Thread by @minna_alander

I personally totally understand how big #Zeitenwende is for Germans. A lot of broken taboos to digest, i.e. huge increases in defence spending, delivering weapons to a conflict party (and even the Greens support it), Habeck making energy deals in Quatar…

However, many of these things are only big domestically.

Stepping up defence spending is basically just catching up with what Germany was supposed to do anyways as NATO member.

Ukraine is not just any conflict party.

Entirely relying on Russian energy was a mistake, yes.

Most Europeans outside of Germany don’t speak German and don’t understand the peculiar German type of pacifism that includes categorically ignoring security policy implications while also being one of the biggest arms exporters in the world.

I see a lot of Germans very frustrated with the current “Germany bashing”, saying “but Germany is doing what it can, it’s not reasonable to expect us to kill our economy for Ukraine”. “

“No one can seriously doubt Germany’s commitment to help Ukraine”.

Unfortunately, yes.

What other Europeans are trying to do is wake up Germans to realise what is expected of them.

It’s not really an argument to say “other EU ms are hiding behind 🇩🇪’s back on energy embargo”. GER is not just any EU ms. Others may hide behind GER but GER can’t hide behind others

The disappointment is big with Germany’s reluctance to try and find solutions instead of just listing all the things that are not possible (that is a peculiarity of the German state bureaucracy but again, most other Europeans don’t know it).

Off topic but my personal experience with German state bureaucracy is that you need to put substantial pressure on the people in charge (i.e. get angry and shout at them) in order to get things done so trying to bash Germany into doing the right thing is not entirely mistaken…

Long story short: especially because of the grave mistake Germany’s energy dependency on Russia has proven to be, and because it’s so difficult for Germany to get rid of it, 🇩🇪‘s European partners expect more and unambiguous moral leadership and commitment to Ukraine.

P.S. seeing how little damage Marine Le Pen’s ties to Putin did to her presidential campaign is not helping the Franco-German duo. To many EU members right next to Russia, it’s painful and very worrisome to see how inward-looking the biggest EU member states are.