EUROPE - POLITICAL NEWS - FEBRUARY 27, 2023

EUROPE – POLITICAL NEWS IN BRIEF

February 27, 2023

 

NATO’s FORWARD PRESENCE IN ALL EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.

Due to the present war situation in Ukraine NATO has decided to strengthen its physical presence in all eastern European member states. Altogether about 10.000 combat ready troops are located in the eight NATO-countries concerned ( in addition to the national defence forces ). And if the situation worsens NATO has decided to strengthen these battle groups to the size of battalions.

The coordinating military headquarter is place in Szczecin in Poland.

The NATO presence is as follows:

ESTONIA:      UK (leader), Denmark, France, and Iceland

LATVIA:         Canada (leader), Albania, Czech Republic, Iceland, Italy, North Macedonia,

                       Montenegro, Poland, Slovenia

LITHUANIA:  Germany (leader), Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Iceland, Luxembourg,

                        Netherlands, Norway

POLAND:       US (leader), Croatia, Romania, UK

SLOVAKIA:     Czech Republic (leader), Germany, Netherlands, Slovenia

HUNGARY:     Hungary (leader), Croatia, US

ROMANIA:    France (leader), Belgium, Poland, US

BULGARIA:    Bulgaria (leader), US, Albania

 

This is a very practical proof of the NATO principle of automatic military assistance.

 

 

 

HUNGARY – AND SWEDEN’s AND FINLAND’s ENTRY INTO NATO:

This week Hungary will finally take steps to ratify the two new member states’ membership of NATO.  It starts with a debate in the Hungarian parliament on Wednesday, March 1. And next week ( March 6-10 ) it is expected that the Parliament will have its final vote.

The Hungarian foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, has ensured Sweden and Finland that the ratification will be adopted.

This will mean that 29 out of NATO’s 30 member countries have ratified the membership. Only Turkey is still missing. But it seems that the matter is also moving towards ratification in that country. The US foreign minister, Anthony Blinken, said so after his recent visit to Ankara.

It is hoped that the formal membership of the two Nordic countries will come into force in connection with the next NATO Summit Meeting in Lithuania on July 11-12, 2023.

 

UKRAINE – YEAR 1 AFTER THE START OF THE RUSSIAN UNPROVOKED ATTACK:

It was last week one year ago that Russia started its unprovoked and very violent attack on Ukraine. It was marked in lots of places, not least also in the media.

The well-known BBC journalist, John Simpson, had a very good interview with president Volodymyr Zelenski on BBC ( partly in English). And the German TV-station ZDF has an hour-long personal interview with chancellor Olaf Scholz about Germany’s attitude.

In the UN General Assembly of all 193 member states a vote with a clear request of Russian pull-out of Ukraine was adopted with 141 votes for and only 7 against. 32 countries abstained from voting, incl. China.

From EU much is being done to help Ukraine, which is a candidate member of EU. Billions of € have been given from the EU budget to purchase of military equipment. Millions of Ukrainian refugees have been received by the EU member states, not least by Poland and Germany. Last year 32.000 Ukrainian refugees came to Denmark. And to help Ukraine in many other fields the EU has directly involved the country in many of its ongoing programmes, such as ERASMUS ( exchange of students ), EU4HEALTH  ( concrete help in the health sector ) and in Horizon Europa ( the big research programme ).

 

ESTONIA’s PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS:

On Sunday, March 5, Estonia has parliamentary elections. All 101 members of Parliament are up for elections. The present government is formed by the Reform Party ( liberal ), the Social Democrats and the Isamaa party ( member of the European People’s Party ). The present prime minister is the young liberal female politician Kaja Kallas.  The opinion polls indicate that the Reform Party will become the biggest party ( around 30 € ). They might form government again with the Social Democrats or with the right-wing parties.  In that case the opposition to the government will be the Centre Party ( which is split due to different attitudes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine ) and the part EKRE ( which in many ways is a rather right-wing populist party ).  The main topics in the election campaign are defence and the support for Ukraine. Most parties agree to this attitude.

You can follow the election campaign in the English-language and reliable newspaper:

BALTIC TIMES.  

 

I also enclose my fact sheet about ESTONIA.

 

Niels Jørgen Thøgersen

niels4europe@gmail.com

February 27, 2023


 

 

 


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