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North Macedonia is blessed with beautiful Orthodox Churches and Mosques. But sometimes, religion in this secular country can become too intrusive on the public space.

A 66-metre-high Orthodox cross overlooks the capital Skopje. Built in 2002 to mark two millennia of Christianity, this cross instils a sense of pride in some, but for others it is a prime example of megalomania, including for many Muslims who live in Skopje.

The second largest religion, Islam, has also drawn criticism. People have complained about the noise coming from the mosques’ loudspeakers. I measured a staggering 80 decibels during the afternoon prayer in Skopje’s Cair municipality. The legal limit is only 45 decibels of noise.

Lorenz Blumenthaler is press officer for the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which combats right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism in Germany.

European Focus: In recent years, a debate has raged in Germany over the naming of some markets that open during the festive period ‘winter markets’. Why are these Christmas markets, which are hardly a religious symbol, igniting a heated discussion?

Lorenz Blumenthaler: There is a right-wing narrative that is reheated every year claiming a “war on Christmas” that is allegedly driven by a supposed “Islamisation” of the west. This is reflected in the renaming, abolition, or replacement of common “traditions” which then represent gestures of submission to this “Islamisation.” However, this is an anti-Muslim conspiracy narrative that is mainly used to stir up fear of Muslims in Germany.

EF: Where did this narrative arise from?

The origin can be traced back to the U.S. In the early 20th century, car magnate Henry Ford circulated anti-semitic publications claiming that Christmas traditions were being restricted by Jews. The modern debate was largely driven by the American alt-right. Since 2004 Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly pushed this and also U.S. President Donald Trump took up the narrative during his 2015 campaign.

The “war on Christmas” fell on fertile ground within the German right. Every year, members of the far-right AfD party, in particular, try to scandalise alleged renaming campaigns. In their eyes Germany is lost when discounters sell “Winter decorations” instead of “Christmas decorations”. If taken seriously, one gets the impression that the self-declared “Christian-Jewish Occident” is defended above all on the front of Advent Calendars. The only goal of these fabricated agitations is to stir up sentiment against Muslims.

EF: The discussion around the alleged “war on Christmas” was not prominent this year. Why?

Inflation, a global pandemic, a Russian war of aggression, the energy crisis, and refugees from Ukraine – who needs a “war on Christmas” when you have all this? Probably these crises and issues offered a sufficient enough basis to spread hostile and racist ideology.

The European Union has never tried to cancel Christmas. This was a piece of fake news spread by the Italian right wing. In the name of tradition and propaganda, Giorgia Meloni led a crusade against Ursula von der Leyen.

This happened last winter, when the leader of Fratelli d’Italia wasn’t yet Italy’s prime minister. “That’s enough!” she wrote in a tweet, addressing the president of the EU Commission. “Our history and identity cannot be erased!”

Did the German Christian-democrat want to profane Christmas? No. Brussels never tried to “erase Christmas”.

The European Commission drafted some internal ‘Guidelines for Inclusive Communication’ suggesting that officials should “avoid assuming that everyone is Christian. Not everyone celebrates the Christian holidays. Be sensitive about the fact that people have different religious traditions and calendars: ‘holiday times’ would be preferable to ‘Christmas time’.”

All the noise had an effect: after the Italian right launched its campaign against “political correctness”, the Commission withdrew the document.

Can you imagine a nativity scene without Mary, without Joseph, and without even Baby Jesus? That is what is happening in the small town of Beaucaire – because the mayor wants to circumvent a 100-year-old French secularisation law.

This prohibits the installation of religious symbols, such as a newborn in a manger, in public buildings, in order to keep public service neutral. After having been convicted on several occasions, the municipality decided this year to keep the nativity scene inside the town hall, but without its main characters.

“They sue us three or four times a year for this beautiful cultural exhibition. What sense of priorities do these people have?” complained the mayor. These ‘people’ are, in fact, the prefecture, the representative of the French state, who regularly takes the municipality of Beaucaire to court for not respecting secularism.

Since their election less than ten years ago, a new wave of far-right mayors has decided to turn nativity scenes into a battlefield, by installing them in their town halls. In their eyes, it is not a religious symbol but a cultural tradition.

Their vision of secularism is also very flexible. They are its most ardent defenders of neutrality when it comes to prohibiting the construction of a mosque, yet they do not hesitate to violate it when it comes to Christian tradition.

Robert Ménard, the mayor of Béziers who started the trend of nativity scenes in town halls, was not only convicted of not respecting secularism. He was also found guilty of ‘provocation to hatred’ in 2017 for saying that there were too many Muslim children in his town’s schools.

This obsession with nativity scenes does not stem from a simple love of the Christmas spirit, as some far-right mayors would have us believe. It is part of a xenophobic and Islamophobic political agenda.

While purchasing power plummets throughout Europe, in Belgium wages continue to rise. This is because the salaries of civil servants and private sector workers are indexed to inflation. The same applies to pensions and social welfare. Every 1 January or four to five times a year, depending on the industry or sector, salaries increase according to the “smoothed health index”. Its calculation is slightly different from inflation, as it does not take into account the price of alcohol, tobacco or petrol.

The indexation of wages to inflation was introduced gradually at the beginning of the 20th century. It has survived the changes in the labour market, globalisation and the oil shocks which led Belgium’s neighbours to abandon similar systems. Today, Belgium is the only country in Europe, along with Luxembourg, to benefit from such a scheme.

During each economic crisis, the same debate resurfaces: should this mechanism be modified? Belgian employers are regularly calling for a freeze in automatic indexation, arguing that the policy puts them at a disadvantage versus their neighbours.

Today, with inflation reaching over 12%, the highest rate since 1975, employers’ unions want to establish an income ceiling above which indexation would be reduced or abolished. On the other hand, 73% of Belgians believe that the mechanism is insufficient, due to the explosion in energy prices, according to a survey in Le Soir newspaper.

However, the results are visible. According to forecasts by the Bank of Belgium, the purchasing power of Belgians should increase by 0.3% in 2022. This compares to a fall of 6.8% in the neighbouring Netherlands.

22.5% is the inflation rate in Estonia in October, this is the highest value in the Eurozone, compared to 10.6% in the euro area overall.

While it’s possible to cut back on some costs, there are some expenses that people have to accept. Nursing homes in Estonia are increasing their prices. “I cannot pay [an additional 300 euros] for that,” stated Kristel, to daily newspaper Eesti Päevaleht.

Estonia’s local governments will start to compensate for some of the nursing care costs, but not until July. As pensions only cover a part of these fees, people with relatives in the nursing homes might have to take out loans or work in second jobs to cope.

Last month in Budapest I was struck by a human chain of teachers protesting sneaky ways to hit the education system. Viktor Orbán’s government keeps their salaries very low. A young Hungarian teacher earns less than 500 euros a month, while inflation has hit 22.5%.

A British teacher makes around six times more than a Hungarian counterpart, but the tune is the same: I also came across strikes in Edinburgh. UK teachers rejected a five per cent pay increase: given inflation there is 11 per cent, “these are cuts”, their union said.

And that’s the point. While the cost of living rises, governments do neglect school and health, our most valuable collective goods and investments. We have seen welfare under attack during the financial crisis. Then we had the pandemic; Italy was the epicentre. But we didn’t learn the lesson: public health continues to be mistreated.

When Giorgia Meloni’s government launched the budget bill, doctors sounded the alarm. Funds are even more inadequate if you consider inflation; of two billion euros, 1.4 billion will be used to pay for the rise of energy bills in health facilities. Italian doctors predict the exodus of a third of them from the public health system.

Do we want our life-saving doctors and our passionate teachers to suffer humiliation? Leaving their jobs for being worn out? I do not. I want to give them a voice with our Focus: their stories concern us as Europeans. Are we repeating the same pattern with this crisis? Will governments dump costs on the weakest and let our welfare and our collectivity pay?

As the poet Audre Lorde wrote, “when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard, nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

“Invitation to governmental press conference at 22:30. Please register by 22:00 today” – such emails are not uncommon for journalists. But when Hungarian newsrooms received the above invitation last Monday, it was already 21:46.

Having only 10 minutes to register and 45 minutes to reach the ministry in the middle of the night was new even by the standards of the Orbán government, which has made a habit of announcing bad news at the very last minute.

This time, it was the scrapping of the fuel prices cap, but from the abolishment of taxes to the raising of household utility prices, Hungarians often have only a day, or even minutes to prepare. No wonder Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s office, who holds weekly press conferences, is the subject of numerous jibes.

While Hungarians know laughter is the best medicine, this time they are wondering how long till the joke wears thin?

Andrei Luca was teaching history when he heard the explosion of the first Russian missile that fell on the territory of Moldova. The sound of the muffled boom came from 6 km away, from Naslavcea, the village on the country’s northern border with Ukraine.

“In half an hour, the scared neighbors called me to tell me that the shock wave broke their windows, and some pieces of the ceramic tile on the roof of my house.”

Although this was the first direct damage from the war that has spilled over to Moldova, it was not the first severe blow to the country. Having half of the energy infrastructure in Ukraine destroyed by the war forced Kyiv to stop exporting energy, and Moldova had to look for alternatives for energy supply.

All of this is happening in a country with a 35% inflation rate (the highest in Europe other than Turkey) and an average salary of only a bit more than 500 euros. Inflation hits the elderly even harder: the state minimum pension is 100 Euros per month, but the monthly food basket is 120 euros.

This is because the separatist, Kremlin-backed Transnistria region decided to drastically cut its supply to Moldova. It used to supply 70%of Moldova’s energy, now it will provide only 27%.

After the bomb attack, Andrei had to spend 270 euros out of his pocket for bills, mostly for heating, now powered by electricity from Romania, which is three times more expensive. “This month we’re switching to wood and coal,” he says.

In order to ensure the bare minimum for his three small children, he does extra lessons, rents an apartment in the capital and works as a pastor at two evangelical churches on weekends. “We can’t afford to live on our salary alone,” he says.

Things are finally moving. The German government of the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is planning to liberalise the immigration law: naturalisation should be possible earlier and foreign professionals should be able to find a job in Germany more easily in the future.

This change would recognise that Germany is an immigration country. It has been for decades. The strength of Germany’s post-war economy would never have been possible without the “Gastarbeiter” (“guest workers”) recruited in the 1960s.

Acknowledging that Germany is an immigration country immediately calls on those who have nurtured their racism for years and have campaigned against more liberal immigration laws. A few days ago, a conservative politician complained that German citizenship should not be “sold off”. And the leader of the Christian Democrats said: “German citizenship is something very precious that must be handled with care.” Even within the government, the liberals are somewhat hesitant.

It is striking, however, that leading business representatives are calling for liberalisation. Germany needs immigration: about 400,000 workers per year are missing. The boomer generation will soon retire, and then their labour will be lacking.

What’s sad but true is that Germany’s prosperity is also based on some level of well-cultivated racism. How else could one comfortably justify allowing migrant workers to work under much worse conditions than their colleagues who are considered Germans? How else could one tolerate the gross violations of health protection of migrant workers in the meat industry during the pandemic? The blatant injustice of not paying workers at all on the construction site of the prestigious Mall of Berlin?

So the conflict will not be so easy to pacify. Not only because a part of German society is simply so ideologically stubborn. But also because racism has a tangible function for the interests of the German economy.