Timothy Garton Ash's Blog, page 6

Europe must seize this chance to help restore democracy in Hungary | Timothy Garton Ash

An opposition united behind a conservative Catholic anti-corruption candidate could be a real challenge to Viktor Orbán’s regime

One day last month I stood in a large crowd at the bottom of Andrássy Street in Budapest and heard Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orbán, denounce the European Union, of which his no longer democratic state remains a full member. “They would force us to be European, sensitive and liberal – even if it kills us”, he said. “Today the words and actions that Brussels directs at us and the Poles are like those usually reserved for enemies. We have a feeling of deja vu, as throughout Europe we hear echoes of the Brezhnev doctrine.’ This from a man whose whole regime depends heavily on EU money. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. The crowd murmured support, although louder applause was reserved for the line, “Hungary will be the first country in Europe in which we stop aggressive LGBTQ propaganda at the school gates.” I saw not a single European flag.

At the other end of Andrássy Street, however, once I had got past a vast double row of coaches used to bus in Orbán supporters, I reached an opposition rally. Here, the much smaller crowd waved European flags. And here I heard Peter Márki-Zay, the candidate of a united opposition for next spring’s parliamentary election, declare that they would bring Hungary back to democracy and the legal standards of the EU. Referring to the misuse of EU funds by the Orbán regime, Márki-Zay said, “We should join the European public prosecutor’s office, which does not infringe our sovereignty, only the sovereignty of criminals.” Then a large group of opposition candidates, from six parties that range all the way from right to left, crowded on to the stage for a group photo.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Why we need a new golden age of European rail | Timothy Garton Ash

About half of flights around the continent are short-haul, with a heavy cost in carbon emissions. Trains are the answer

As we approach the start of the Cop26 conference in Glasgow, I have been considering what I can do to help combat the climate crisis. Eat less meat? Buy an electric car? Swap the old gas boiler for a heat pump? Take the train instead of a short-haul flight?

All of the above, to be sure. But as someone who has spent much of his life flying around Europe, the last seems especially pertinent. About half of all flights in Europe are short-haul, defined by the EU as journeys of less than 1,500km. One detailed study showed that short flights on selected routes across Europe can cause up to 19 times the CO2 emissions of the equivalent train journey. (Nineteen is Zurich to Milan: the shorter the flight, the greater the excess). Britain’s Campaign for Better Transport recently staged a “race” from central London to Glasgow city centre. The train passenger arrived just two minutes later than the person who came by plane, and the CO2 emissions were an estimated 20kg, compared with 137kg for the flight. But, this being Britain, the train ticket cost twice as much.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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In Germany’s election, the fate of the EU is at stake | Timothy Garton Ash

After Merkel, the incoming coalition will have to prove that democracy can meet Europe’s great challenges

In Brussels last week, I found everyone waiting for Berlin. In Berlin, I found everyone electrified by an unexpectedly wide-open election. One thing, however, is clear: the new German government will be a coalition, and almost certainly of three, rather than two, parties.

That points to the deepest question underlying this pivotal European event: can democracy deliver? More precisely: can the European model of change through democratic consensus, of which Germany is a prime example, produce the actions Europe badly needs if it is to hold its own in the 21st century?

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist and edited the recent report Young Europeans Speak to EU

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America will never be back like before, but the world still needs democratic leadership | Timothy Garton Ash

In the aftermath of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle, we should consider the alternatives to a Washington-led order

“America is back,” said President Joe Biden earlier this year, and the entire democratic world breathed a sigh of relief. But as we watch the debacle of the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan – Kabul as Saigon 2 – a ghostly voice whispers to us: what if America is not back? What if it is never coming back? What happens then? The Chinese century? Europe as new leader of the free world? Or just plain old international anarchy?

If only this were like Saigon in 1975. The US humiliation in Vietnam, following Watergate, marked a low point for America’s reputation in the world. But within a decade, the US was back. By 1995, it seemed to be bestriding the globe as an unchallenged hyperpower. Everyone knows that this time is different. The United States’ self-inflicted domestic problems are 10 times more profound and structural than they were in the mid-1970s – partly because, following the pattern of over-extended empires throughout history, it has spent trillions of dollars in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, rather than doing more nation-building at home. Abroad, it faces not a declining Leninist-ruled superpower, the Soviet Union, but a rising Leninist-ruled superpower, China. Climate change is the only hyperpower now.

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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VW’s dilemma in Xinjiang shows how the west is headed for an ethical car crash | Timothy Garton Ash

Europe and the US are economically dependent on China now – and ‘change through trade’ is no longer on the cards

On YouTube, you can watch a video clip of Volkswagen’s chief executive, Herbert Diess, denying that he knows what’s going on in Xinjiang. When the BBC correspondent helpfully spells it out – so-called reeducation camps for one million Uyghurs – Diess says: “I’m not aware of that.” Either he was being culpably ignorant about a region where Volkswagen has a factory, or he was lying.

This was in the spring of 2019, and a company spokesperson soon declared that Diess was “of course aware” of the situation in Xinjiang. The case is particularly sensitive because Volkswagen was originally set up by the Nazis, and its use of forced labour during the Third Reich has been scrupulously documented by German historians.

Related: Slavery will never be history as long as we turn a blind eye to China | Nick Cohen

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Five years on from the Brexit referendum, the result is clear: both unions are losing

The UK has been weakened, but so too has the EU. Relations between them need not be this bad

Five years after the fateful referendum on 23 June 2016, what is the current balance sheet of Brexit? Answer: two weakened unions, the British and the European, and bad-tempered relations between them. Lose. Lose. Lose.

The weakening of the British union is obvious. There will be another referendum on Scottish independence within the next few years. Scottish nationalists may win it with the argument that Scotland should leave the British union to rejoin the European one. A vote in Northern Ireland on Irish unification seems more likely than at any point since it was first provided for in the Belfast agreement in 1998. Boris Johnson’s government is full of rhetoric about keeping the union together but has no strategy for doing so.

Related: Brexit ‘purity’ is breaking up the union. Just ask the people of Belfast | Nick Cohen

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Only by taxing the rich can Johnson become more than a plutocratic populist | Timothy Garton Ash

‘Britain Trump’ is riding high, thanks in part to a divided opposition. But unless his deeds match his words, it may not last

What is the difference between former US president Donald Trump and current British prime minister Boris Johnson? Both men are skilful practitioners of plutocratic populism, but “Britain Trump”, as the president himself called his British ally, might yet prove the more successful.

Trump was a super-spreader of this Anglo-Saxon variant of populism. He promised to help the poor but actually helped the rich. His actions were inseparable from the interests of his own businesses, party donors and a wider oligarchy. True, the US economy did well until the Covid pandemic hit, but there was no substantial economic or social “levelling up”. And then many, especially poorer, Americans died as a result of his culpable mishandling of the pandemic. Trump did not “deliver”, in the way that verb is generally used by commentators, and yet more than 70 million Americans still voted for him at the last election.

Related: Starmer accuses Johnson of ‘short-term gimmicks’ after Queen’s speech

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Under cover of Covid, Poland is stifling free media – and all Europe should be worried | Timothy Garton Ash

A planned ‘coronavirus tax’ on revenues and attacks on foreign-owned media threaten to cut away democracy piece by piece

Democracy dies in darkness. One of the European Union’s most fragile democracies, Poland, now faces the spectre of the night that falls when public service media have been turned into propaganda organs for a ruling party while private, independent media are suffocated. In the end, light is cast no more on the failings and abuses of those in power, because there are no more torches to shine that light. Hungary – which is no longer a democracy – has almost reached that twilight moment, with the extinction of its last major independent radio station.

Poland is still a long way from dusk, but the threat is real. In the World Press Freedom index, the country has sunk from 18th in 2015, ahead of Britain and France, to 62nd last year. (Hungary is down at 89th.)

Related: Poland accused of abandoning domestic violence victims

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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Will the EU emerge from the coronavirus crisis stronger or weaker? | Timothy Garton Ash

After its mixed Covid response, the EU must now focus on really delivering what its citizens want

Coronavirus – latest updatesSee all our coronavirus coverage

A year ago this week, we learned with astonishment that Italy was going into a national lockdown to fight a strange new virus that had apparently come from somewhere in China. Within a fortnight, Spain, France and Britain had followed. Now here we are a year later, still in a state of emergency.

We work at home and live online. Our children have become babyzoomers. “You’re on mute!” is the most frequently heard sentence of our time. Face masks and 2-metre distancing from other human beings seem almost normal. Our languages have acquired a whole new imagery: “second wave”, “flattening the curve”, “herd immunity”, “the British variant”. Demographers will trace the long-term effects of this year of Covid for a century to come. Some say there is already a Generation C.

Related: Why is the EU running into so many difficulties with its Covid vaccine campaign? | Leo Cendrowicz

Timothy Garton Ash is a Guardian columnist

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To restore trust in democracy, the US should lead a global 'fact fightback' | Timothy Garton Ash

Facebook, Twitter, Fox News – by blurring the truth, all pose a risk to democracy itself. But the US and EU can counter them together

To survive, democracy needs a minimum of shared truth. With the storming of the Capitol in Washington on 6 January, the US showed us just how dangerous it is when millions of citizens are led to deny an important, carefully verified fact – namely, who won the election.

To prosper, democracy needs a certain kind of public sphere, one in which citizens and their representatives engage in vigorous argument on the basis of shared facts. Restoring that kind of public sphere is now a central task for the renewal of liberal democracy. Call it the fact fightback.

Timothy Garton Ash is the author of Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

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