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Bollmann, Ralph
4 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Energy transition takes time
Last week German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with the premiers of the federal states to discuss a complete nuclear phaseout in Germany. The conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung compares the debate with that over the social reforms implemented by Merkel's predecessor Gerhard Schröder: "In the late years of Helmut Kohl's chancellorship, the abstract desire for a restructuring of the social welfare state was almost as uncontested as the energy transition is today. The protests only started when it took on concrete form under Gerhard Schröder and the questionnaires started circulating among those in need. Things will be no different when bulldozers start arriving to build embankment dams, the price of electricity soars and light bulbs start to flicker. In this respect there is no difference between the energy reform and all those that went before it. ... Progress will always come at a snail's pace."
» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Energy, » Germany
Only The Left party dares call for withdrawal
The controversial air strike in Afghanistan has become a prominent issue in Germany's election campaign but only The Left party dares to call for a complete withdrawal, writes the left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung, commenting that all other parties are too deeply committed to the Bundeswehr's deployment: "That's pretty much determined by the posts held or aspired to by the parties' leading politicians. Even if the [social democratic] SPD, the Greens or the [liberal] FDP really did want to attack deployment in Afghanistan - which despite all their doubts doesn't look at all likely at the moment - they couldn't. The SPD is in the least comfortable spot in this debate. With his firm defence of German reasons of state, [Foreign Minister and chancellor candidate Frank-Walter] Steinmeier is once more hemmed in on all sides. On the one side is The Left party, the only group to argue for an immediate withdrawal, and on the other the chancellor [Angela Merkel], who yesterday nourished vague hopes that a date for withdrawal will be set. There must be substantial progress within the next five years, she said. That's certainly very vague, but it sounds more definite than what Steinmeier's come up with."
» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Domestic Policy, » Elections, » Germany, » Afghanistan
Are Europeans too fat?
Ralph Bollmann can live with a more extensive food-labelling requirement: "The big question is, 'How much influence should the state have in this area?' OK: it has to enable consumers to make informed choices about nutrition, in face of an overpowering food industry. That means, for example, comprehensive information on packaging, and maybe even warnings." But Bollmann adds: "There is no injury to third parties from unhealthy food – that's the difference from tobacco consumption. All those who favour using disparaging rhetoric or even bans to impose the aesthetic measures of the academic middle class on the new proletariat should keep this in mind."
» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Health and Medicine, » Germany
The debate about the GDR Order to Fire
Ralph Bollmann reflects on why this document, the contents of which are nothing new, is causing such a stir: "This poses the question of why the existence or non-existence of this 'Order to Fire' is causing such uproar. There's a remarkable parallel between this and the fruitless search for a 'Führer's order' for the murder of Europe's Jews, which went on for several decades. As incomparable as these two affairs are, in both cases the public, fixated on the search for such a historic document, entertains excessively naïve notions about decision-making processes and chains of command. The alarming thing about apparatus such as the GDR border regime is precisely the insidious interplay of group pressure and rash obedience, rewards and punishment which could not be adequately explained by a single brief instruction - even if it did exist."
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More from the press review on the subject » History, » Germany
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