The German constitution, or Basic Law, mandates that the Bundeswehr can only be deployed as a security force inside Germany when a state of emergency has been declared.

This has already caused a legal problem in the state of Thuringia, where the state authorities have asked the Bundeswehr to help at an asylum-seekers’ home that has been placed under quarantine. Thuringian authorities maintain that the soldiers are only needed to “secure provisions for the approximately 500 inhabitants,” not to guard the home itself, the DPA news agency reported.

dw.com/en/coronavirus-germany-plans-to-mobilize-military-reservists/a-52846211

Nice to see that order of Red Cross tanks came in to Germany on time.

Former Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski said that some European Union member states are failing the solidarity test with Italy by abandoning the country right at the moment coronavirus is killing thousands of its citizens.

Some countries, such as Germany, have even made it difficult for Italy to get the filter masks it needs while others, such as Sweden, have argued that the pandemic is not great enough to justify completely closing its borders and will still permit asylum seekers enter its territory.

“In the case of aid for Italy, solidarity has been missing. Some disturbing information has been reaching us such as that aid that was to be delivered by member states has been stopped. There was information about masks and virus tests being confiscated in Germany that were supposed to go to Italy,” said Waszczykowski.

Germany, along with France, put in place medical gear lockdowns that resulted in the countries restricting the export of vital medical equipment to countries like Italy.

The former Polish foreign minister acknowledges that the EU would need to change its treaties in order to intervene directly in public health matters and force member states to export medical equipment.

The EU also lacks authority in other key areas, such as the rule of law, security, education, and other key issues.

Despite the EU’s lack of authority in health matters, that does not mean it is powerless. There are EU agencies such as Frontex, Europe’s border and cost guard agency, which could theoretically deploy to Italy. The EU also has diplomatic muscle, and it can take decisions on economic aid.  

The EU has already allowed existing resources to be directed towards alleviating the spread of the coronavirus, but no new money has been found for this cause, according to Waszczykowski.

Waszczykowski says that in the past, the EU has often exceeded its authority and competencies, especially when it seeks to attack its political foes. This has happened in areas such as the rule of law issues, where Brussels is locked in an ongoing battle with Poland over judicial reform despite European treaties making it clear that court systems fall under the purview of member states.

Yet, in a time of true crisis, the EU is demonstrating it is reluctant to overstep its “boundaries” and aid Italy.

The foreign Polish minister suggests that the EU could learn from the pandemic crisis to develop new standards for combating epidemics and pandemics. At the same time, he does not necessarily want the EU to claim new prerogatives in the area of health.

Waszczykowski regards the area of health as a security matter which should remain in the control of member states.

rmx.news/article/article/eu-has-abandoned-italy-in-coronavirus-fight-says-poland-s-former-fm

A video has been circulating on social media which shows an African man getting into an altercation with a Brussels Airlines crew, while he strikes and spits on them.

The video was originally posted on Friday by an American woman, Carmen Moore, who filmed the incident, according to a report at the Dutch-language, Belgian news site SCEPTR

Moore claims that the African man became enraged because other passengers did not give his mother-in-law enough elbow room. When the crew approached the man to get him to calm down, the situation soon became violent.

Brussels Airlines confirmed the altercation, and said that it happened on Wednesday last week on a flight from Accra, Ghana to Brussels.

A statement from Brussels Airlines claimed that increasing aggressiveness by passengers is becoming an increasing problem. “We have therefore made extra efforts to train our crew to deal with these difficult situations,” the statement read.

The problem of migrant violence isn’t limited to the airlines, however, and is a problem in Belgium itself as well. Last autumn there were several incidents of migrant violence against Belgian citizens that resulted in serious injuries, and in November a North African migrant was arrested in Brussels for posing as a taxi driver so that he could entrap and rape unsuspecting women, as previously reported by Voice of Europe.

voiceofeurope.com/2020/03/watch-african-spits-on-and-strikes-female-flight-attendant-on-brussels-airlines-attacks-male-crew-member-too/

“Allahu Corona” – with these and similar words a 37-year-old Lebanese man marched last Tuesday through the central station of Leipzig and sprayed passengers with disinfectant. The municipality of Leipzig, as the responsible authority can impose a fine of up to 1000 EUR on him. The man was allowed to be released from the Federal Police station after the measures were completed. The disinfectant was seized to avert danger.

presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/74165/4551810

As borders close across Europe, German farmers fear a massive shortage of migrant workers right at the moment harvests are supposed to begin. 

In an effort to provide farmers with a workforce of readily available workers, Germany may turn to its own out-of-work citizens, particularly restaurant workers who have been disproportionately impacted as the coronavirus shuts restaurants and cafes across the country, according to German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

The radical new plan by Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner, member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), would see thousands of German restaurant workers take to the fields to both harvest and plant crops across Germany.

Every year, 300,000 seasonal migrant workers, many hailing from countries like Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, arrive in Germany to work on the country’s fields. They often face intense labor but the strong incentive of earning a substantial amount of euros, which goes much further in terms of purchasing power in the home countries they originate from, keeps them coming back every year.

This year, many of these migrants are staying home out of choice or simply because Europe is increasingly closing its borders due to the virus pandemic.

“I can understand very well that farmers are worried about the spread of the coronavirus and are afraid of the consequences for their farms,” ​​said Federal Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner. Her proposal to take restaurant workers and put them on the fields is only in the initial planning stages, and any measures that are adopted will have to be adopted quickly.”Whether those employees who unfortunately have less and less to do in the catering trade can and want to step into the agricultural sector – we also have to consider something like this,” she said.

In just a week, many farms will start the first harvest for the year, but for Simon Klein, only 20 of the 80 migrant workers he was expecting have confirmed that they will be coming to help.

Klein told Taggeschau that he has 150 hectares of land in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with 90 of those made up of vegetables and everything must be planted and harvested by hand

“The harvest is in danger,” he said, a sentiment shared with farmers across the country.

For the most part, Germany’s organic farms and labor-intensive crops such as rhubarb, strawberries, and asparagus face the most dire consequence if Germany cannot mobilize workers to help on the fields. Conventional farms producing staple crops like wheat and potatoes are highly automated and rely less on human labor.

“We farmers will continue to be able to provide the population with safe and high quality food even in times of the coronavirus,” says Joachim Rukwied, the president of the German Farmers’ Association.”If the borders remain closed for a longer period of time, we can face significant problems due to the lack of seasonal workers and harvest helpers, which we urgently need to support agriculture,” said Rukwied. Fears are growing that if farmers do not find enough harvest workers soon, it may be difficult for some to keep up.

Restaurant workers and other impacted disproportionately by the coronavirus, such as hotel industry workers, would likely earn around €13 to €14 an hour for their work, which is the same as what seasonal migrant laborers earn on the fields.

Still, stark challenges remain. While many argue that native Germans are no longer interested in the intense labor involved with farm work, another reason has to do with the pay. For migrants from countries like Bulgaria or Romania, they can often earn enough in euros during the farming season to live on the rest of the year in their native countries, where the wages they earn in Germany go much farther.

In Germany, farm work wages often are simply not enough for many Germans to justify the hard work, but faced with unemployment, many Germans may take up the offer.”Now you have to see how to motivate people to work in the field, for example when harvesting strawberries and rhubarb,” said Green Party agricultural politician Friedrich Ostendorff, who runs an organic farm himself. “Every helping hand is currently needed on the farms.”

The other challenge involves the relative inexperience of many of the Germans who could be put to work. Given the circumstances, they may simply have to learn on the go or this year Germany’s harvest may face disaster. 

rmx.news/article/article/germany-s-radical-plan-to-turn-waiters-into-farmers-as-coronavirus-closes-borders-to-migrants

The German government has promoted a fake news story asserting that the United States is trying to gain exclusive access to an experimental coronavirus vaccine being developed by a German biotech firm.

The story — which has sparked anti-American furor in Germany and elsewhere in Europe — has been swiftly debunked by the company, which denied that it had received financial offers from the U.S. government or any related entity.

The attempt to whip up anti-Americanism appears to be an effort by the German government to blunt public criticism of Chancellor Angela Merkel and her cabinet for their lackadaisical response to the coronavirus epidemic.

On March 15, the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, in an article titled, “Donald Trump Poaches German Vaccine Company,” reported that U.S. President Donald J. Trump had offered “a large sum of money” to buy the privately-held Tübingen-based company CureVac, which is working to produce a vaccine against the coronavirus.

The newspaper reported that according to anonymous persons within “German government circles” (deutschen Regierungskreisen), Trump wanted to “secure the drug exclusively for his country.” The article stated:

“The U.S. president allegedly offered the German company a large amount of money to secure its work. In Berlin, there is talk of a billion dollars. What is particularly problematic is that Trump is doing everything possible to get a vaccine for the United States. ‘But only for the USA,’ says the federal government….

“Representatives of the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Economy are negotiating with CureVac…. Germany, it can be heard in Berlin, is making financial offers to try to keep the company [in German hands]…. CureVac itself refused to answer questions.”

The story was quickly picked up and uncritically disseminated by print and broadcast media throughout Europe — and America. Nearly all quoted the Die Welt article verbatim without confirming the story on their own.

“Vaccine ‘Only for the United States,'” Rheinische Post claimed. “Trump’s Anti-Social Act,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung complained. “The Insolent Attack on CureVac is a Wake-up Call for Germany,” Die Welt’s business correspondent, Anja Ettel, wrote in an unhinged rant. Der Aktionär, a German business and finance magazine, surmised: “For Trump, the vaccine would be a miracle cure with which he could score properly in his election campaign.”

German politicians also reacted, also apparently without verifying the story. Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said, “Germany is not for sale.” Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted: “We cannot allow a situation where others want exclusively to acquire the results of our research.”

The head of the libertarian Free Democratic Party (FPD), Christian Lindner, said: “Such America-first thinking is really out of place here.” German MP Karl Lauterbach, of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), tweeted:

“The American government has committed an extremely unfriendly act. The exclusive sale of a possible vaccine to the USA must be prevented by all means. Capitalism has limits.”

CureVac has repeatedly denied the allegations. In a March 15 press release, the company said that it “rejects allegations about offers for acquisition of the company or its technology.” In a March 16 tweet, the company wrote:

“To make it clear again on coronavirus: CureVac has not received from the US government or related entities an offer before, during and since the Task Force meeting in the White House on March 2. CureVac rejects all allegations from press.”

The tweet was referring to CureVac’s then-CEO, Daniel Menichella, who was invited to the White House on March 2 to discuss strategies for the rapid development and production of a coronavirus vaccine. He met with President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force as well as high-ranking representatives of other pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell denied the allegations. “Not true,” he tweeted. “The Welt story was wrong. But Business Insider, Reuters and others went with it anyway despite not having their own sources. Now everyone is back peddling.”

An American official told Reuters: “This story is wildly overplayed… We will continue to talk to any company that claims to be able to help. And any solution found would be shared with the world.”

The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine, in an article titled, “Curevac Has Not Received an Offer from the U.S. Government,” described the Welt article as “Fake News” concocted by CureVac in order to secure government funding. The paper suggested that the German government helped to promote the lie:

“Is U.S. President Donald Trump displaying his true colors by following the motto ‘America First’ in the corona pandemic? The Welt am Sonntag reported that he wanted to secure access, with a lot of money, to the German biotech company Curevac. The allegations caused great excitement and harsh protest.

“High-ranking politicians in Berlin confirmed Trump’s push to various media. Indirectly, the irritations were also reinforced by Chancellor Angela Merkel….

“In the meantime, Curevac has received a commitment of 80 million euros in funding from the European Commission.”

Readers of the Die Welt article were overwhelmingly skeptical of the veracity of the article. One commenter wrote:

“A German minister, who heard from another German minister, that a German journalist, who was not there, reported that the U.S. president offered $1 billion for a company that has not yet developed a vaccine against COVID-19…. For my taste, much hearsay, the striving of Die Welt for many clicks, the fueling of resentment against Trump and perhaps intelligent marketing by the company for public funding in times of the corona crisis.”

In an essay for the blog Achgut, commentator Dirk Maxeiner, explained:

“If you want to distract from your own wrongdoing, it is always advisable to shout: ‘Stop the thief, there he goes.’ This game could be seen in clear form in recent days. German media and politicians, who in view of the Corona crisis would actually have enough reason to take a closer look at themselves, are taking down their favorite thief: Donald Trump, who else?

“Trump blocked entry for non-citizens from China to the United States over six weeks ago, while in Germany passengers continue to land cheerfully from there and enter unchecked. This does not prevent the Süddeutsche Zeitung, for example, from accusing Trump of ‘failure’ in the corona crisis. Headline: ‘Virus meets incompetence.’ Or, even better, Die Welt: ‘Trump’s attack on Germany hides America’s fear of chaos.’

“You can of course see it the other way around: ‘Germany’s attack on Trump hides Germany’s fear of chaos.’ This version is much more plausible. The mixture of stupidity, arrogance and provincial self-overestimation can be described as an example in the following small episode.

“‘The Insolent Attack on CureVac is a Wake-Up Call for Germany,’ writes Die Welt. ‘Donald Trump is poaching a German vaccine company,’ it reported…. The German government is trying to prevent that….

“If you look at the updated information, you can only determine that it is a tempest in a teapot, in which the ‘Stop the Thief’ method met latent anti-Americanism, and the slogan ‘Stop the Trump’ spread like a wildfire. In the meantime, the narrative has become a fixed anecdote of German Trump and America haters….

“All of this shows how outrageous and provincial it is to want to construct a German-American economic confrontation out of American interest in the work of these researchers. It also demonstrates very clearly that German politicians are apparently only interested in cutting-edge research in this country when Americans discover it for themselves. Otherwise they do everything in association with the Brussels Nomenclature to make life difficult for top researchers in the medical field.”

On March 16, the European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, announced that it had offered CureVac up to €80 million ($87 million) in financial support to scale up development and production of a vaccine against the coronavirus.

Merkel’s chief of staff, Helge Braun, said that CureVac will remain in German hands:

“We have been in very close contact with the company in the past two weeks when there were thoughts of luring them to the United States. We also made it clear: If a vaccine is developed in Germany, it is for Germany and the world. That also convinced the company that they will stay.”

Ultimately, the controversy may be superseded by events. On March 16, the United States became the first country to conduct a human test trial of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus. In total, 45 healthy adult volunteers between the ages of 18 to 55 will receive the trial vaccine over approximately six weeks.

The vaccine is called mRNA-1273 and was developed by scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and collaborators at biotechnology company Moderna, based in Massachusetts. It may be another year to 18 months before it becomes available, once it has passed more trial phases to prove that it works and is safe.

Meanwhile, after weeks of equivocating, Chancellor Merkel finally acknowledged the threat posed by the coronavirus. In an address to the nation on March 18, she said:

“The situation is serious. Take it seriously. Since German unification, no, since the Second World War, there has been no challenge to our nation that has demanded such a degree of common and united action.”

A few days earlier, Merkel had finally warned that more than two-thirds of the German population — 58 million people — could get infected with the coronavirus:

“The virus has arrived in Europe, it is here, and we must all understand that. As long as there is no immunity in the population, no vaccines and no therapy, then a high percentage of the population — experts say 60% to 70% — will become infected.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15766/coronavirus-germany-anti-americanism

In this video clip, a fighting-aged migrant invader can be seen aggressively using his pre-teen daughter as a battering ram against Greek border guards.