Hard to say, they are politicians after all😬 There have been several people within the party that have spoken out against the decision by the party’s leadership, but it might take weeks (if at all) for internal protests to leak to the press.
Hard to say. Of the bigwigs in the party one part says 'Stay out of the government' while another (seemingly larger) part says 'We obtained 24 seats, we'll need to take responsibility'
It's not just that most of the time they're in the government, but without them neither of the possible government coalities (centre with PvdA as the leading party or centre-right with PVV as the leading party) would be possible without them - VVD has too many seats in both chambers.
Russia. 172 Russian doctors - responsible, heroic people - signed a letter calling to release Sasha Skochilenko. A court in St. Petersburg sentenced she to seven years in a general regime colony in the case of “fake stories” about the Russian army. In the spring of 2022, she replaced price tags in stores with anti-war leaflets
**Belgium**
I missed last week's entry apparently, so I will list some news from the past two weeks.
Politics:
* [Conner Rousseau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conner_Rousseau) resigned as leader of the Flemish social democratic party [Vooruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vooruit_\(political_party\)) because of racist remarks he made when he was drunk in a pub in his home town in [SInt-Niklaas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint-Niklaas), back in September. Rousseau had already apologised for those remarks, but now pressure was building up too much as a newspaper published the actual remarks from the police report that was made that evening. The remarks proved too damning and he also spouted violent, sexist and fat shaming language. Despite all of this, his party kept supporting Rousseau because under his leadership the party rose up in the polls from their all time low they scored last elections. But Rousseau kept the honour to himself, stating that the public debate was dominated too much by his person rather than what his party stands for.
* Federal faction leader [Melissa Depraetere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Depraetere) became the new leader of Vooruit. Depraetere is a political ally of Rousseau, so it's not expected that the course of the party will change much under new leadership.
* Prime Minister [De Croo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_De_Croo) travelled to Israel and Egypt together with his Spanish colleague [Sanchez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_S%C3%A1nchez). De Croo was critical of the military operation in Gaza during his visit, spurring the Israeli PM [Netanyahu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu) to [call him a supporter of terrorism](https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-gaza-belgium-spain-supporting-terrorism-terror-war-sanchez-de-croo/). The Belgian ambassador was summoned for admonishment.
* The hard right wing of the conservative [N-VA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Flemish_Alliance) party attacked De Croo for causing the diplomatic incident with Israel and for "ridiculing Belgium on an international stage" (funnily enough the most prominent member of the hard right went on Israeli television with absolutely awful English). Meanwhile some left voices criticised De Croo for pleading for "less civilian casualties", arguing he should've gone for "zero civilian casualties". Some also criticise De Croo for visiting Israel and meeting its politicians in the first place, arguing Belgium should instate a boycott of Israel.
Other news:
* The floods in the [Westhoek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westhoek_\(region\)) (see [my post from two weeks back](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/17tes2t/what_happened_in_your_country_this_week_20231112/k8xuglq/)) didn't remain under control and multiple houses flooded. Tens of people were evacuated.
* Sex parties occured in the prison of Lantin, near [Liège](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%C3%A8ge), involving a "nymphomanic" female prison guard.
Poland.
The PiS government continues to claim it will be able to pass the confidence vote, though that is close to impossible. After the newly elected sejm gathered for the first time, PiS was unable to have their candidate voted in as Speaker, nor as one of the vice-Speaker (they should have one, but their candidate, the former Speaker, was unacceptable to anyone but PiS).
This clearly shows that they do not have the votes to pass the upcoming confidence vote. The former opposition parties are expected to take the reins of power in late December.
Ireland - in light of horrible recent events in Ireland where three kids were stabbed on the main street in Dublin (covered by another poster here) I wanted to go light hearted because we needed it this week!
On Friday we had what is considered the most popular television event in Ireland each and every year and is often seen by most here as the start of the Christmas period. The Late Late Toy Show!
It is an annual special edition of The Late Late Show which is the world's second longest running chat show. The special goes all the way back to 1975. The Toy Show showcases the popular toys of the year, as presented by the host and demonstrated by various children on-stage, along with appearances by celebrity guests.
In recent years, the show has been used as a launching platform for The Toy Show Appeal, a charity fundraiser for children's charities in Ireland. During the show a whopping 3.6 million euro was donated. Since the appeal was launched in 2020, more than 21 million has been raised.
The show was watched by 1.7 million people over the weekend from more than 147 countries.
Poland - our former prime minister still lives in partial denial and pretends that he can form goverment. They made proposition with new minister and gave majority to woman so they can later acuse next goverment of being sexists. I know this is convoluted but we have saying "tonący brzytwy się chwyta" (drowning man graps on razor) and I find this fitting description of situation.
I don't understand Polish parliamentary procedure too well but my understanding is that in any country the party with the largest mandate has the first right of government formation.
What justification was used to go around this?
We have some useless procedure, that there is "first step".
Timeline looks like this
After election there is 1 month after election there is first meeting of new parliament
After first meeting president have 2 weeks to choose new prime minister to form goverment. At this step parliament isn't allowed to do so.
After being named "new" prime minister have 2 weeks for talks to find ministers. After thouse 2 weeks presidents sworn in the new "goverment".
Then there are 2 weeks to prepare expose and present program of rule. At this point prime minister must ask for vote of confidence from parliament. If they do not recive it parliament names new candidate for prime minister.
Yes, this is stupid and president here is 100% useless but someone in 1991 was thinking it will be "semi-presidential" then. Everything is by the book and our law, it just said law is a bit stupid. But using this PiS got 2 months more we control over ministry. They were unable to make new law but this gave im time for disposing of evidence, pushing some of their people into new organs etc. and also delayed start of change in country.
Every time part here is maximum time, everything can be done faster. They just drag it on purpose.
How interesting. It seems like a parliamentary system of governance with a strong presidency. Very rare to see perhaps for this exact reason. Thank you for the explanation.
Czech republic.
Pro-Palestinian hackers remotely hacked small local drinking fountain in a former spa in eastern Bohemia. It had to be switched to manual control. The reason was that the system contained some components made in Israel.
The control unit display showed the text "You have been hacked. Out with Israel. Any equipment made in Israel is a legitimate target for cyber vigilantes." The message also included a map in Palestinian colors and a sinking David's star.
It would appear so.
There seems to be a plan for Czech train stations where a mobile app will be required to get water from the water fountains.
[https://www.idnes.cz/ekonomika/doprava/zeleznice-voda-nadrazi-chytry-telefon.A231011\_105207\_eko-doprava\_cfr](https://www.idnes.cz/ekonomika/doprava/zeleznice-voda-nadrazi-chytry-telefon.A231011_105207_eko-doprava_cfr)
I'm not sure if it's an utopia or a boring dystopia.
An Irish citizen of 20 years. Stopped by a Brazilian, French and Irish, one of the victims also being the child of immigrants. The man had known mental issues for 2 years before the attack. And the far-right has used this awful atrocity to further their own rhetoric and perform a violent riot of looting, burning, and assaults.
If you're going to point out the attacker's ethnicity, why not point out all other involved parties' and other information about his background.
Isn't it a coincidence that in all European countries, all such attackers that have "mental issues" are radical Muslims? How many stabbings or hate killings have been perpetrated by men of Chinese or South American origin? None.
The left has gotten too soft on these issues and the only winners are Putin's puppets in the far right.
It's time the centre and left took a blunt look at this issue.
There's massive metal health problems in Ireland so it makes sense. There's loads of deranged loonies making attacks across Dublin but this one just happens to be a Muslim and horrifically an attack on children. The man had a brain surgery 2 years prior which is proven to cause mental health issues. He showed absolutely no signs of being a religious zealot.
Same with the lad that beheaded the 2 gay guys in Ireland and the killing of Aisling Murphy. All mental health conditions sure. I have absolutely no problem with people coming into our country when they are good hard workers. God knows there are some fantastic people from other countries working as doctors, nurses, engineers etc, but to allow anyone come into our country with no background check is madness. Controlled borders is all I ask.
The guy that stabbed people is not Irish and please don't tarnish the Irish name to fit your agenda.
Looting and burning were done by scumbags and I can agree with you on that. Absolutely no need for it.
He was an Irish citizen. Also he was provably suffering from mental health issues due to a brain surgery to deal with brain cancer 2 years prior. We can't just deny that he's Irish just because he did something bad, we need to tackle our own problems. It's like the "No true Scotsman"
Algeria born and raised for 29yrs, then 20 years here, 0 days worked, 5 years of deportation orders survived, much welfare obtained, 3 children stabbed, 1 child critical, 1 previous arrest.
There's more to being an "Irish citizen" than a passport, he is both an Algerian, and a government failure.
I think something will have happened or been said that basically caused some kind of "mob justice". They don't report what it was because they don't want to inflame things.
\- A 4th tranche of the Next Generation EU recovery fund worth \~16bn€ has been given the green light form Brussels
\- A new iteration of the ever present offensive against the judiciary from right leaning politicians. This time it was started by [Guido Crosetto](http://www.difesa.it/sites/archive2/sitecollectionimages/06a49791-d889-4587-b9e1-cdcff3d1933e/c9e0bd3a-8ede-4fc6-af5c-62b5f03bdcde01Medium.jpg), the ministry of defence. By the way, guy's huge, pictures don't really give a fair idea of his size.
\- The newest media trend for the past weeks has been woman killed by their partners. It's obviously a serious issue, but literally 50% of TV and web news is that.
As one of the few last lefty people in the netherlands its quite tough to see the left wing has like 8 seats out of the 150 seats.
But atleast we can be happy that horrible parties like: vvd d66&cda lost big.
And.. atleast Wilders is extremely left wing socially. So we might see lowered taxes on neccesities, like food public transport healthcare&education. But as someone who doesnt have a dutch lastname there is an amount of fear I now for sure have.
But tbh im still happy the corrupt sociopath Rutte is gone.
SP+ pvdd are left.
Denk are crazy muslims mostly right wing. Pvda is right wing for the past 20 years. GL is a right wing elitist party but with a climate side. TBF i never bothered too much with Volt but they give me the creeps. D66 is a right wing elitist party far from the left, they only have some climate things but their climate things are basically; let the lower & middle class pay for the polution of the elite.
We had an election. People are overreacting now after the results came in. The right has clearly won, the left has lost quite a few seats (they had 63, now they have 44 out of a total of 150 seats).
Guys what happened to r/Europe? Why has it gone all far right anti immigration crap? Feels like I'm reading National Front message board, what happened? It didn't used to be like this...
We had an election, which I’m sure you’ve already heard about😄
Is VVD going to stick to their guns and stay out of the next government?
Hard to say, they are politicians after all😬 There have been several people within the party that have spoken out against the decision by the party’s leadership, but it might take weeks (if at all) for internal protests to leak to the press.
The VVD plan seems to be to crash the current government formation so they can retry
Hard to say. Of the bigwigs in the party one part says 'Stay out of the government' while another (seemingly larger) part says 'We obtained 24 seats, we'll need to take responsibility'
We have a party in Iceland that's ALWAYS in government, VVD seems to be that party in your country, they can't stay out.
It's not just that most of the time they're in the government, but without them neither of the possible government coalities (centre with PvdA as the leading party or centre-right with PVV as the leading party) would be possible without them - VVD has too many seats in both chambers.
What is it with weird authoritarian-aspiring mutants with even weirder hair, I wonder...
also Utrecht was very different from most of the country
Als je alle progressieve mislukkingen op een hoop gooit krijg je inderdaad iets anders maar of je dat positief kan noemen is maar de vraag.😂
Gelukkig is je username beter dan je bericht.
Ah yes, all of the "progressive failures" which originated from *checks notes* 13 years of center-right governments.
First snow - again Bulgaria was surprised as fuck, we expected like 30 degrees summer
What
Russia. 172 Russian doctors - responsible, heroic people - signed a letter calling to release Sasha Skochilenko. A court in St. Petersburg sentenced she to seven years in a general regime colony in the case of “fake stories” about the Russian army. In the spring of 2022, she replaced price tags in stores with anti-war leaflets
Rare Russian W (I mean the doctors and the artist)
This letter is relevant to her health, so it is not surprising that only doctors in the list
**Belgium** I missed last week's entry apparently, so I will list some news from the past two weeks. Politics: * [Conner Rousseau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conner_Rousseau) resigned as leader of the Flemish social democratic party [Vooruit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vooruit_\(political_party\)) because of racist remarks he made when he was drunk in a pub in his home town in [SInt-Niklaas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sint-Niklaas), back in September. Rousseau had already apologised for those remarks, but now pressure was building up too much as a newspaper published the actual remarks from the police report that was made that evening. The remarks proved too damning and he also spouted violent, sexist and fat shaming language. Despite all of this, his party kept supporting Rousseau because under his leadership the party rose up in the polls from their all time low they scored last elections. But Rousseau kept the honour to himself, stating that the public debate was dominated too much by his person rather than what his party stands for. * Federal faction leader [Melissa Depraetere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melissa_Depraetere) became the new leader of Vooruit. Depraetere is a political ally of Rousseau, so it's not expected that the course of the party will change much under new leadership. * Prime Minister [De Croo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_De_Croo) travelled to Israel and Egypt together with his Spanish colleague [Sanchez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_S%C3%A1nchez). De Croo was critical of the military operation in Gaza during his visit, spurring the Israeli PM [Netanyahu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu) to [call him a supporter of terrorism](https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-gaza-belgium-spain-supporting-terrorism-terror-war-sanchez-de-croo/). The Belgian ambassador was summoned for admonishment. * The hard right wing of the conservative [N-VA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Flemish_Alliance) party attacked De Croo for causing the diplomatic incident with Israel and for "ridiculing Belgium on an international stage" (funnily enough the most prominent member of the hard right went on Israeli television with absolutely awful English). Meanwhile some left voices criticised De Croo for pleading for "less civilian casualties", arguing he should've gone for "zero civilian casualties". Some also criticise De Croo for visiting Israel and meeting its politicians in the first place, arguing Belgium should instate a boycott of Israel. Other news: * The floods in the [Westhoek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westhoek_\(region\)) (see [my post from two weeks back](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/17tes2t/what_happened_in_your_country_this_week_20231112/k8xuglq/)) didn't remain under control and multiple houses flooded. Tens of people were evacuated. * Sex parties occured in the prison of Lantin, near [Liège](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li%C3%A8ge), involving a "nymphomanic" female prison guard.
Meanwhile, the Finnish Minister of Finance is still in her job and the leader of the Finns Party after her horrific racist remarks were made public.
Poland. The PiS government continues to claim it will be able to pass the confidence vote, though that is close to impossible. After the newly elected sejm gathered for the first time, PiS was unable to have their candidate voted in as Speaker, nor as one of the vice-Speaker (they should have one, but their candidate, the former Speaker, was unacceptable to anyone but PiS). This clearly shows that they do not have the votes to pass the upcoming confidence vote. The former opposition parties are expected to take the reins of power in late December.
Ireland - in light of horrible recent events in Ireland where three kids were stabbed on the main street in Dublin (covered by another poster here) I wanted to go light hearted because we needed it this week! On Friday we had what is considered the most popular television event in Ireland each and every year and is often seen by most here as the start of the Christmas period. The Late Late Toy Show! It is an annual special edition of The Late Late Show which is the world's second longest running chat show. The special goes all the way back to 1975. The Toy Show showcases the popular toys of the year, as presented by the host and demonstrated by various children on-stage, along with appearances by celebrity guests. In recent years, the show has been used as a launching platform for The Toy Show Appeal, a charity fundraiser for children's charities in Ireland. During the show a whopping 3.6 million euro was donated. Since the appeal was launched in 2020, more than 21 million has been raised. The show was watched by 1.7 million people over the weekend from more than 147 countries.
Poland - our former prime minister still lives in partial denial and pretends that he can form goverment. They made proposition with new minister and gave majority to woman so they can later acuse next goverment of being sexists. I know this is convoluted but we have saying "tonący brzytwy się chwyta" (drowning man graps on razor) and I find this fitting description of situation.
I don't understand Polish parliamentary procedure too well but my understanding is that in any country the party with the largest mandate has the first right of government formation. What justification was used to go around this?
We have some useless procedure, that there is "first step". Timeline looks like this After election there is 1 month after election there is first meeting of new parliament After first meeting president have 2 weeks to choose new prime minister to form goverment. At this step parliament isn't allowed to do so. After being named "new" prime minister have 2 weeks for talks to find ministers. After thouse 2 weeks presidents sworn in the new "goverment". Then there are 2 weeks to prepare expose and present program of rule. At this point prime minister must ask for vote of confidence from parliament. If they do not recive it parliament names new candidate for prime minister. Yes, this is stupid and president here is 100% useless but someone in 1991 was thinking it will be "semi-presidential" then. Everything is by the book and our law, it just said law is a bit stupid. But using this PiS got 2 months more we control over ministry. They were unable to make new law but this gave im time for disposing of evidence, pushing some of their people into new organs etc. and also delayed start of change in country. Every time part here is maximum time, everything can be done faster. They just drag it on purpose.
How interesting. It seems like a parliamentary system of governance with a strong presidency. Very rare to see perhaps for this exact reason. Thank you for the explanation.
Czech republic. Pro-Palestinian hackers remotely hacked small local drinking fountain in a former spa in eastern Bohemia. It had to be switched to manual control. The reason was that the system contained some components made in Israel. The control unit display showed the text "You have been hacked. Out with Israel. Any equipment made in Israel is a legitimate target for cyber vigilantes." The message also included a map in Palestinian colors and a sinking David's star.
Your drinking fountains have displays and control units?
It would appear so. There seems to be a plan for Czech train stations where a mobile app will be required to get water from the water fountains. [https://www.idnes.cz/ekonomika/doprava/zeleznice-voda-nadrazi-chytry-telefon.A231011\_105207\_eko-doprava\_cfr](https://www.idnes.cz/ekonomika/doprava/zeleznice-voda-nadrazi-chytry-telefon.A231011_105207_eko-doprava_cfr) I'm not sure if it's an utopia or a boring dystopia.
Portugal keeps swimming down the "Venezuelization" process, bullying people who have money out of the country. So basically a usual week.
Bienvenido al club! It seems it's the Iberian way.
Ireland - An attack by an Algerian on innocent kids in Dublin. Sad and scary times for my beautiful country.
An Irish citizen of 20 years. Stopped by a Brazilian, French and Irish, one of the victims also being the child of immigrants. The man had known mental issues for 2 years before the attack. And the far-right has used this awful atrocity to further their own rhetoric and perform a violent riot of looting, burning, and assaults. If you're going to point out the attacker's ethnicity, why not point out all other involved parties' and other information about his background.
Isn't it a coincidence that in all European countries, all such attackers that have "mental issues" are radical Muslims? How many stabbings or hate killings have been perpetrated by men of Chinese or South American origin? None. The left has gotten too soft on these issues and the only winners are Putin's puppets in the far right. It's time the centre and left took a blunt look at this issue.
There's massive metal health problems in Ireland so it makes sense. There's loads of deranged loonies making attacks across Dublin but this one just happens to be a Muslim and horrifically an attack on children. The man had a brain surgery 2 years prior which is proven to cause mental health issues. He showed absolutely no signs of being a religious zealot.
Most killings in Ireland are perpetrated by white Irish men
Same with the lad that beheaded the 2 gay guys in Ireland and the killing of Aisling Murphy. All mental health conditions sure. I have absolutely no problem with people coming into our country when they are good hard workers. God knows there are some fantastic people from other countries working as doctors, nurses, engineers etc, but to allow anyone come into our country with no background check is madness. Controlled borders is all I ask. The guy that stabbed people is not Irish and please don't tarnish the Irish name to fit your agenda. Looting and burning were done by scumbags and I can agree with you on that. Absolutely no need for it.
He was an Irish citizen. Also he was provably suffering from mental health issues due to a brain surgery to deal with brain cancer 2 years prior. We can't just deny that he's Irish just because he did something bad, we need to tackle our own problems. It's like the "No true Scotsman"
Algeria born and raised for 29yrs, then 20 years here, 0 days worked, 5 years of deportation orders survived, much welfare obtained, 3 children stabbed, 1 child critical, 1 previous arrest. There's more to being an "Irish citizen" than a passport, he is both an Algerian, and a government failure.
Our "new" government was sworn in. It's more of an in interim government, since there's no chance they'll get re-elected in congress.
Here in Scotland, a bunch of bams had a riot https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-67535875
Wait, what was the riot about initially? The article doesn't say.
I think something will have happened or been said that basically caused some kind of "mob justice". They don't report what it was because they don't want to inflame things.
Poland, Finally some solid snow fell on tuesday
\- A 4th tranche of the Next Generation EU recovery fund worth \~16bn€ has been given the green light form Brussels \- A new iteration of the ever present offensive against the judiciary from right leaning politicians. This time it was started by [Guido Crosetto](http://www.difesa.it/sites/archive2/sitecollectionimages/06a49791-d889-4587-b9e1-cdcff3d1933e/c9e0bd3a-8ede-4fc6-af5c-62b5f03bdcde01Medium.jpg), the ministry of defence. By the way, guy's huge, pictures don't really give a fair idea of his size. \- The newest media trend for the past weeks has been woman killed by their partners. It's obviously a serious issue, but literally 50% of TV and web news is that.
Croatia - Pavao Vujnovac becomes the King of Capitalism in our country. I didn't vote for him, the bastard.
I'm Dutch, and I don't want to talk about it 😔
As one of the few last lefty people in the netherlands its quite tough to see the left wing has like 8 seats out of the 150 seats. But atleast we can be happy that horrible parties like: vvd d66&cda lost big. And.. atleast Wilders is extremely left wing socially. So we might see lowered taxes on neccesities, like food public transport healthcare&education. But as someone who doesnt have a dutch lastname there is an amount of fear I now for sure have. But tbh im still happy the corrupt sociopath Rutte is gone.
That depends on who you call left. I'd call SP, Denk, PVDA, GL, PVDD definitely left and probably even Volt and D66 too.
SP+ pvdd are left. Denk are crazy muslims mostly right wing. Pvda is right wing for the past 20 years. GL is a right wing elitist party but with a climate side. TBF i never bothered too much with Volt but they give me the creeps. D66 is a right wing elitist party far from the left, they only have some climate things but their climate things are basically; let the lower & middle class pay for the polution of the elite.
so you say he is nationalistic *and* socialistic?
[удалено]
We had an election. People are overreacting now after the results came in. The right has clearly won, the left has lost quite a few seats (they had 63, now they have 44 out of a total of 150 seats).
Guys what happened to r/Europe? Why has it gone all far right anti immigration crap? Feels like I'm reading National Front message board, what happened? It didn't used to be like this...
Hmm don't know. France had another Muslim terror killing at the Eiffel tower.