Archives: Newsletters

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.

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.

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.

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.

“I have a message for Liz Truss… We work hard. We work the longest hours in Europe,” the Trade Union Congress (TUC)’s General Secretary Frances O’Grady told her conference in October, referring to the former UK prime minister’s leaked audio comment that British workers needed more ‘graft’.

British workers have fewer public holidays (known as bank holidays, as these were initially exclusive to bank workers) compared to their European peers.

O’Grady and other union leaders have called for new bank holidays to reward British workers and this, paired up with data from the 2021 census of the Office for National Statistics, which highlights the UK’s diversity in terms of ethnicity and religion, creates an opportunity.

Given the UK’s rich melting pot, workers of all confessions should have the same opportunity to celebrate their religious holidays with their families, from Ramadan to Diwali, from Hanukkah to Vaisakhi, as Christians celebrate theirs.

As all British workers, religious and nonreligious, need more holidays, these times could be used to learn more about different communities in Britain, as happens during Black History Month.

Another element that could reinforce a similar scenario is the role of the monarchy, as King Charles III inherited the Queen’s role as head of the Church of England, but at the same time, he labelled himself as “Defender of faiths” back in 1994 and will recognise all faiths during his coronation in May 2023.

At a time when divisions run deep and social tensions are rising, the opportunity for holidays where all Britons rest and spend time with their families, while exchanging and learning about other communities, would pay tribute to the kaleidoscope of cultures, religions, and traditions that represent the United Kingdom today.

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.

“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?

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.”

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.

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.

Two years ago, I met Andrei Amariei*, a young Romanian who had been working in the German meat industry. At that time, the pandemic was wreaking havoc in Europe, and the role of essential workers across Europe was making headlines.

Andrei told me about 12 hour-shifts in freezing temperatures, long weeks without a day off, and a salary the bosses often slashed with no justification. “Germans see the Romanians as three or four classes below them, as the lowest in Europe,” he summed up.

Andrei is one of millions of Romanians trying to earn a living in western Europe, many of whom face discrimination and slave-like conditions.

In their absence, the Romanian economy struggles to find replacements. In 2022, the government allowed companies to hire 100,000 non-EU workers – the largest number ever authorised. Most of them come from Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan or Vietnam. I see them working in fast food restaurants and on construction sites, crossing Bucharest on bikes to deliver food, or in their free time, trying to make sense of this messy and confusing east European city.

Their experience is similar to that of millions of Romanians abroad since the Revolution. In 2020, residents of a village in central Romania rioted after a local bakery hired two workers from Sri Lanka. The story inspired award-winning director Cristian Mungiu’s latest movie, R.M.N.

A current investigation described the conditions of many foreign workers in Romania: they work up to 60 hours a week, sometimes without a contract, and live in overcrowded containers.

In the absence of policies to improve the European labour market and build solidarity in a world where profit dictates all, a chain of abuses is linking the West and the East. The exploited soon becomes the exploiter, and the weakest will suffer, as they always do.

*The name was changed, as the worker feared a legal dispute with his former employer.

2.2 million Poles lived and worked abroad for more than three months during the last year. In parallel, the number of Ukrainian workers is rising in Poland, many replacing the missing Polish labour force.

Even before the war, Ukrainians came to Poland in large numbers in search of work. Last year there were 1.5 million. After the Russian invasion this number more than doubled.

Ukrainian workers have become crucial to the Polish economy, which continues to grow, despite skyrocketing inflation.

Ukrainians coming to Poland are first hired for the lowest-paid jobs, like the Poles when they arrived in west European countries.

Young people are leaving. The population is ageing, and birth rates are declining. There is a chronic lack of workers, as they have been vacuumed out from the region – this is the gloomy picture of the Balkans today.

No wonder few want to stay. With wages a fraction of the EU average, the region is still entangled in border disputes, ethnic quarrels, rampant corruption, unfinished EU and NATO accession (in some states) and the ghosts of the wars of the 1990s.

“People see no future here, so they seek their fortunes in central and western Europe or anywhere else. It’s not only about the money, but above all about the comparatively lower quality of life [at home],” says Ilija Aceski, a professor of sociology in Skopje.

If one believes the projections of the United Nations, the World Bank and the statistical agencies, Bulgaria will have 38% fewer people in 2050 than in 1990. In Serbia, numbers will be down 24%, and North Macedonia and Croatia will see a 22% drop.

Unlike in Germany, France, Poland or even Romania, there is no influx of migrant workers to fill the vacancies. Despite the millions of migrants and refugees from the Middle East who have passed through the region in the last decade, almost no one wanted to stay. Just like the inhabitants of the Balkans, they dream of a life in wealthier countries.

Both the public and private sectors are hit. Everywhere you look, there is a chronic lack of doctors and nurses. The same goes for engineers, plumbers, bricklayers and other skilled professionals.

“It’s a vicious circle,” adds Aceski. “The more people leave, the more the overall quality of life dwindles. And that in turn causes even more people to flee.”

In his opinion, governments have so far offered very few resources and sound plans to stop the exodus.

“It is absolutely necessary to regularise workers who make this country work and who are, unfortunately, in an irregular situation”

For Laurent Berger, general secretary of CFDT, one of the main French workers’ unions, the French government’s recent proposal for the immigration law reform, which will be discussed in Parliament at the beginning of 2023, doesn’t go far enough.

One of the suggestions is to ease the professional integration of foreign workers by delivering a residence permit for “jobs in tension”, in sectors where it is difficult to fill the vacancies, such as in hospitality and construction.

In an interview for French television France 2, Laurent Berger suggests that the immigration situation requires an approach “not only economically useful, but also socially thankful to these workers”. He argues that they need to be “automatically regularised” and provided with work permits and official papers.

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.

​​In my family, we watched every international football match together. Every World Cup, every Euro Cup. My parents told me stories about their favorite players. About Maradona or Ronaldo. I was a diehard fan.

The last game we watched together was the 2010 World Cup final in South Africa: Spain against the Netherlands. No one spoke for the whole match, and no one went to the bathroom. We stared spellbound at the television, until we jumped up and let out the tension when Andrés Iniesta scored in overtime, and crowned Spain the world champions.

Spain’s tiki-taka football mesmerized the world, but for me, it didn’t last beyond 2010, because of the development of my political and social attitudes, which are contrary to corrupt sports events.

When I was younger, the only side I had to pick was a football team to support. That was quite easy. Always Spain, second Brazil, third Argentina, and the fourth place for the underdog. As I grew older I learned that Maradona wasn’t quite the saint my parents claimed him to be and that my favorite sport was riddled with criminality.

Everything seems to revolve around sums of money, no longer around the magical ball. I can only watch a game for a quarter of an hour, until I start thinking how professional football has no connection to my reality. That professional soccer is riddled with fraud and graft, and that ratings, television rights and finances dominate the game, rather than strategy and tactics.

There was a football that I loved. But scandals seem a part of professional football. I’m nostalgic about the game that made me cheer and jump up with excitement. I miss the rollercoaster of emotions. Professional football no longer holds a candle to that. And the championship in Qatar won’t do so either.

“To leave now would mean to betray Estonian football,” said the president of the Estonian football association, Aivar Pohlak, who appeared to be dying on the country’s national TV station.

The Macbeth-inspired monologue was not performed by Pohlak himself, but a comedian from the group Kinoteater, who fill in time between World Cup matches.

On the first day of the championship, the group criticized human rights’ violations and workers’ poor conditions in Qatar, which Pohlak claimed was against the facts. That is when Kinoteater decided to respond during a special broadcast, and it set Estonian social media ablaze.

Pohlak’s decades-long iron grip on Estonian football is still strong, despite FIFA ranking the men’s team outside the top 100 and the women’s in the 96th place. The president has a history of controversy.

The latest will probably blow over, but his tenure may go into extra time.

The knowledge that Qatar most likely won the right to host the World Cup using bribes is widespread in Poland. Yet neither the Polish Football Association, nor anyone from the national team has ever seriously considered boycotting the championship because of this.

An important reason for this silence might be that for years the Polish Football Association (PZPN) tolerated corruption in Polish football. Some of its members were even involved. Investigations are still ongoing. Last week, police detained two high-ranking Polish Football Association board members at Warsaw airport, who were on their way to Qatar for the Poland-Mexico match. The charges: fraud and money laundering.

Polish national coach Czesław Michniewicz is also a controversial figure. The media revealed that in the past he had been in telephone contact more than 700 times with the representative of a Polish football team who was in charge of fixing matches during the first football league in the early 2000s.

This was a huge scandal in which more than 600 people were charged: among them, footballers and coaches. A network pre-determined match results over the phone, with players dropping bribes to referees and the opposing team in the locker room before the game. Michniewicz was never charged, but he also never explained why he was in such frequent contact with the main suspect.

Then again, the Polish public does not seem to require this of the coach. The calls to boycott the championships are quiet and the viewing figures for the matches on TV are record-breaking. Cezary Kulesza, CEO of the Polish Football Association said: “Teams can always boycott any tournament and simply not go to it, but how many of those will you find? No one will go as far as that.”

It seems that neither ethics or transparency count at the World Cup, only results.

10,000 French fans are expected to make the trip to Qatar. This is one third of the 27,000 French attendees at the previous World Cup in Russia, and almost half the 17,000 who traveled to Brazil in 2014.

In Doha, even the tricolor shirts are discreet. Libération’s correspondent did not see a single one during the opening ceremony.

Supporters have suggested several reasons for this drop: from the difficulties of having a holiday in the winter, and higher costs to some fans’ concerns about supporting a disastrous World Cup in terms of human rights.

“We want beer! We want beer!” roared the crowd during the opening match of the 2022 World Cup. In a country where migrant workers have been deprived of their rights, where women and LGTBQ people are oppressed, and where the World Cup bid was won with cold hard cash, the public drew the line at Doha’s decision to forbid the sale of alcohol around the stadiums.

The Qatar World Cup is facing the biggest boycott of any major sports event in recent history. But something is bugging me. Russia hosted the World Cup in 2018. Russia, a country notoriously undemocratic, where political opponents and journalists fall from windows, get shot on their doorstep or are poisoned with polonium, and where the World Cup bid was also won by dirty money.

Was there a boycott there? No. Sounds like something has changed… Or that there are some double standards. Why were European societies ‘ok’ with Russia’s Cup and not with Qatar?

Let me underline some aspects that could play a role: Qatar is different from us Europeans, and the ban on alcohol is just a small part. We could close our eyes to politics and focus on the game in Russia with the help of all the party that comes with football: beer, pre-match joy on the streets, fights with rival fans, and even prostitution.

You can find none of that ambience in Qatar. This time, there is a specific anti-Qatar feeling, driven in part because of its strict Islamic-based laws, but also because it is unattainable for the average fan to attend.

Many fans feel the show has been stolen from them. That is why we do not have the incentive to close our eyes, as we did with Russia.

“You are a part of our population growth problem,” Martin Helme, the current leader of the far-right Estonian party EKRE, told a 27-year-old female journalist in 2016.

She had asked him if it was wrong that she was not planning to have children at that time. He also called her a “socially harmful element”. This quote has since become infamous in Estonia’s ongoing baby debate.

Although this statement was condemned by liberals, it did not damage EKRE’s popularity. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, Estonia has experienced a rapid decline in its birth rate.

However, Tallinn University demographer Mark Gortfelder has pointed out that the existential fear of demographic “survival” has existed longer than the 104-year-old-republic.

Estonia experiences the issue of survival more literally than in most other parts of Europe. Every regional power has at some point in history controlled the Baltic nation of today or a large chunk of it. Most of these periods have involved a massive loss of Estonian lives.

Estonia’s first period of de facto independence (1918 to 1940) was ended by World War II, and accompanied by mass killings and deportations. Between 1945 and 1989, migration increased the proportion of the non-Estonian population within the Soviet-controlled republic from 3% to 38%. It was feared that Estonians would soon be “a minority on their own land”.

For all these reasons, the “baby-making” narrative falls on fertile ground in Estonian politics.

For prime minister Kaja Kallas, this meant ditching her coalition partners who, together with EKRE, introduced a bill for a massive increase in family subsidies behind her back. Many experts say that these will not significantly increase the birth rate.

The price for Kallas to keep her job was high. Her new coalition partners demanded lavish subsidies for families. It was exactly because of those that the previous government was ousted.

In Hungary, all married couples can access an interest-free loan of 24,500 Euro (or 10 Million HUF). No repayments are due for three years after the first child is born, 30 percent of the debt is waived after the second, and the entire debt is waived after the third.

Backed by the government slogan “family-friendly country”, this financial benefit is only valid as long as citizens fulfill their ‘domestic’ obligations.

If the couple divorces or has no children before their fifth anniversary, this support turns into a penalty: not only is the loan at market rate, but the couple must pay back the subsidized interest rate to the state.

I come from a Catholic family. I have three sisters. But when I think about having children, what I see is the uncertainty of the future.

After the 2008 crisis, the Spanish labor market suffered a shock. What used to be ‘a company you always worked for’ transformed into unemployment queues. We received the ‘firing flexibility’ but without the perspective of a fast re-hiring in another company.

Now, if I don’t know whether I will still have a job in five years’ time, how am I going to embark on a long-term commitment like having a child?

When I hear drastic warnings about the shrinking of the European population, fears that Spain’s birth rate is among the lowest in Europe, or politicians blaming young women and their lifestyle for this situation: it’s always on women.

The blame for the decline in birth rates only falls on women joining the workforce (it’s true!), women wanting to focus on their careers (also true!) and even ‘selfish’ women trying to enjoy longer child-free years of youth (more truths!).

But when politicians address natality, it is never about housing, economic insecurity, the labor market, or the cost of living. Government policies should approach the problem in a holistic way. Unfortunately, it has always been a disappointment.

Instead of trying to convince me to have children, the Government could try to fix the housing market. After years of unstable employment, I was 27 years old when I got my first fixed contract. In Madrid, where I live, finding an affordable house with more than two rooms in a normal neighborhood is an ordeal. And forget about buying a place.

How could I think about having a child without a house to raise them? Let alone four kids, like my mother.

“‘Don’t worry. It happens sometimes due to paperwork. Meanwhile, borrow some money if you can’ – This is what I was told when I asked the Public Health Fund why my maternity leave payments were overdue. It happened last year after I gave birth to my second child. The money started arriving after a three-month delay. As a single mother with a newborn, this delay became really stressful. I had to borrow money from my parents. I can’t understand how the state could leave me like that when I was at my most vulnerable.”

In North Macedonia, the state fund covers 100% of a mother’s wages during maternity leave. But Lidija Stancevska, 43, from Skopje, told us that mothers are sometimes left penniless before the state’s ‘helping hand’ arrives.

Meanwhile, the country is gearing up for a public debate on extending maternity leave from nine months up to one year. But what good is a formal extension if the cash turns up late?

Would you say that a woman’s life is worthless if she doesn’t have children? This seems inconceivable in a European country. But this is exactly what we are experiencing in Italy.

Under the new far-right government of Giorgia Meloni, the idea of supporting families goes hand in hand with propaganda, and that’s where problems arise for women.

Nothing explains it better than this sentence by Isabella Rauti, daughter of the founder of fascist Italian Social Movement party, Pino Rauti. In May, she spoke at the conference of Fratelli d’Italia, Meloni’s party, as a head of the Family department. She said: “Without children, without the joy of being continued, there is no future, there is nothing.”

Once in government, Meloni set up the Ministry of Natality, whose minister Eugenia Roccella has previously stated that abortion is “not a right”. This week, while launching the budget bill, the government prepared a reform to the pension system.

It allows earlier retirement to women who have more children. The more children you have, the earlier you can retire. What if you cannot or do not want to have children? Has your partner any role?

Behind the smokescreen of propaganda, the stark reality remains: women need a supportive welfare system and fair wages, otherwise there is little point in talking about family, traditional or otherwise.

Giorgia Meloni, who made being “a woman and mother” her brand, leads a party that voted against the equal pay directive in the EU. In Italy, her first obsession is dismissing the universal basic income. For now, the ability to help families seems “much ado about nothing”.

What happens when propaganda interferes in women’s lives has already been shown. After Fratelli d’Italia won local elections in the Marche region, the right to abortion was put under threat.

“You are living in a fairy tale,” a neighbor in the small German village where I fled from Ukraine in the spring told me. But beautiful scenery is not enough to calm someone living under constant stress.

My current house has more items than my apartment in Kyiv. The whole village helped me, by collecting kitchen utensils, furniture, and clothes. People even found a coffee machine when they heard that I liked coffee. I had almost everything.

But my integration was like a slow walk. I woke up around 4 a.m., checked if everything was okay with my friends and relatives in Kyiv, and then fell asleep until 9 a.m. when I started working. I had permanent internet access and didn’t need to hide in a damp basement. But the inner numbness of my life changed so quickly. The dissonance between the photos from Ukraine and the landscape outside my window kept me awake.

Of course, this was the first stage ― a rejection of the new reality, combined with an uncertain future. Having overcome the fear of speaking German, I began to communicate with locals more. When I started to understand how these people live, it became easier to overcome stereotypes.

Germany isn’t just a country with a strong social security system, and a place where nothing should ever distract people from planning their weekend entertainment, as some stereotypes suggest. It’s a very diverse place with its problems and divisions, rules and traditions.

I have accepted the new rules of life and broken down many barriers: linguistic, emotional, bureaucratic. Openness, gratitude for people, and activity helped it all go smoothly. But…each of our stories is much more complicated than any “fairy tale” we see in the lives of others or that they see us in.

Poland expects 500,000 Ukrainians to arrive in the coming months, fleeing winter, increasing Russian terror and a lack of access to water, electricity and heating.

There are more than a million Ukrainian refugees in Poland. Aid agencies predict the new arrivals will be different, and traumatized by the war. Feeding them could be a challenge. There are currently 80,000 refugees sheltering in aid centers, and many living in overcrowded housing.

In the first weeks of the war, Polish society gave massive support to refugees. Solidarity may again be needed as migration experts believe the state’s preparations are inadequate.

Daria remembers the night of 23 February as if it were yesterday. The 29-year-old film producer was sleeping in her spacious Kyiv apartment with the window open when sirens sounded. “I was annoyed because I thought it was a car alarm,” she says.

“I turned on my cell phone and my mother had posted a message on the family group in WhatsApp. ‘It’s started’, she said.” The first explosions struck the Ukrainian capital. “I was shocked, paralyzed. I took refuge in a shelter. I thought I would stay there for twenty minutes, but I spent two weeks without going outside,” adds Daria.

The Russian invasion triggered a trauma for her. “I started to feel very bad. I couldn’t sleep. I told myself that I had no choice but to leave.” On 18 March, Daria left Kyiv in a hurry with a small bag, “like a refugee”. Her destinations were Warsaw, then Geneva, then Paris. She had already studied cinema for five years in the French capital, and joined tens of thousands of Ukrainians who found refuge in France.

Daria put her bags down at a friend’s house, in the lively Buttes-Chaumont neighborhood.’For the first few days, she managed to rest a little. Her big blue eyes were tired from sleepless nights spent collecting money for the war effort or in the kitchens, where she prepared meals for Ukrainian soldiers.

But even in Paris, something seemed wrong. Despite her friends’ support, Daria felt alone in her struggle. “When I arrived, I found it hard to see people happy, to be in a country at peace when mine was at war,” she says. Daria tried by all means to inform the French about the situation in Ukraine.

She participated in all the demonstrations, organized solidarity dinners, and covered herself with fake blood to try to alert the population. She never went out without her Ukrainian flag, which she tied on her shoulders. “I recreated the atmosphere of wartime kitchens in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. [To raise money for the war effort] We prepared 1,000 meals for the locals, but sold only 50 of them. I was really disappointed. French people don’t understand that Ukrainians are fighting to protect the rest of Europe,” she says.

On 19 May, Daria made a radical decision: she returned to Ukraine, even if this possibly meant losing her life. She needed to find her friends, her family and be among those “who know what war is”. On her way back, where I joined her, her emotions changed from laughter to tears. On the train between Poland and Ukraine, she could no longer hold back her emotions: “It’s over, I’m going home,” she said, before bursting into tears. Her smile widened as she moved closer to home.

Now the country is chaotic. In most cities, anti-bombing sirens still wail several times a day. In Kyiv, it is possible to have brunch on the terrace of a trendy restaurant down the street from military funerals. But the young producer knows that she’s not alone. More than 2.5 million Ukrainians have returned home since the beginning of the Russian invasion. Six months later, Daria has no regrets. She tells me that she will stay in Ukraine “until the victory”.

“Every time it’s like the next level in a computer survival game. Now there is no electricity or water supply, frightened employees don’t come to work. Or they show up, but can’t stand the pressure,” writes Anna Zavertaylo, co-owner of the popular Honey cafes in Kyiv.

Since the Russian strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure, which started on 10 October, there have been daily power cuts in Kyiv to save energy. Anna’s business is trying to adapt. When the power is out, the confectioners wear headlamps, so they can continue making desserts.

It’s the same in many places for eating out. The Ornament cafe, after the blackouts started, initially offered a limited selection of drinks from its menu, such as filter coffee, which can be brewed in advance and stored in a thermos.

Now, after purchasing a small gas stove, all drinks are available. Kha.food, which sells Kharkiv traditional square pizza, announces its opening hours daily on social networks. The Greek restaurant Chaika warns that when there is no electricity, visitors can enjoy grilled dishes.

It is not only the catering industry that is adapting. Many units are buying diesel generators to keep them running in the event of a power cut. Kyiv businessman Ilya Kenigstein has bought a large generator to keep his business, Creative States coworking centers, running smoothly. Last week he sold out all the places for solo work, and there is a waiting list of teams who want to rent the offices.

“After the war broke out, we understood how important it was to stay here,” says Zavertaylo. “We are here to work, create and support each other. All these complications only transform our values. We have to walk this path, and they [the Russians] won’t break us.”

On 9 November, the Day of Ukrainian Writing and Language, the annual “Dictation of National Unity” organized by the Ukrainian public broadcaster went viral. The reason why? – its topic hit too close to home.

In this radio, TV and online gathering, audiences are invited to write down the words to an essay correctly. The piece, by writer Iryna Tsilyk, was dedicated to the concept of home, which the Russian invasion has stolen from millions of Ukrainians.

Having fled the war or taken up arms to defend their country, many listeners found themselves away from home, and united in writing words about a place dear to their hearts.

“Sometimes a home can fit into the size of a suitcase. We now are like those snails, [we] know the price of large migrations,” reads the essay.

Many were moved to tears, including the TV anchor of the event, Roman Kolyada, whose house was demolished by Russia’s war. Social networks were full of crying faces and damp sheets of paper.

Three men caught my eye in 2014 after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s annual summer speech on a sunny Transylvanian afternoon, in the spa town of Băile Tușnad (Tusványos). They were eager political pilgrims. I’ve seen a lot of strange things here, but this was really disturbing.

Orbán gives a State of the Nation address in Romania every year, targeted at the country’s 1.2 million Hungarian minority. More than 500,000 of these have dual citizenship and the right to vote in Hungarian elections. Over 90% of those voters support Orbán’s Fidesz party. Orbán’s annual litany is truly an election-decider.

The embarrassing detail was on their T-shirts: Orbán’s men wore Putin’s portrait.

Since then, the bigger picture has become clearer. The Hungarian-Russian political alliance has now blossomed. At the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, this cooperation took on its own Transylvanian topicality.

This war is about minority rights – as the Hungarian voters in Transylvania are told on a daily basis by the Hungarian state media and meme factories. And Russia and Putin personally (as well as Orbán) are the real champions of these minority rights. Putin is giving the Russians back their territories.

Are Transylvania or Ukrainian Transcarpathia, also inhabited by the Hungarian minority, next? The propaganda offers no explicit promises but only floating, informal hopes.

The Romanian majority in the polls is more in favor of the Ukrainian cause. Hungarian revisionism scares them. The war between Russia and Ukraine has a Hungarian-Romanian shadow.

On a hot October evening last week here in Transylvania a Hungarian right-wing extremist announced that Hungarians must be prepared for the annexation of Transylvania, for the oppression of the Jews and the Roma, and one of the local journalists should be hanged.

Romanian reactions to this were swift and fierce. Even the Prime Minister condemned the call for murder.

The journalist who they demanded to be hanged was me. I don’t know what kind of T-shirt would protect people like me in this time of war.

Almost one in five Germans – 19% – believe that NATO provoked Russia’s war against Ukraine, according to a recent study. This is up from 12% in April.

As the study suggests, pro-Russian propaganda offers a distorted context, where the US is fundamentally denigrated and Russia is glorified. Anti-democratic actors such as the right-wing AfD party also spread disinformation to shake confidence in democracy, the authors conclude.

This works, given that an additional 21% partially believe that NATO is to blame for Russia’s war. What could be a practical outcome of such disinfo? One result: sceptics tend to be against sanctions.

Last summer, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko ordered an elaborate operation that brought thousands of Middle-Eastern illegal immigrants to the Polish border. Could this happen again, but with the action shifting from Belarus to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad?

The Polish government considers this quite likely. According to the Ministry of Defence, there is intelligence information that Russia is preparing a “hybrid attack” on the Kaliningrad border. However, the Ministry did not make the details public. The alleged plan is for Russia to fly planes full of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East to Kaliningrad, and then push them across the border into Poland.

For this reason, the Polish military last Wednesday started to erect a 2.5-metre-high fence with triple razor-wire along the entire 200-kilometer border with Russia – similar to the fence that the Polish government built along 186 kilometers of its border with Belarus last year.

Whether this deterred further migrants, or Belarus froze their operations, is open to debate. As is the question of whether Russia wants to carry out such an operation in Kaliningrad.

Last year, the construction of the fence further polarized the deeply divided Polish society. While the state media strongly supported the action, opponents of the fence accused the government of a lack of humanity, as more than a dozen people died of exhaustion in the Belarusian forests because the Poles refused to let them in.

Now, part of the opposition and the media are already accusing the government of propaganda. Meanwhile, the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) needs to mobilize the electorate ahead of next year’s elections. The higher the turnout, the more certain the party’s victory. And a migrant crisis could help bring out more voters for PiS, who consider themselves supporters of the government.

For this week’s European Focus, our colleague Alicia Allamilos interviewed a man who professionally follows Russian disinformation campaigns in Spain, and the wider Spanish-speaking world. For security reasons, our interviewee keeps his identity secret.

Russia’s strategic goals in the Western Balkans have long been clear. By taking advantage of corrupt local elites, the Kremlin exploits the existing ethnic divides to stoke anti-Western sentiment, further complicate the region’s already sluggish reform plans, and prevent more countries from joining the EU or NATO.

The track record includes its refusal to recognize Kosovo’s independence, a coup attempt in Montenegro and its support for separatist-minded leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The recent Bulgarian blockade of North Macedonia’s EU aspirations also provides space for malign Russian influence. The same is true in Serbia, where Moscow has capitalized on continuing Serbian resentment of the 1999 NATO campaign.

However, it is not the Kremlin, but the EU that has been providing pretexts for this development for far too long.

Although the peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo have played an important role in maintaining stability, European indecision has led to a rise in anti-Western sentiment and to doubts about the EU’s true intention to provide a way forward for the region.

Over the past two decades, Brussels has lost its focus on the region and started showing ambiguity towards its EU perspective. Unsurprisingly, this has alienated many citizens, for whom EU ideals increasingly seem like a pipe dream.

All the Kremlin had to do in the meantime was pour salt on the Balkans’ wound to make things worse.

“Russia’s strategy has been to manipulate the rifts in the Western Balkans. We would like to counter this […] And we would like to bring them closer to the EU,” a senior German diplomat told Euractiv at a meeting of countries from the region in Berlin last week.

It is time Brussels acted. Russia’s war is a wake-up call to revive the enlargement process and clarify the EU’s strategic vision. Otherwise, Europe risks losing the Balkan peoples’ mindshare and leaving its front yard vulnerable – which is dangerous for the EU itself.

A few months ago, as I was rummaging through old stacks of paper I had stored in my grandmother’s attic, I found a letter from 2007 that the assistant to then Chancellor Angela Merkel had written to me and my sister.

It was in response to an appeal for which we had collected 364 signatures in our high schools, asking Merkel not to put the interests of the German auto industry first, but to keep her promise and treat climate protection as a top priority.

Kind words were the response, informing us how strongly Merkel is committed to climate protection. Reading this answer, one could immediately feel how shallow these phrases were.

Today they seem to be even more superficial, as we are light years away from adequately protecting the climate. The crisis has worsened. This year’s October in Germany was 3.8 ° Celsius warmer than the average of any October since 1881.

I see the activists of today and remember how desperate I was fifteen years ago. I remember the sleepless nights thinking about what I could do to raise awareness. How I decided to organize a conference for my school about the threat of climate change, to at least do something.

And I remember resigning myself a little later because nothing was going to change anyway as a result of my desperate “activism”. That I was a lonely teenager who had no influence on political decisions.

For today’s young activists, it must feel even more like it’s too late and too little. For me, however, seeing their actions feels like a relief. Worrying about climate change is no longer an isolated perspective. Today’s fight for climate action is being waged collectively and is more powerful. It’s the fight of a generation that is willing to use more radical means to make its voice heard. That gives me a little hope. Even if the shallow phrases about not acting still sound much louder.

Juan López de Uralde left his post as director of Greenpeace Spain to found the country’s first Green Party in 2011 – but without success. Today, the Greens are divided among various coalitions.

European Focus: Let’s start with the problem. Will Spain be the first country in Europe to be affected by the worst aspects of climate change?

Juan López de Uralde: We’re probably the EU’s first, and most vulnerable victim of climate change. According to the Spanish Meteorology Agency, the temperature increase has already reached 1.2º C. This has implications for the spread of wildfires, the reduced availability of water, the widening of arid zones and much more. The problem is that passivity is taking its toll – as we have long warned.

European Focus: As a woman from Córdoba, I remember the 47ºC summers and some years of water rationing. The awareness of climate disaster is there in Spain. Yet there is no Green Party and no strong environmental activism, why?

de Uralde: We have tried without success. There are three main problems: Firstly, the lack of resources. Secondly, the Spanish electoral system, which punishes small parties. And thirdly, there is no strong social support for the Green cause as compared to other European countries. Awareness has grown, but the climate issue is not yet a decisive factor in voting decisions. That’s the main difference with Europe. Economic or employment problems count more.

European Focus: You were in jail after gatecrashing a Climate Change Conference (COP) in 2009 with a banner. Now we see young activists throwing soup at Van Goghs. Do Spanish activists have to be even more radical to be heard?

de Uralde: We went directly to those who were causing the problem. But I respect what these activists are doing: it’s a cry for help from the younger generation. In Spain there was also a factor that we have not mentioned so far: The biggest climate mobilizations were around COP25 (in Madrid), just before the Covid 19 pandemic. Some major parties are also beginning to take up the climate agenda, but it remains to be seen whether this is really the case. If not, activism will increase.

According to the latest polls, only 1.3% of Estonian voters support the Green Party. A political party in Estonia needs a threshold of 5% to enter parliament, so it is unlikely that the Greens will be represented in parliament in the next elections in March 2023.

Many commentators attribute this low rating to the party’s lack of a comprehensive political program that includes issues other than those concerning the environment. This is backed up by another survey, which states that 71% of Estonians would like to lead a more environmentally friendly lifestyle, but financial restraints and current laws do not support such a change.

With such a self-image, it is surprising to see concern about the environment not translating into political support. Is it something the Green Party alone can fix or should Estonians take a hard look in the mirror?

Last autumn an environmental activist and two journalists were shooting a documentary on the deforestation of Romania’s forests, when they were attacked, beaten and threatened with death. Although there were dozens of attackers, the police were only able to arrest four. Some of them were employees of the National Forest Administration, who are paid by the state to protect forests.

This is just the tip of the iceberg that shows the reality that activists have to face. No wonder they are mostly doomed to fail. Support from Western Europe activists could be crucial in this respect, as in the case of the gold mining project “Rosia Montana Gold Corporation”. This billion-dollar foreign investment in Romania’s Apuseni mountains was stopped after almost twenty years of struggle, which included cooperation between Romanian and international activist groups.

Official statistics estimate that an average of 20 million cubic metres of timber are illegally logged every year in Romania. According to Greenpeace Romania, “local legislation fails to protect nature, even when legal action is taken.”

Some NGOs are trying to encourage the EU to protect forests. It would take many years for these policies to be effective, if they ever can be. There is no real political will to implement them.

Yet Romania is in a privileged situation. While Western European countries are trying to rewild some of their regions, Romania only needs to protect what is still there: over 500,000 hectares of virgin and old-growth forests, which is more than any other country in the European Union. Our biodiversity is unique. We need to educate the entire population if we want to prevent corruption and protect the forests, with the help of a strong civil society.

Where Romanian activists have neither enough knowledge nor tools, western colleagues could also help, with a strategy adjusted to the Romanian reality. The bridge that must be built between Westerners and Easterners rests on different foundations on opposite banks of the river, and needs a unique structure to bring the two sides together.

“We know that young people especially care about protecting the environment. We will take this on board. Because, as Roger Scruton, one of the great masters of European conservative thought, wrote: ‘ecology is the most vivid example of the alliance between those who have been here and those who will come after us’.” – Giorgia Meloni

In her first speech to Parliament as Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni seems to be aware that the climate change issue is unavoidable. But by invoking right-wing ideologues such as Roger Scruton, she manipulates this issue to propose anti-environmental measures. Her party has rejected the European Green Deal and called climate activists gretini (a combination of “Greta” – after Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg – and “cretini” – idiots).

Now that the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia is in charge of the government, Meloni is using right-wing “ecologism” to advocate the idea of “nature with man in it,” as she has said. This means that she defends the right of corporations to pollute the environment in the name of productivity.

When the first drones struck Kyiv, Oksana Kovalenko, 42, shared in a group chat on Telegram what she was seeing and hearing in real time. For this week’s European Focus, our authors Anton Semyzhenko asked her what she felt then and how she feels now.

The latest phase of Moscow’s terror strategy in Ukraine tells us something: that Russia is helpless. But it also tells us that there is no better moment than now to further strengthen Kyiv’s military. The Russians are unable to hold the occupied territories, let alone conquer new ones. The Ukrainians are making progress and gradually liberating the country thanks to weapons supplied from the West.

But the capacity of the countries that have sent most of the weapons so far is slowly running out. This is a dangerous moment for the EU. However, it needs to become even more involved, instead of scaling back the arms deliveries.

In Poland, the conviction that standing alongside Ukraine means defending itself against Russian aggression has followed both those in power and the entire opposition from the very beginning of the conflict.

So far, Warsaw has donated equipment worth $1.7 billion. The country has given Ukraine so many weapons that it is now struggling with its own stockpiles. That’s why it is rapidly ordering tanks, aircraft and heavy weapons from the United States and South Korea, regardless of the cost.

Poland feels that the rest of Europe is not doing enough. In Warsaw’s view, the recently agreed EU military aid package of €3.1 billion is too little. The equipment already handed over by the Poles accounts for more than half of that amount and will not compensate for the country’s outlay (and there are 26 other EU countries waiting to be reimbursed).

It is time for other European countries to become more involved in the defence of Ukraine. Russia’s withdrawal cannot be achieved other than through military victory. Paradoxically, this is the only way to save thousands more of Vladimir Putin’s victims from death.

Tens of thousands of freedom-loving teachers and students rallied in Budapest over the weekend on the 66th anniversary of the 1956 revolution, protesting against the government, demanding better wages and educational reform. At the same time, many expressed their disgust at the current abuse of the memory of the revolution by the Orbán regime.

Why? Because, in a shocking U-turn, the prime minister now says that the Hungarians of 1956, thousands of whom lost their lives, were in fact not fighting for their freedom or democracy – but to force a ceasefire and peace negotiations conducted over their heads by the Western and Eastern blocs.

That’s what he wants for Ukraine, too. It does not matter what the Ukrainians want, the war can only be ended by negotiations between the US and Russia, Orbán said in Berlin in mid-October.

To get them to the table as quickly as possible, the parties must be forced, Orbán explained. For example, he said, a major problem is that weapons from the West are pouring to the front. He did not mention weapons from the East. He also hopes that the Americans will turn away from Kyiv.

Thus, for Orbán, it is not the Russians who need to be coerced, but the country under attack.. In the struggle between two political systems, he is rooting for autocracy. Meanwhile, a current government campaign portrays the EU’s sanctions against Russia as bombs falling on Hungary.

The memory of the revolution could perfectly mirror Ukraine’s struggle today. As in 1956, Russian tanks have once again invaded a country striving for freedom and democracy.

Unlike our prime minister, who began his career by standing up to the Soviet empire in 1989, many Hungarians have not forgotten this.

Last week, 24 deputies of the governing Green and liberal FDP parties published an appeal calling for more German initiative in a European restructuring of the weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

However, not a single member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD signed the appeal, even though its chairman, Lars Klingbeil, acknowledged a day earlier the party’s misjudgments toward Russia in recent decades as clearly as never before.

Even today, the party is still struggling to come to terms with its own “Zeitenwende”, the historic shift in German foreign and security policy declared by Scholz on February 27.

When Iranian suicide drones slammed into Ukrainian cities, the new reality dawned on Western Europe: Ukraine needs an effective anti-aircraft shield to protect its people from these terror attacks.

Paris, criticised over its meagre military support for Kyiv, has pledged its help. On October 12, Emmanuel Macron announced the delivery of “radars, anti-aircraft systems and missiles to protect Ukrainians from attacks, especially drone attacks.”

After getting to grips with ‘Caesar’ self-propelled howitzers, Ukrainian soldiers will now have to learn how to handle ‘Crotales’, French-made air-defence missile batteries. Paris has committed to supplying them to Ukraine within two months. Although the quantity was not specified, it will be limited: the French army itself has only twelve Crotales.

Though helpful in the war, they will have very limited impact on the drone battle, according to military expert Vincent Tourret. “The Crotales are rather designed to shoot down aircraft or missiles. They are more likely to be used to hit Russian Sukhoï helicopters or intercept cruise missiles in the terminal phase. It would not be very cost-effective to use them against drones. With their range of only four kilometres, the German Gepard guns would be more effective.”

By helping Ukraine, Paris also wants to support its own arms industry. It has set up a fund of 100 million euros, “from which Ukrainians can buy whatever they want, provided that the supplier is French,” said Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

Kyiv has reportedly begun using the fund to buy motorised pontoon bridges to help cross rivers. However, this solution has one important limitation: production time. Unlike selecting them from army stocks, the production process is lengthy. On average, it takes a year from order to delivery of a 155-mm shell.