham Palace, the poshest caff that Britain can offer. John Bercow, the Speaker, welcomed her to the royal gallery of the House of Lords by trowelling on the flattery before peers and MPs listened in respectful silence to her arguments of substance and laughed deferentially at her dry jokes. British reporters,...
t even registered that their chancellor was going to the UK. Most of the reporters who travelled with Merkel to Jerusalem earlier in the week decided to skip London and leave the coverage to local correspondents . The feeling among the press and the public was summed up by a colleague who wrote: "Whatever happens, Merkel is bound to disappoint the British." This is what happened. Merkel's face at the...
The German chancellor Angela Merkel’s whistle-stop tour of London takes in meetings with leaders of all three main political parties, an address to the UK parliament, and tea with Queen Elizabeth II ...
Andrew Sparrow ’s rolling coverage of all today’s political developments as they happen, including Angela Merkel’s speech to parliament and her press conference with David Cameron Andrew Sparrow ...
The UK welcomes German chancellor Angela Merkel with open arms today: is this a reminder that despite two great wars and too many football penalties, the two countries are in many ways more naturally friends than foes? Juliette Jowit ...
Angela Merkel delivers a speech to a joint session of MPs and peers in the Royal Gallery in the House of Lords on Thursday ...
s other leaders is finite Angela Merkel has pleaded with Britain to remain a strong voice in the EU but said the country cannot expect special treatment if David Cameron embarks on a renegotiation of Britain's membership terms after a Conservative election victory. The German chancellor opened her speech to a joint session of the UK parliament in English to drive home her message of Britain's central...
t quite playing Zadok the Priest as Angela Merkel swept into the Royal Gallery at the Houses of Parliament, but that was probably only because someone had spotted that a blast of Handel, a German who naturalised as a Brit, might not make the most tactful welcome for the chancellor. Otherwise, give or take the odd sceptre and whatnot, the German reporter who observed at a later press conference that...
doable' but not a piece of cake, says German chancellor as Downing Street welcomes signals as 'helpful but realistic' Angela Merkel has taken the first tentative steps towards outlining a modest framework for negotiations to persuade British voters to remain within the EU, in an in-out referendum which David Cameron will call by the end of 2017 if he wins next year's general election. The German chancellor,...
s collective memory. How could such a thing happen? Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics offers a fitting metaphor. According to Heisenberg, subatomic phenomena can manifest themselves as particles or waves; similarly, human beings may alternate between behaving as individual particles or as components of a larger wave. In other words, the unpredictability of historical events...
s open approach to trade and markets. Her visit, which has many of the trappings of a state visit rarely offered to a head of government, contrasts with the low key reception for the French president, François Hollande, at the Anglo-French summit last month at RAF Brize Norton. Hollande faced embarrassing questions about his private life at a press conference with David Cameron and then sat through...
rights that were being dismantled by the Thatcher government could be re-established on a European scale. Such was the impact of the Delors speech that it provoked a chorus of Frère Jacques from his audience. The second is Angela Merkel. Tomorrow Merkel pays an important if brief visit to London, and it is generally being reported in the narrow context of the Conservative party's internal management...
s proportional system has encouraged the creation of an unusually high number of smaller parties. While the Pirate party, the anti-euro Alternative für Deutschland and the far-right NPD are the three most prominent parties likely to gain from the changes, a number of smaller splinter groups and single-issue parties will be hoping for seats in Strasbourg and Brussels too. The head of the Pirate party,...
t get off to the greatest of starts: one of his earliest decisions as party leader was to pull Conservative MEPs out of Merkel's party's group in the European parliament. But their relationship seems to have improved markedly since he became prime minister, so much so that the German chancellor's trip to the UK is being treated, especially by those Conservatives who hope the EU can be reformed rather...
s literary inhabitants bring the city alive To me Berlin is as much a conceit as a reality. Why? Because the city is forever in the process of becoming, never being, and so lives more powerfully in the imagination. Long before setting eyes on it, the outsider feels its absences as much as its presence: the sense of lives lived, dreams realised and evils executed with an intensity so shocking that they...
s video promo for mammoth Edeka chain goes viral as store aims for more funky image A 58-year-old performance artist and self-described flneur has gained celebrity status in Germany thanks to a viral video for the supermarket chain Edeka. The advert follows Friedrich Liechtenstein skipping through the streets of Berlin , puffing on sausages and bathing in a tub full of muesli and milk, all the while...