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      JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

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      JD Vance has met with the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, breaking a taboo in German politics as the Trump administration continues to court and promote far-right populist parties across Europe.At the meeting in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president and AfD leader Alice Weidel reportedly discussed the war in Ukraine, German domestic politics and the so-called brandmauer, or “firewall against the right”, that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions in Germany.Vance met with Weidel just weeks before a German election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party appears poised to take second place on a wave of growing anti-establishment sentiment.The meeting was the latest in a string of contacts between the party and figures close to Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the billionaire now leading a purge of the US federal government, has repeatedly claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany” and last month hosted Wiedel in a 75-minute live conversation on his social media platform, X.Addressing the Munich security conference earlier on Friday, Vance admonished Europe’s leaders for refusing to work with their far-right parties.“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” said Vance. “You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.”The move sent shockwaves through German political circles as the Trump administration appeared to be making a large bet on some of the continent’s most toxic parties in opposition to the sitting governments in the UK, Germany and other major allies.“I expressly reject what US Vice President Vance said at the Munich Security Conference,” said Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in a post on X. “From the experience of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus: this is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGerman courts have ruled that the AfD can be classified as a suspected threat to democracy, paving the way for the country’s domestic intelligence agency to spy on the opposition party.In May, the AfD was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by the senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS had been “not all criminals”.In a speech likely to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe as they struggle to find a single policy on the war in Ukraine, Vance also accused the European leaders of “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’”.“Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to pick a fight with our friends,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, at the Munich event.Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.“If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes. That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning,” he said. More

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      Vance to meet Zelenskyy as European leaders call for unity over Ukraine

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      The US vice-president, JD Vance, will face calls for greater consultation and coherence when he meets European leaders, including the president of Ukraine, at a security conference in Munich.The timing of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with US officials, initially scheduled for Friday morning, remained unclear because the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had to change his flight from Washington when the plane experienced a mechanical fault.The expected showdown came after 48 hours in which senior members of the Trump administration, including the president, unleashed a volley of contradictory positions on how and when negotiations with Russia about Ukraine’s future would be conducted.In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Vance tried to quell criticism that Donald Trump had made a series of premature and unilateral concessions in a phone call with Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.He said the US would still be prepared to impose sanctions on Russia if Moscow did not accept a satisfactory deal. “There are any number of formulations, of configurations, but we do care about Ukraine having sovereign independence,” he said.Vance added the option of sending US troops to Ukraine if Moscow failed to negotiate in good faith remained “on the table”. He said there were “economic tools of leverage, there are of course military tools of leverage” the US could use against Putin.Before being nominated as vice-president, Vance said he did “not really care about Ukraine’s future, one way or the other”.Rubio added that the US had an interest in the long-term independence of Ukraine, remarks intended to imply some form of security guarantee for Ukraine.Trump has also insisted that any deal would be in consultation with Ukraine, but he has been less emphatic about the involvement of Europeans – an omission that has infuriated leaders of the continent, who believe any Ukrainian settlement will have profound consequences for European security.Trump reiterated that it would not be possible for Ukraine to ever join Nato since Putin would not accept it. In his view, Ukraine is aware of this. “I think that’s how it will have to be,” Trump said.Instead, he foresaw Russia rejoining the G7 group of wealthy countries as part of its reintegration into western economies.The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, who was due to meet his Polish counterpart in Warsaw on Friday, said the US was not making premature concessions.European leaders have long expected Trump would slash US support for Ukraine, but have been shocked by the lack of planning by the administration and the absence of consultation with allies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe French president joined the chorus of politicians demanding the US adopt a more careful and coordinated approach. “A peace that is a capitulation is bad news for everyone,” Emmanuel Macron said.“The only question at this point is whether President Putin is sincerely, sustainably … prepared for a ceasefire on that basis,” he said, adding that Europe would have a “role to play” in regional security discussions.The most angry response from a senior European politician came from Kaja Kallas, the new EU foreign policy chief and former Estonian president.“Why are we giving them [Russia] everything they want even before the negotiations have started? It’s appeasement. It has never worked,” she said, adding that Nato membership for Ukraine was the “strongest” and “cheapest” security guarantee available.She suggested the war would continue with European support if Zelenskyy was cut out of the talks. “If there is agreement made behind our backs, it simply will not work,” Kallas said. “The Ukrainians will resist and we will support them.”Hegseth also downplayed the relevance of European values to security policy: “We can talk all we want about values. Values are important. But you can’t shoot values. You can’t shoot flags and you can’t shoot strong speeches. There is no replacement for hard power.” More

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      ‘Notes on Displacement’ Review: Seeking a Fresh Start in Europe

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      The artist and director Khaled Jarrar accompanies a group of people from Syria on their way to Germany in this documentary.As its title implies, “Notes on Displacement” is more of a scattered assemblage of scenes than a polished documentary. It follows the director, the Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar, over travels from Greece to Germany — by boat, bus, train and frequently by foot — as he accompanies a group of refugees from Syria seeking a fresh start in Europe.Nadira, the matriarch of the main family in the film, was born in Nazareth in 1936, and Mona, her now-adult daughter, was born in a refugee camp for displaced Palestinians in Damascus. Part of what Jarrar aims to show is the psychology — and absurdity — of being uprooted in two ways. (“When you get a German passport,” Jarrar tells Nadira near the end, “you can visit Palestine.”)Jarrar, credited with the cinematography and sound, trails his subjects from camp to camp. (“Our dream,” one person says of the twists and turns, “has become to know where we are.”) Although the director occasionally identifies himself as an artist or insists to an authority figure that he has a right to continue filming, there are some points when he needed or chose to keep his camera hidden from view.It is clear that this rudimentary setup means that a lot of the trek was lost. Many night scenes are barely legible, and there are still other moments when Jarrar, on the fly, appears to have been more concerned with recording sound than image. But this hectic, disorienting style is surely part of the message, given that the filmmaker pointedly saves basic biographical information for the closing titles. In its form, “Notes on Displacement” mirrors the terrifying, dangerous journey it chronicles.Notes on DisplacementIn Arabic, with subtitles. Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Her Brother Disappeared in War 80 Years Ago. She Finally Got to Say Goodbye.

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      Margery Hop Wong last saw her older brother Sgt. Yuen Hop in 1943. He was a soldier missing in action, until researchers solved the mystery behind his death.When Margery Hop Wong bade her older brother goodbye in 1943, she was just a 12-year-old girl who loved it when he took her for joy rides in his used convertible around the apple orchards their family worked.Yuen Hop left their home in Sebastopol, Calif., a small town 55 miles north of San Francisco, at 19 to join the U.S. Army. His little sister never saw him again. She knew he had died in the war, but she did not know how. Or where. Or what had happened to his body.On Friday, Ms. Wong, now 94, sat in the front pew of a mortuary just south of her home in San Francisco, her brother’s remains in a casket draped in an American flag. Younger generations of the Hop family and military veterans filled the rows behind her as a singer led the group in “Amazing Grace.”For 80 years, Sergeant Hop was lost. Now, he was found.Yuen Hopvia the Hop familyMs. Wong was the youngest of seven children born to Gin and Chan Hop, immigrants from China who spoke Cantonese and struggled to communicate with their American-born children, who grew up speaking English.Life was difficult because of anti-Chinese sentiment fueled by the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882 to dramatically restrict Chinese immigration. Chinese immigrants were regularly prohibited from living or working where they wanted, Ms. Wong recalled in an interview. She said her brother was proud to have scraped together money working as a mechanic and drying apples to buy a used convertible and tried to make life fun for his brothers and sisters.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Guardian view on political turmoil in Paris and Berlin: an ominous end to the year | Editorial

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      After a brief weekend hiatus, action has resumed in the real-life political boxsets playing out in the EU’s two most important capitals. In the Bundestag on Monday, a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered coalition government duly paved the way for a snap election in February. Over in Paris – where the same manoeuvre collapsed Michel Barnier’s short-lived government a fortnight ago – his prime ministerial replacement was putting his feet under the desk after being appointed on Friday by an increasingly desperate Emmanuel Macron.As Europe faces big decisions and dilemmas over Ukraine, how to deal with Donald Trump, and the challenge of China, this is no time for the continent’s fabled Franco-German engine to temporarily conk out. But there are no easy fixes in view on either side of the Rhine. In both France and Germany, the rise of the far right and a concomitant crisis of trust in mainstream politics have pointed to a deep political malaise for some time.Mr Scholz effectively decided to put his troubled coalition government out of its misery in November by firing his fiscally hawkish finance minister, Christian Lindner. As Germany seeks to reboot an economic model that can no longer rely on cheap Russian energy and export-led growth, the SPD leader has deliberately forced an election to seek a mandate for greater borrowing and investment.Unfortunately, he looks unlikely to get it. The most likely next chancellor is Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and a former BlackRock executive. Mr Merz has pledged to maintain the cordon sanitaire excluding the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) from power. But the CDU’s plans to cut corporate taxes and rein in public expenditure would only deepen the social tensions that have fuelled the AfD’s rise.France’s problems began in earnest with Mr Macron’s disastrous decision to call his own snap election last summer. Conceived as a means of confronting Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, which had won the European elections in June, the strategy succeeded only in delivering an ungovernable parliament divided into three blocs, none boasting a majority. Mr Macron then compounded his error by refusing to allow the election’s narrow winner, the leftwing New Popular Front coalition, to provide the next prime minister.A damaging democratic fiasco has ensued. Mr Macron spectacularly lost his electoral gamble, but is stubbornly attempting to protect his unpopular pension reforms and push through an austerity budget to appease the markets and satisfy Brussels’ deficit criteria. With the rightwing Mr Barnier ousted in record time, he has now turned to François Bayrou, a veteran centrist from the rural south-west of France and longstanding ally. Mr Bayrou is the fourth prime minister to be recruited by the president this year, each lasting a shorter period of time than their predecessor. He has drily pronounced his task to be of “Himalayan” proportions.Political dysfunction in the EU’s two most powerful member states feels like a somewhat ominous way to close the year. From January, Mr Trump will doubtless be seeking to browbeat western allies on matters of economic and foreign policy. Right now, with Paris and Berlin plunged into introspection, it would be fair to say that Europe does not look fully ready for the challenge. More

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      Scholz Calls for Confidence Vote, in Step Toward German Elections

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      Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who had few alternatives after his three-party coalition broke up, is widely expected to lose when Parliament takes up the measure on Monday.Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany called for a confidence vote in Parliament on Wednesday, taking the first formal step toward disbanding the German government and leading to snap elections likely to oust him from office.The move, culminating in a parliamentary vote on Monday, became all but necessary in November, when the chancellor fired his finance minister, precipitating the breakup of his fragile three-party coalition.“In a democracy, it is the voters who determine the course of future politics. When they go to the polls, they decide how we will answer the big questions that lie ahead of us,” Mr. Scholz said from the chancellery in Berlin on Wednesday.Mr. Scholz expects to lose the vote. The collapse of the government along with the early election on Feb. 23 amount to an extraordinary political moment in a country long known for stable governments.The political turbulence in Germany and the fall last week of the government in France have left the European Union with a vacuum of leadership at critical moment: It is facing challenges from Russia’s war in Ukraine and the imminent return to the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States.Mr. Trump has threatened a trade war with Europe and has consistently expressed skepticism about America’s commitment to the NATO alliance that has been the guarantor of security on the continent for 75 years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Guardian view on the EU-Mercosur trade deal: another farmer flashpoint approaches | Letters

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      Anticipating the strong protectionist winds that will blow from Donald Trump’s White House, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been responding by making her own economic weather. Last week, Ms von der Leyen flew to Montevideo, 5,000 miles south of Washington DC, to controversially conclude negotiations in one of the biggest free trade agreements in history. Twenty-five years in the making, the Mercosur trade deal opens up trade between the EU and a Latin American bloc of partners comprising Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.In theory, the agreement promises a more open market of 700 million people for products ranging from Argentine beef to German cars. For European manufacturers, it would eliminate tariffs on a majority of goods. As Mr Trump threatens to impose heavy tariffs on Chinese and European exports, here was evidence, asserted Ms von der Leyen, “that openness and cooperation are the true engines of progress and prosperity”.This sunny analysis does not, however, tell the whole story. From an economic perspective, the Mercosur deal makes sense for Europe, offering an alternative market in the event of US tariffs and amid the continuing Chinese slowdown. It also deepens European connections with the global south, at a time when Beijing is doing the same in systematic fashion. But the political realities are treacherous: opposing Mercosur is a common cause celebre among European farmers, who fear being undercut by Latin American producers who are not subject to the same environmental standards.At the end of a year in which farmers’ protests have made headlines across the continent, and far-right parties have exploited rural resentment to attack the EU’s green transition, this is territory to be navigated with extreme care. The deal has yet to be ratified, and EU member states are split. Germany, desperate to shore up its export industry, is strongly in favour. France, whose farmers famously carry immense political clout, is implacably opposed. Serious reservations have been expressed by the Netherlands, Poland, Austria, Italy and Ireland.Less than a month after officially beginning her second term in office, Ms von der Leyen is taking a risk by pushing ahead at pace when such divisions exist. Approval of the trade part of the overall deal may be subject to a qualified majority vote, meaning that France would not be able to exercise its veto. That would be grist to Marine Le Pen’s mill, given that, in one recent poll, almost two-thirds of French citizens said they no longer had confidence in the EU. Meanwhile, the prospect of a disunited European front – with France and Germany at loggerheads – as Mr Trump enters the White House, is not an uplifting one.In the quarter of a century since the Mercosur negotiations began, the negative impacts of globalisation on particular European regions and economic sectors have driven a backlash that has benefited the far right. Trade deals are about politics as well as economics. To avoid the fallout of this deal overshadowing the economic gains, Brussels should make it a priority that losers from it are adequately compensated. Bypassing a necessary battle for hearts and minds, as the EU confronts new geopolitical challenges without and the rise of Eurosceptic nationalism within, is not a viable option.

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      Volkswagen Unions Begin Short Strikes and Threaten More

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      Workers at nine of the automaker’s German factories walked off their jobs for several hours, and warned they would escalate the action if their demands went unmet.Volkswagen workers across Germany escalated their labor dispute with management by walking off their jobs for several hours on Monday, and their union threatened longer strikes if their demands were not met.The automaker is in the middle of labor negotiations with IG Metall, the union representing most of its workers, as the company tries to reduce costs in an effort to return it to profitability. Volkswagen is seeking 10-percent wage cuts and threatening to close factories in Germany, the first such move in its 87-year history.Thousands of workers at nine of the company’s plants in Germany, as well as several other subsidiaries that are covered under a wage agreement with the automaker, staged two-hour strikes on Monday, demanding that Volkswagen guarantee their jobs and keep its factories open.IG Metall has threatened to start longer walkouts, or open-ended strikes, unless it is able to reach an agreement with Volkswagen managers.“If necessary, this will be the toughest collective-bargaining battle Volkswagen has ever seen,” said Thorsten Gröger, the chief negotiator and district manager for the union. “Volkswagen will have to decide at the negotiating table how long and how intense this dispute has to be.”The labor battle, the company’s first involving strikes since 2018, comes as Volkswagen, Germany’s leading automaker, faces slowing demand for its cars in Europe and Asia, as well as increased competition from Chinese automakers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More