Germany ‘trying to impose its policies’ on East-Central Europe
January 19th, 2016Those who are terrified of the prospect of a United States of Europe should realise that this entity has already come to life: it is governed from Berlin and its leader is called Angela Merkel, a pro-government analyst warns.
In Magyar Idők Zoltán Kottász suggests that Germany has evolved from the economic engine of Europe into the political powerhouse of our continent, and it decides on such issues as the fate of Greece or whether Brussels should punish rogue Poland. Last week Kottász was already warning in Magyar Idők of ‘a drive to set up a European super state’. (See BudaPost, January 16) Now he takes aim specifically at the German chancellor, accusing her of persisting in a misguided migration policy. ‘Merkel has authority over matters of life and death. And this is Europe’s great tragedy’, the author alleges.
Berlin’s percieved influence over the region is also the subject of an article written by Zsolt Bayer in Magyar Hírlap, the other nationwide pro-government conservative daily. The well-known right-wing pundit publishes what appears to be the first part of a series of articles on Poland, emphasizing its history of struggles with Germany (and Russia). Bayer evokes the battle of Grunwald in 1410, when a Polish-Latvian army, supposedly boosted by troops from other eastern European nations including Hungary, crushed the army of the German-Prussian Teutonic Knights. He suggests that Poland’s fate is once again in the spotlight of great power diplomacy, as what he calls the ‘core countries’ of western Europe entertain a growing fear of the possible rise of a strong and independent alliance of East-Central European states.