Latest news with #German-French
France 24
17 hours ago
- Business
- France 24
'We want to open a new chapter in German-French relations': Germany's Europe minister
While relations with France under the previous German government of Olaf Scholz were sometimes strained, Krichbaum suggests that things are changing under the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. "It's no secret that we had different opinions between France and Germany in the past," Krichbaum says. "But the decisive point is that we have to finally find a consensus and to have an atmosphere of trust. And this, I think, is now the new dimension of French-German relations. We are not only opening a new page. We want to open a new chapter in German-French relations. But I think the instruments we have are sufficient. We don't need more common debts in Europe because the national states have a responsibility for their own national budgets." Krichbaum certainly does not exclude more European investment, but he says that "we should always take into account that we have to guarantee fair conditions between the generations. So that means not making more debts, more debts, more debts, but also thinking about the next generation, because this [debt] has to be paid back one day." On NATO and European defence, Krichbaum asserts that "Europe has to stay together; it has to define its own interest. And especially in defence politics." The German government is planning to invest "3.5 percent of GDP directly for defence, and 1.5 percent for infrastructure, which helps to achieve the goals we have in common. This is ambitious, and it cannot be reached within the next year or in 2027. But finally it's a target, and it should be achieved together. Germany did not realise the 2 percent targets a few years ago, but I think the challenges are enormously high, and without security, we can do nothing in the world, nothing in Europe and nothing in Germany." Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Berlin not to supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, while also saying that he is open to talking to the German chancellor. Krichbaum says that he personally was "always in favour of delivering Taurus, because it's necessary that Ukraine can defend itself. The United States wants to withdraw more and more from Ukraine because they concentrate more on the future on the Pacific. On China, Taiwan and the whole area. And so we have to concentrate on our task. And that means [supporting] Ukraine as a European country." He clarifies that no decision on Taurus has been made by the German government so far, but adds that "in the past we were transparent and so Putin could react because he knew at each stage what Europe will do next, what Germany will do next. And this transparency is not helpful". Finally, asked about Berlin's steadfast support for Israel and the US in the conflict with Iran, Krichbaum asserts: "Nobody can live in peace thinking that the [Iranian] mullah regime has a nuclear weapon. So I would dare to say that if it was possible to destroy all the plants, the enrichment plants in Iran, then I think this is a contribution to more security, not only for the region, but for the world. And now it is also necessary to find further solutions in negotiations."
Budapest Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- Budapest Times
Bóka: Hungary did not join EU to abandon national interests and adopt a federalist plan
János Bóka said Visegrad cooperation "is important and still viable" as a countervailing force. János Bóka, the EU affairs minister, told a Visegrad Group event on Monday that Hungary did not join the European Union to abandon its national interests and adopt a federalist plan. In his speech opening this year's V4 Diplomacy Academy at the National University of Public Service (NKE) in Budapest, Bóka said that contrary to paying obeisance to the Robert Schumann model based on the German-French reconciliation and the duo's dominance of Europe, central Europeans wanted to reunite Europe by joining the bloc in 2004 and shaping legislation that determines European life. But, he said, now the forces of centralisation were in conflict with the idea of cooperation between sovereign member states. Central Europe's historical experiences differed from those of Western Europe, where the prevailing fear was that nationalism led to wars, he said, adding that national sentiment and the nation state 'are positive concepts in central Europe,' which ensured survival against dictatorship. The minister said the current EU bureaucracy had become a political actor and was trying to govern Europe in an increasingly politicised way. Some decisions, he added, were based on satisfying the interests of left-wing forces that derive their ideology from the events of 1968. Visegrad cooperation 'is important and still viable' as a countervailing force, he said, adding that the V4 could still play an important role in better enforcing their interests, despite the differences between its member states.
Toronto Sun
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Toronto Sun
Marcel Ophuls, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who forced France to face its WWII past, is dead at 97
Published May 26, 2025 • 4 minute read German-French Marcel Ophuls (centre) holds his Oscar for Best Documentary Feature with friends Peter Kovler (left), Jon Friedman, Hamilton Fish (second from right) and Catherine Zins on March 29, 1988 at the 61st Annual Academy Awards. Photo by MARK LOUNDY / AFP via Getty Images Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. PARIS — Marcel Ophuls, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker whose landmark 1969 documentary 'The Sorrow and the Pity' shattered the comforting myth that most of France had resisted the Nazis during the Second World War — has died at 97. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The German-born filmmaker, who was the son of legendary filmmaker Max Ophuls, died Saturday at his home in southwest France of natural causes, his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert told The Hollywood Reporter . Though Ophuls would later win an Oscar for 'Hotel Terminus' (1988), his searing portrait of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, it was 'The Sorrow and the Pity' that marked a turning point — not only in his career, but in how France confronted its past. Deemed too provocative, too divisive, it was banned from French television for over a decade. French broadcast executives said it 'destroyed the myths the French still need.' It would not air nationally until 1981. Simone Veil, Holocaust survivor and moral conscience of postwar France, refused to support it. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. But for a younger generation in a country still recovering physically and psychologically from the aftermath of the atrocities, the movie was a revelation — an unflinching historical reckoning that challenged both national memory and national identity. The myth it punctured had been carefully constructed by Charles de Gaulle, the wartime general who led Free French forces from exile and later became president. In the aftermath of France's liberation in 1944, de Gaulle promoted a version of events in which the French had resisted Nazi occupation as one people, united in dignity and defiance. Collaboration was portrayed as the work of a few traitors. The French Republic, he insisted, had never ceased to exist. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'The Sorrow and the Pity,' which was nominated for the 1972 Oscar for Best Documentary, told a different story: Filmed in stark black and white and stretching over four and a half hours, the documentary turned its lens on Clermont-Ferrand, a provincial town at the heart of France. Through long, unvarnished interviews with farmers, shopkeepers, teachers, collaborators, members of the French Resistance — even the town's former Nazi commander — Ophuls laid bare the moral ambiguities of life under occupation. There was no narrator, no music, no guiding hand to shape the audience's emotions. Just people — speaking plainly, awkwardly, sometimes defensively. They remembered, justified and hesitated. And in those silences and contradictions, the film delivered its most devastating message: that France's wartime story was not one of widespread resistance, but of ordinary compromise — driven by fear, self-preservation, opportunism, and, at times, quiet complicity. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The film revealed how French police had aided in the deportation of Jews. How neighbours stayed silent. How teachers claimed not to recall missing colleagues. How many had simply gotten by. Resistance, 'The Sorrow and the Pity' seemed to say, was the exception — not the rule. It was, in effect, the cinematic undoing of de Gaulle's patriotic myth — that France had resisted as one, and that collaboration was the betrayal of a few. Ophuls showed instead a nation morally divided and unready to confront its own reflection. In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, Ophuls bristled at the charge that he had made the film to accuse. 'It doesn't attempt to prosecute the French,' he said. 'Who can say their nation would have behaved better in the same circumstances?' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Born in Frankfurt on Nov. 1, 1927, Marcel Ophuls was the son of legendary German-Jewish filmmaker Max Ophuls, director of 'La Ronde,' 'Letter from an Unknown Woman', and 'Lola Montes.' When Hitler came to power in 1933, the family fled Germany for France. In 1940, as Nazi troops approached Paris, they fled again — across the Pyrenees into Spain, and on to the United States. Marcel became an American citizen and later served as a U.S. Army GI in occupied Japan. But it was his father's towering legacy that shaped his early path. 'I was born under the shadow of a genius,' Ophuls said in 2004. 'I don't have an inferiority complex — I am inferior.' He returned to France in the 1950s hoping to direct fiction, like his father. But after several poorly received features _ including 'Banana Peel' (1963), an Ernst Lubitsch-style caper starring Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jeanne Moreau — his path shifted. 'I didn't choose to make documentaries,' he told The Guardian . 'There was no vocation. Each one was an assignment.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. That reluctant pivot changed cinema. After 'The Sorrow and the Pity,' Ophuls followed with 'The Memory of Justice' (1976), a sweeping meditation on war crimes that examined Nuremberg but also drew uncomfortable parallels to atrocities in Algeria and Vietnam. In 'Hotel Terminus' (1988), he spent five years tracking the life of Klaus Barbie, the so-called 'Butcher of Lyon,' exposing not just his Nazi crimes but the role Western governments played in protecting him after the war. The film won him his Academy Award for Best Documentary but, overwhelmed by its darkness, French media reported that he attempted suicide during production. In 'The Troubles We've Seen' (1994), he turned his camera on journalists covering the war in Bosnia, and on the media's uneasy relationship with suffering and spectacle. Despite living in France for most of his life, he often felt like an outsider. 'Most of them still think of me as a German Jew,' he said in 2004, 'an obsessive German Jew who wants to bash France.' He was a man of contradictions: a Jewish exile married to a German woman who had once belonged to the Hitler Youth; a French citizen never fully embraced; a filmmaker who adored Hollywood, but changed European cinema by telling truths others wouldn't. He is survived by his wife, Regine, their three daughters, and three grandchildren. Ontario Music Sunshine Girls Money News World
Reuters
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- Reuters
Netherlands agrees to buy at least 46 Leopard 2A8 tanks from KNDS
AMSTERDAM, May 14 (Reuters) - The Dutch government said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement to buy at least 46 Leopard 2A8 tanks from German-French arms maker KNDS as the Netherlands builds a tank unit for the first time in over a decade. The tanks will be delivered between 2028 and 2031 and form part of a push by the Dutch to increase military spending in order to comply with the NATO target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence. The new tank battalion, which could be expanded with another six tanks, will be stationed in Germany and include around 500 soldiers, the government said in a statement.
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Netherlands agrees to buy at least 46 Leopard 2A8 tanks from KNDS
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Dutch government said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement to buy at least 46 Leopard 2A8 tanks from German-French arms maker KNDS as the Netherlands builds a tank unit for the first time in over a decade. The tanks will be delivered between 2028 and 2031 and form part of a push by the Dutch to increase military spending in order to comply with the NATO target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence. The new tank battalion, which could be expanded with another six tanks, will be stationed in Germany and include around 500 soldiers, the government said in a statement.
