Press Review: Italian Firepower, French Farmers’ Fury, Ukrainian Intrigue — Europe’s February Heats Up

ATHENS — The EU’s green light for $54 billion in fresh aid for Ukraine is as much of a sign as any that Europe has shaken off its winter torpor and is finally, in its characteristically roundabout way, getting down to business. By many accounts it was was pressure from Germany and Poland that moved the deal across the line, but it turns out that Chancellor Scholz and the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, were just ghosts in the Brussels gloom.Behind the scenes, it was Italy’s tough-talking prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who put her Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orbán, on notice that time was up on holding up the four-year security assistance package. At one point on Thursday the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, President Macron, Herr Scholz, Ms. Meloni, and Mr. Orbán were reportedly all in the same room. Only Mr. Orbán and Ms. Meloni, though, have something of a genuine rapport. So it was gently but insistently that Ms. Meloni warned the Hungarian that without cooperation, “We are suspending you from the life of the Union, we are removing your right to vote, let’s freeze your country, let’s be serious.” An Italian broadsheet, Corriere della Sera, reported that only Ms. Meloni had the chutzpah to speak to Mr. Orbán directly, and lo and behold, he listened.What Ms. Meloni was referring to was Article 7 of the treaty on the European Union, also known as the suspension clause. It allows for the possibility of suspending EU membership rights (such as voting rights in the Council of the European Union) if a country “seriously and persistently breaches the principles on which the EU is founded as defined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union.” The threat of invoking it was enough, apparently, to persuade Mr. Orbán — who makes no secret of his disdain for Ms. von der Leyen — to soften his position and vote in favor of the new EU budget. The EU, and Mrs. von der Leyen specifically, though, are by no means out of the woods. The high costs stemming from the war in Ukraine, for one thing, are a big part of what has so many European farmers up in arms right now. On the same day that the Ukraine deal went through, irate farmers were burning bales of hay and throwing eggs at police officers outside the European Parliament building at Brussels. A Belgian newspaper, Le Soir, reported that some farmers have threatened to blockade the entire country, notably with their tractors. By Friday, though, there were signs that some of the tractor protests in France were easing up. That is happening in part because the famous “French fury” appears to have led Ms. von der Leyen to blink: She has signaled that there will be a temporary loosening of green farming requirements under the Common Agricultural Policy. Since 2023, EU farmers have been required to set aside 4 percent of their land to biodiversity fallow meadows in order to access farming subsidies — which come in handy as a bulwark against cheap imports. They will be exempt from those requirements for the remainder of the year, but then what happens? By that time Ms. von der Leyen may have moved on to greener pastures herself. ***If you want to send Pope Francis into a tizzy, just say surrogacy. For the Greek Orthodox church, gay marriage will do the trick. Greece’s parliament is set to vote in less than two weeks on a bill that if passed will legalize same-sex marriage. Cue raised hackles at Greek churches and monasteries everywhere in a country at once modern and deeply conservative. This week the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece sent a letter to 300 Greek lawmakers, claiming the bill “abolishes paternity and maternity, neutralizes gender in the context of the relationship between parents and children, transforms parents from father and mother to neutral guardians and places the rights of homosexual adults above the interests of future children.”Theological opposition aside, the more politically interesting thing here is that the bill is being tabled by Prime Minister Mitsotakis, who wants to make good on pledges to eliminate discrimination based on sexual orientation. Mr. Mitsotakis heads the conservative New Democracy party, and even some of his own party members are against it. The center-right New Democracy, though, is surging ahead of left-wing opposition parties in polling. Like many European leaders, Mr. Mitsotakis is also keeping an eye on EU elections in June. If the gay marriage bill passes, it will steal some programmatic thunder from the left and allow Greek centrists to head into those elections from a stronger position. Greece is arguably the European capital of intrigue, but some political goings on at Kyiv this week are giving Athens a run for its money. To wit, is President Zelensky going to fire his top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny? CNN has reported on that possibility, which comes amid differences about how to prosecute the war — and this despite General Zaluzhny’s popularity among ordinary Ukrainians. The Washington Post reported that a major bone of contention is over conscription. General Zaluzhny says that Ukraine should call up at least as many soldiers as Russia plans to recruit into its own armed forces — a figure north of 400,000 — and has reportedly warned Mr. Zelensky to gird for losses comparable to last year’s. Large-scale conscription, though, means among other things higher taxes for Ukrainians, and a relevant bill seems to have stalled in the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. There has also been a tactical shift toward prioritizing drone warfare against Russian targets. In any case, in addition to battling the Russians, it appears that Ukraine has some political battles of its own to sort out in the coming weeks.

Press Review: Italian Firepower, French Farmers’ Fury, Ukrainian Intrigue — Europe’s February Heats Up

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