Merz said that \u201cthe radiance of what we in the West call liberal democracy is noticeably diminishing,\u201d adding: \u201cIt is no longer a given that the world will orient itself towards us, that it will follow our values of liberal democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNew alliances of autocracies are forming against us and attacking liberal democracy as a way of life,\u201d Merz said.<\/p>\n
Recent global turmoil has struck Germany with particular force. Russia\u2019s all-out invasion of Ukraine and the erosion of the transatlantic alliance have compelled the country\u2019s leaders to invest massively in rebuilding the relatively feeble German military<\/a>. The energy shock that accompanied the Ukraine invasion and U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s tariff wars have both hit German industry particularly hard<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Macron too, speaking after Merz, echoed parts of the chancellor\u2019s message, arguing that Europe is undergoing a \u201cdegeneration of democracy\u201d due to attacks on various fronts \u2014\u00a0including from within.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are also threatened from the outside. But we should not be naive. On the inside we are turning on ourselves; we doubt our own democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cWe see everywhere that something is happening to our democratic fabric. Democratic debate is turning into a debate of hatred.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of that degeneration is due to online discourse on platforms controlled by U.S. and Chinese firms, said Macron.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Merz said that \u201cthe radiance of what we in the West call liberal democracy is noticeably diminishing,\u201d adding:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[14787,6641,31,34,2000,299,5187,1945,1824,2348,2441,7965,1217,413,1201,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-473048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-cold-war","9":"tag-competitiveness","10":"tag-democracy","11":"tag-emmanuel-macron","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-friedrich-merz","16":"tag-germany","17":"tag-history","18":"tag-markets","19":"tag-platforms","20":"tag-protectionism","21":"tag-space","22":"tag-trade","23":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115314713133416851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}