Tag: Sebastian Kurz

Mr. Kurz vaulted to power in Austria in late 2017 with an anti-immigration message that challenged Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, after her country took in thousands of refugees who streamed across southern Europe from Syria and other war-torn Middle Eastern nations. He is a “rock star,” said Richard A. Grenell, the United States ambassador to Germany, who invited Mr. Kurz to lunch in Berlin. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Kurz a one-on-one meeting and an expanded session with his senior aides — the kind of attention that leaders of smaller countries almost never get, save for the prime minister of Ireland around St. Patrick’s Day. “He’s a very young leader, I have to tell you,” Mr. Trump said, turning to his guest. Mr. Trump and Mr. Kurz later discussed trade tensions between the United States and Europe, as the White House nears a decision to impose tariffs on German automobiles. Mr. Trump’s decision to meet with him was mostly about what Mr. Kurz symbolizes in a Europe with which the president has had an increasingly antagonistic relationship. “For better or for worse, he is the chancellor of a German-speaking country that is in a coalition with the hard right,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, an expert on Europe at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Kurz is not the first young European leader to beguile Mr. Trump. And the United States recently held a summit meeting on the Middle East in Warsaw — a reward for Poland’s right-wing government, which has sought close ties to Mr. Trump. “The Warsaw summit showed in brutal clarity the internal contradictions of U.S. policy towards the right in Europe.

It gives the party’s chief whip an automatic seat at the top table in Downing Street because Theresa May has to rely him to steer Brexit through an increasingly hostile House of Commons. With 94 Tories claiming they will vote down May’s final deal, the scale of the task ahead of Smith in the run up to the meaningful final vote on 11 December is, colleagues acknowledge, considerable. In the short time since, “the chief”, as his staff call him, has become one of May’s most important advisers, alongside Gavin Barwell, her chief of staff, and Peter Hill, her private secretary, helping with not just keeping the party’s 315 MPs in line but shaping wider political strategy. Chief whips are meant to be seen but not heard, but a fortnight ago, as the first phase of the Brexit deal was concluded and ministers were threatening to resign, the loyal Smith was in Downing Street telling reporters that May had “worked day in and day out” and “stuck with it through a really, really tough year or two”. When it comes to the party’s rebellious backbenchers, however, Smith has yet to get stuck in, although some say this is reflective of an attempt to take a “softly softly” approach. A key tactic for the Brexit vote is to allow all the other options to be voted on via MPs submitting amendments, and let them fail first, forcing MPs to consider May’s deal as the only realistic option on the table. The Smith argument is that none of the various alternatives command a majority in the Commons. The job of the government whips is to get the prime minister’s business through the Commons, monitoring the mood of backbenchers, picking up concerns early, soothing, persuading and threatening where necessary to ensure MPs troop through the division lobbies behind the party leader. There are also two actual whips on Smith’s Downing Street office mantelpiece – one with a bone handle and the other black leather with metal studs. The Yorkshire MP entered the government as a junior whip in 2015 and was promoted to become deputy a year later, where he caught the eye of the new prime minister.

Former Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern announced on Saturday he would retire from politics, thereby also ending his bid to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as EU Commission president next year. Kern, who stepped down as head of the opposition Social Democrat (SPOe) party last month, earlier indicated he had considered putting himself forward as a candidate to take over from Juncker. But on Saturday, the 52-year-old told reporters he was ending his career because "domestic political games" were overshadowing key debates over European parliamentary elections in May 2019. "As a former head of government, it's impossible to leave the domestic political stage," he said in Vienna. Describing next year's parliamentary vote as "the battle of all battles over the future of our continent", Kern said Europeans had to unite to avoid a takeover by far-right and rightwing parties. At an EU summit in Salzburg last month, he had sought to drum up support for his candidacy for the EU's most powerful job ahead of a meeting in Lisbon in December where the Social Democrat (S&D) grouping will choose its contenders. Juncker is scheduled to leave office at the end of October 2019 after a term marked by a series of crises, including a huge influx of refugees, soaring debt and Brexit. His successor will be chosen by a so-called "Spitzenkandidat" procedure, a term meaning "lead candidate" in German, which was used was for the first time to appoint Juncker in 2014. It is the second biggest group in the European Parliament after the right and centre-right EPP from whose ranks Juncker came. The German head of the EPP parliamentary group, Max Weber, enjoys the support of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and is seen as a frontrunner.

A humiliating Brexit deal risks a descent into Weimar Britain | Timothy Garton Ash Read more May’s trip follows the EU chief Brexit negotiator insisting there was no difference of opinion in European capitals to exploit. “Anyone who wants to find a sliver of difference between my mandate and what the heads of government say they want are wasting their time, quite frankly,” he told reporters at a joint press conference with the new Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, in Brussels. The British negotiators have become increasingly frustrated with the EU’s attitude to the white paper thrashed out at the prime minister’s country retreat. They feel that it will take an intervention by leaders, most likely at a summit in Salzburg in September, to move the dial in favour of a deal. A number of cabinet ministers have been despatched around EU capitals to make their case for greater flexibility. While Raab insisted that with “political will” a deal on trade and on avoiding a border on the island of Ireland was achievable by a crunch summit in October, Barnier offered a damning verdict on a major element of the UK’s vision of the future. To avoid customs checks after Brexit, the government wants an unprecedented system where the UK would collect EU duties while having the freedom to set different tariffs on goods destined for the British market. We have considered the innovative approaches the EU has taken in the past with other third countries – when the political will has been there.” Barnier offered the UK some cause for hope with regard to its temporary customs proposals, which are designed to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland in the period before the final arrangements are ready. The commission’s negotiator conceded that a UK-wide customs plan, avoiding a border in the Irish sea, was the goal, rather than one that simply kept Northern Ireland in the EU’s customs territory. Raab said there needed to be “conditionality” tying the Brexit divorce bill to the deal on future relations.