🇩🇪 German elections (federal & EU level)

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Apparently, the program of the future coalition want to abolish coal energy. I'm surprised FDP accept this insanity.

Abolishing coal AND nuclear in an heavy industrial country is...interesting.


Good news for French and Italian industries.


And good news for russian diplomacy.

The litmus test won't be about coal; the crucial question will be if the FDP is going to cave in to pressure from SPD and Greens regarding the speed limit question...

I sure hope not.  One of the things I love about renting a car in Europe and driving in Germany is fact I can drive at over 200 km/h.  Its only place on earth I can legally do this, so I really hope that stays.

I cannot make a judgment on your driving skills, but generally, foreign drivers who drive at a speed they are not trained for or used to for the sake of driving very, very fast can lead to very dangerous situations on the Autobahn.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

In an unsurprising but nevertheless very smart move, the SPD has nominated now General Secretary Lars Klingbeil and incumbent leader Saskia Esken for the party leadership.

Klingbeil is an excellent choice, as he is relatively moderate but has no real opponents in the party. He was also responsible for managing the SPD's successful election campaign. Klingbeil is relatively young, seems down-to-earth, and is quite charismatic.

Keeping Esken on the ticket is also a great choice because it will symbolize that the influence of the SPD's left-wing will remain strong in the future. She has been a target of ridicule and often unfair criticism and she had a rough start but later, she handled her job perfectly. Also, for some reason, Hades is really, really angry at that woman, which means that she probably does a good job.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Really bad proposal. As Logical said, the entire purpose of single-member constituencies is undone if the winner of a district is not elected. To combat the explosion of the number of seats, they should have introduced either an MMM system, letting go of proportionality (not sure if this would be constitutional though), or they could have simply gone for multi-member constituencies.

No, it wouldn't. The constitutional court has affirmed multiple times that the German electoral system is at heart a proportional system. If the court hadn't said this in 2011 or so, the Bundestag wouldn't have introduced compensatory seats in 2013, and we wouldn't be in this mess.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

Romeo is also the worst. A wretched hive of scum and villainy. An remember the competitors!