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Spiegel Online provides a inside look at the leader of the Law and Justice Party which was elected to power in 2015. The liberal opposition that was in power since the fall of communism has seen its popularity decline in the rural areas of Poland, especially in the east. The urban-rural divide seen in other countries such as France is acutely present in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, with poor governance and a tendency for economic gains made under capitalism following the fall of communism to go to more educated people in the large cities. The party's leaders are Lech and Jaroslav Kaczynski who were president and prime minister from 2005 to 2007. At the time they were seen as outsiders lacking the sophistication and experience in government of the liberal opposition under Donald Tusk, who now is head of the EU Council since 2014. Tusk was prime minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014. Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash in 2010. Jaroslav Kaczynski appoints members of his party to key positions in government including prime minister Duda. Kaczynski is strident about the manner in which the gains since Poland joined the European Union have gone only to certain groups able to benefit from capitalism. At a recent party congress near Warsaw he is quoted here as saying: "We are here to ensure that everyone in Poland has the same opportunities, regardless of where they live, in the cities or the country." Kaczynski's appeal is in offering a generous welfare state for the middle classes- small businessmen in villages and towns across Poland, common people, with subsidies to tackle the cost of living. His focus is on the "pathological" consequences of economic liberalism after the fall of the Iron Curtain, privatization that benefitted a few, including Kaczynski says former communists and dissidents. Small businessmen felt the inroads of large private retail chains, and families felt the problems of lack of investment in schools and kindergartens. The liberal opposition can only offer the hope that being a reliable EU ally will ensure prosperity, which does not go well with the eastern part of Poland. As a result the Kaczynski government is moving away from the ideas that anchor the European Union. It sees the rule of law and independence of the judiciary as something that can be changed to where the president appoints members of the Supreme Court and the judiciary. Protests in Warsaw and the large cities are taking place against these moves. Der Spiegel says this could end up the way it happened in Britain where it simply stumbled into leaving the EU just by accident. This is the situation in 2017. It could be a temporary process that is a response to the excesses of capitalism. As Kaczynski says to create a level playing field for all parts of Polish society by smoothing out some of the harsh effects of rampant capitalism. Or as Spiegel Online points out a shaky period in which the EU and Poland are at odds- ironically with Donald Tusk as the head of the EU confronting both Theresa May and Kaczynski.  ...

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Michel Barnier is approved by 52% of French people in an Ifop poll, yet 74% think he will not last long. The NFP will call a no confidence motion when its candidate 37 year old Lucie Castets of the Finance Ministry was turned down by Macron. The RN of Marie Le Pen will support Barnier for now and Marie Le Pen says she expects new elections within 1 year. Barnier supports halting migration to France for 4 years, a position RN of Le Pen supports. Denmark with a socialist government has taken similar position. By taking strong action on migration as northern and southern Europe both shift to this policy including Socialist parties, the EU as is happening in the US can address fundamental issues of cost of living action, infrastructure investment and investment in education, healthcare, science and technology competitiveness, renewable energy. Removing the migration issue can put a clear focus on the action needed to address these problems.

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Chancellor Merz says after the signing of the UK- Germany Friendship Treaty on July 16, 2025 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London-

"This is a historic day for German-British relations. . . We want to work more closely — especially after the UK's departure from the European Union."  

UK and Germany will work closely in all areas and increase education exchanges, setup a direct rail link for close cooperation after Brexit. French president Macron visited London the week earlier and DJT is expected to visit King Charles soon.  The E3 countries UK, France and Germany are working closely in 2025.

Compare this with the Merkel period and one can see a significant improvement in Europe, a more dynamic forward looking Europe replaces the idea that only the European Union arrangement speaks for Europe. 

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The planned merger of Random House owned by Bertelsmann, and Penguin owned by Pearson, creates the largest consumer book publisher in the world with a 25% market share. Bertelsmann will control 53% of the new entity, and Pearson 47%. The merger will help the new entity better handle the challenges presented by the shift to electronic books and internet retailing, and respond to the power of large companes such as Apple, Amazon and Google in this field. This creates pressure for mergers among the other large publishers, Hatchette owned by Lagardere in France, HarperCollins a part of News Corporation, Macmillan part of Georg von Holtzbrinck in Germany, and Simon & Schuster a part of CBS.

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A new generation of younger leaders takes over at the European Central Bank under Mario Draghi. Belgian economist Peter Praet succeeds Peter Stark of Germany in the Economics Department. Portugal's Vitor Constancio is vice president. Jorg Asmussen, 45, from Germany is on the ECB executive board, so is Benoit Coeure, 42, from France, and Klaas Knot, 44, from the Netherlands. Asmussen will head the ECB's International Division. Jens Weidmann,43, is the new head of the Bundesbank. The result experts say could be a reorientation of the ECB's outlook away from the rigid anti-inflation stance of Draghi's predecessor, Claude Trichet, and a willingness to try new approaches to help Europe tackle this recession.

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Educational opportunity and mobility in the EU countries compared to the U.S. and Britain. Germany and France have maintained access to educational opportunity as a path to upward mobility for people of all classes in society. The deterioration in educational opportunity and access in the U.S. has long term consequences. It is also rarely mentioned in comparisons with Europe. Both sides of the Atlantic still espouse the same ideals for access to education for all, part of the ideals for their framework for democracy, even as the U.S. falls behind in practice. Better educated societies across all classes of society with upward mobility can also make more informed and better choices for society and government.

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A bill requiring that women make up 30% of nonexecutive supervisory board members of 100 companies by 2016 is likely to pass in the German parliament in Dec. 2014. Women make up 22% of the supervisory board of 30 companies on the DAX. The new bill requires that companies have to leave the positions unfilled if they cannot find women. France requires 20% of nonexecutive director positions go to women, which goes up to 40% in 2017. Women make up 29.7% of the boards of the 40 companies in France's CAC 40 index, which is up from 12.3% in 2011. The European Union has set a goal of 40% women on boards by 2020.

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Israelis from across the political spectrum say the nuclear deal with Iran in negotiations with the U.S., Britain and France, threatens Israel. Israel's nuclear experts say the 12 month breakout window for Iran to break the agreement and rush to develop a nuclear weapon in 12 months is not sufficient, because of the time it takes for detection and develop the response. Israelis have a deep distrust of Iran's intentions. On the other side of the Middle East the Saudis are also expressing serious concerns about the negotiations giving Iran enough leeway to keep the nuclear program and make a weapon at a future date. The proposed agreement creates further disagreement between prime minister Netanyahu and U.S. president Obama.

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The revival of Britain's automobile industry under foreign automakers BMW, Tata Motors and Honda. BMW and Tata Motors Land Rover operate plants at nearly full capacity in early 2014. The "working time account" model at BMW borrows from the German practice of "kurzarbeit" with extra hours put in by workers at times of high demand to be applied to wages when demand slows down. This and lower payroll wages have helped keep British costs down per hour in 2011 for carmakers to 25 euros. It compares with higher costs in France of 45 euros per hour, and 28 euros in Italy, 46 euros in Germany, according to joint research by KPMG and Germany's Association of the Automotive Industry, VDA.

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The difficulties in making a merger of equals work. The 50-50 merger of ad agency groups Publicis of France and Omnicom of the U.S. The problems at EADS with co-CEO arrangement and Daimler-Chrysler with different cultures. The problem of cultures may be less acute than appears because each group has ad agencies with different cultures, and the nature of the ad business with clients from different regions of the world. The problem of tackling the digital revolution in the ad business is common to both companies and the industry, which caused the merger to take place. Finding the best solutions for the agencies to tackle digital should be the focus of management.

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Some of the airlines that are seeing significant increases in airline passengers are Etihad Airways, and Quatar Airways, others like Ryanair, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Southwest, singapore, Cathay and LAN airlines are seeing increases in passegers. This separates them from airlines especially in the USA that are having to pay higher fuel prices with a weaker dollar, and lower proportion of international traffic and a very competitive market. As some airlines are shrinking others are buying new fuel efficient planes and moving into routes left by the shrinking airlines, and using their cash reserves to hedge fuel costs, and some like Singapore Airlines are attracting customers with premium services for premium prices.

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Ceasefire arranged by president Sarkozy of France who holds the rotating Presidency of the EU when he visited Moscow and met Medvedev the Russian President. It lets Russia keep a bigger peacekeeping force in Georgia than before and preserves the internationally recognized borders and so the sovereignty of Georgia yet not the territorial integrity of Georgia, as it lets Russia continue to issue Russian passports to residents of Abhakazia and South Ossetia the two breakaway regions. The opposition in Georgia says it will question the Georgian President's decision to launch an attack in South Ossetia and ending up losing the 2 breakaway parts of Georgia and will ask him to resign after things settle down.

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Poland's president Kaczynski says after the Irish No vote to the Lisbon Treaty that he does not know which way this whole thing will end. President Sarkozy of france who has assumed the six month rotating presidency of the european Union says Kaczynski agreed to the Lisbon treaty in negotiations in Brussels last year. Poland like most other European nations approved the treaty through its legislature and Mr. Kaczynski's signature gives it ratification by Poland.

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Germany's Federal Criminal Police (BKA) says its online tip portal is hit by hackers in a denial of service attack. The site was restored to normal service shortly afterwards. The tip portal was for the public to share video and text on clues to the attack.

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Bernd Riegert in the DW.com expresses the view that the sooner that the "obstinate" Britons invoke Article 50 and start negotiations the better, so that a lot of uncertainty for the European Union can be removed. After the High Court ruling that parliament has to approve Brexit, it says that it is strange that a hairdresser and an investment manager should be the ones taking it to the High Court, but that nothing is strange in the Brexit saga anymore. The political turbulence as Ms.May mulls over calling another election is not in the European Union's interest, Riegert says, as this causes more uncertainty for the European Union that it does not need at this time.

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With only 44% of Catalan people supporting independence and 48% opposed there is considerable division in the Catalan region about independence from Spain. The WSJ looks at different neighborhoods in Barcelona some working class and others more affluent and sees a sharp division along lines of class, age and language. People in the working class neighborhoods of Ciutat Meridiana are opposed to separation from Spain. The independence movement is mostly popular among younger, middle class and Catalan speaking people. Meridiana in northern Barcelona is one of the poorest neighborhoods. In the hip central neighborhood of Gracia with leafy squares dotted with art galleries and vegan restaurants the pro-separatist movement has major support. Support for independence is highest under age 25 and declines with age and is lowest for people at 65 years. More popular with middle class and less with people earning less than 1300 euros. Today Spain has a constitution that gives greater autonomy to individual regions such as Galicia, Basque and Catalan regions that have their own language and traditions. This was suppressed during dictator Franco's rule after the Spanish civil war in the 1930's. The Spanish constitution was written after Franco's death and ratified under King Carlos in 1978 providing freedom with self-government for all nationalities and regions, and an unusual degree of autonomy.  Poorer people in Barcelona feel the young people supporting separation are spoiled brats and dismiss charges that the state is fascist as a lack of knowledge of what fascism really is.  As the division and dispute drags on following the 2017 referendum that was declared unconstitutional, support for independence is declining, as reported in the Guardian recently.  All this has hurt the Catalan economy and foreign investment adding an economic dimension to this as Catalonia is now seeing growth lower than the national growth rate in Spain. In addition to this the new socialist government of Pedro Sanchez and some Catalan separatist parties are supporting new negotiations to address Catalan grievance. Catalans have felt that they are not getting a fair share of revenues that can be invested in housing, health and other services, that they are giving more in tax revenues than they are receiving. The 2009 financial crisis has also affected Catalonia in ways that increased support for an independent state as Catalonia was growing more than the rest of Spain at that time.  ...

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Mario Draghi faces his first test as head of the European Central Bank as Italian bond yields approach 8%. Draghi has limited purchases of bonds of troubled EU countries to 5-10 billion euros each week. This has been sufficient to keep Italian bond yields from going out of control, but high enough to keep pressure on governments in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece to make necessary changes. France, Germany and other countries in the EU are working on new rules for making strict budget discipline legally binding, with enforcement sanctions by a EU budgetary authority. Germany is pushing for the new rules. France's Sarkozy with a legacy of Gaullist reluctance to surrender sovereignty in such matters had resisted such calls in the past, but is moving in the direction of convergence of fiscal policies as the only way to preserve the euro currency and the EU idea alive. Draghi is taking a flexible stance on inflation and lowering rates compared to his predecessor, Trichet. He sees signs of slowing manufacturing activity and credit tightening in Europe as signs that inflation will come down from above 3% to something closer to the 3% target set by the ECB. Economists expect him to lower interest rates for the eurozone to 1% from 1.25%, when the ECB meets in a week. The manufacturing purchasing manager's index went down to 46.4 in November, below the breakeven point of 50, which signals a contraction. Output and orders were down across all of Europe, including Germany. Economists say Draghi has left open the possibility of larger bond purchases if the new rules are made legally binding on eurozone members....

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Higher inflation in Germany could help rebalance the German economy by increasing imports. German inflation has averaged 1.6% since 1999, compared to 2.0 % for the eurozone. It was 2.3% in December. And after years of wage restraint German unions are increasing the wage demands. IG Metall is looking for a 6.5% wage increase. And interest rates at 1% are quite low for Germany where unemployment is down to 5.5%, according to Eurostat, and employers have to meet higher wage demands. The ECB is aiming at 2% inflation and Germany has a 26% weighting in the calculation of the rate. But as Italy, France and Spain see inflation decline there is room for addditional inflation in Germany before the eurozone goes well above the 2% inflation rate. By freezing wages and improving price competitiveness with German products, other countries could increase exports. Yet the prospects of this making a large difference is limited because German companies are likely to push for wage restraint. The Bundesbank predicts wage increases of 2.4% in 2012. Over time the wage restraint in other eurozone countries and even slightly higher wages in Germany would reverse the trend since 1999 of Germany having much lower inflation, and this could be one of the factors helping in rebalancing....

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France makes masks mandatory in public spaces starting August 1, 2020.