Sorry for that typo above. I wanted to write "now" above. Blair can forget the job most likely.

I think this is a good development. Maybe Blair would have been someone the world knows, but he is one of the least popular politicians in Europe. It would be a terrible sign to nominate a first Council President who is hated by so many and disliked by most of the rest.

Apart from that, I don't want to see a powerful Council president, he is no "EU president". He should be what this job is made for, being the chairman of the Council and the iconic figure of it maybe.

We already have a head of the executive in the EU and his name is currently Barroso. Barroso is under the scrutiny of the Parliament and the Council, the Council President is not, he is only dependent on the Council no one else. Lisbon should be about improving the situation not about creating a system of cohabitation where two people fight over the lead and the whole system goes down the drain in the meanwhile. So we need a good broker as Council president, one who is a committed European and also knows how to move efficiently in Brussels.

At the same time the new "foreign minister" will be a position of real power with a diplomatic service and EU embassies under his authority. While I am not fully happy about this position either, especially the fact that the member states fundamentally blocked the EP from having any influence on foreign policy and defense. But that can be changed at a later point as the Council can decide at a later point to switch to the common legislative procedure also in this area if the will is there.

While everyone is talking about the jobs, I think people fail to see yet the other changes. The EP will finally become by large a full parliament in my opinion. Yes, it has no direct right of initiative (it can "ask" the Commission though to get draw a proposal about something specific), but in European reality this is nothing that most national parliaments use much anyway either. You can bet that this will lead to some seismic shifts in Brussels. I am not quite convinced that this will also take place in public perception of the parliament. But one can always hope.

Furthermore, the unanimity restriction falls in a lot of important areas. This could stop the deadlock there, and also improve the quality of decisions as the smallest common denominator can be larger if you need "only" a big majority instead of unanimity.

__________________
""Even though our unity is our strength, our diversity remains our wealth,""
Herman Van Rompuy

Well, sure. But Klaus is an old nationalist of the 19th century. Not I am saying this but a known former Czech dissident said this a few days ago.

I can only despise a man who does not care and simply abuses old phobias and emotions from a past war time (and its immediate aftermath), for some pity personal agenda. The worst one can do is to do what he expects you to do. To play his ugly 19th century game of escalation and resentments.

This chapter is done in my opinion. Europe can't win anything by digging it out again and throw our future into the dustbin in order to be able to fight it out - once again.

__________________
""Even though our unity is our strength, our diversity remains our wealth,""
Herman Van Rompuy

The Sudeten Germans are still a separate, defined entity today?

My understanding is that the Sudetan Germans lived in Silesia and parts of Moravia and Bohemia prior to 1945. I thought the entire population were violently expelled in 1945-47?

Yet this conversation seems to assume they are still a separate group. I thought they were resettled in western Germany?

They are not really anymore. There are still Sudeten German lobby groups and not too many people who were expelled at something else than very young children are still alive.

The Sudeten Germans settled down as far as I know all across Germany mostly. While there may exist still a certain consciousness of the own roots, they should be considered today pretty assimilated.

In Austria its more German speakers from Moravia and there from around Brünn that found a new home here, not so much Sudeten Germans. They are pretty assimilated into Austrian society today as well. Its interesting to see that people coming originally from the same area could be in their own understanding nowadays Austrians, or they could be Germans, depending on where they settled down.

__________________
""Even though our unity is our strength, our diversity remains our wealth,""
Herman Van Rompuy

Yes, most of them in Bavaria, forming a huge part of the votership of the bavarian christian social Union (CSU), a party also represented in the german federal governement. The CSU´s (at least in the past) often anti-polish and anti-czech positions are partially explained by having many voters among the expellees that were for decades not willing to give up their dream off a regermanized Silesia and Bohemia.
But with the war generation gone and the next generations grown up in another Germany the Sudeten Germans are history, in every aspect of the word.

Thanks Slart and Voland for the details and explanation. That matches what I had thought.

I was somewhat confused by the conversation betweem Anobitsar and Still Alive.

I have just finished a well written and quite impressive book about the period just after the war in Germany. It is called: Germany 1945, From War to Peace by Richard Bessel.

Amazon.com: Germany 1945: From War to Peace (9780060540364): Richard Bessel: Books

There are many detailed descriptions of the transformation that took place throughout the former German lands of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia and the forced expulsions, rapes and killings.

That is only one part of the book, certainly, but it is a powerful and compelling account. The author does not write as a 'politician' but as a serious and thoughtful historian.

Very well said.

Barroso will be off at the end of his term for health reasons.
Sadly, he ´s a guy that talks a lot witout saying anything.
Acting is not one of his strenghts either.

So things are bound to get better, no matter who gets the job.
It won´t be anyone, tryeing to steal the limelight right now.

The foreign Sec will have a very tough job.
Not one of the national ambassadors will give up any of his rights,facilities and obligations.
So he/she will have to be a moderator too, bringing forth only what all the others agreed on.
This , by no way weakens his position, quite the contrary.
He´ll have all the ambassadors and all the Governments behind him.
A far stronger position than the US SoS has right now.

What will happen, already in the next election, is, that a lot more political heavyweights will go to Brussels.
The present part-time-politicians will disappear and we´ll have a real Euro Parliament.

I would have loved to see Verheugen at the foreign job, but he refused.
Had he agreed, Merkel would have even started a boxing match just to get him through.
He has shouldered all that Barroso was able to throw at him and that was a lot.
Any guy followng him will have a job to fill his shoes.
And, most people like him except, of course, Anob.
The latter would accept only Benediktl as EU President and one of the Pius Brotherhood as Foreign Sec.

__________________
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse
of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion.
The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner
as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion,
or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises

Read the link.
98% of them voted for the Nazi party in Czechias last pre-war elections.
Already in 1934, 44 of the 66 german seats in the Czech Parliament were held by Nazis.

And for todays Sudetendeutsche, I was talking about the "Landsmannschaften"
a term, btw created by the NSDAP and still used to this very day.

The views of these groups have not changed, nor were they ever reconsidered since 1938.

To attack the Czechs for their resettlement is ludicrous.
It was a decision of the Allies, not the Czechs.

Sure, the Czechs retaliated after WWII, but looking at it from a non-partisan level it seems understandable given what Czechs, Slowaks and Jews went through under the Nazis.

The "Landsmannschaften" OTOH are just lamenting about their plight, without being willing to admit, even consider their own failings and crimes.

Yet each single Sudetendeutscher was given tenfold of what he had at home.
And it´s still not enough for some.

In case, you compare Czechia with East-Prussia, forget it.
They cannot be compared.
East-Prussians were driven out of their country, with the vast majority receiving no compensation at all.
They built up their own lifes and most of them very sucessfully

The Sudeten guys were re-settled and had their asses gilded. No doubt, there was a handful left out of the money shower.
But these sadly were the ones once opposed to Nazism.

Come on over, Adam, and I promise you to get the facts here instead of the myths propagated by some and accepted by many.

All I write about this subject is based on facts and can easily be verified by the data available.

__________________
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse
of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion.
The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner
as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion,
or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises

Your book and observations are probably true in a general sense, but guys like anobsitar and stillalives reaction represent another part of the story as well.

Voland and stariblabla (sorry for the unintented, non offensive meant misspelling) are not Germans and are probably not aware (or ignore it) of the local/ethnic "politics" involved in daily German life.

Hell no matter how hard Sudetendeutsche might try to be real locals in their community, but as soon as they oppose the general spirit of the community they are fucking foreigners again. Reading about the problems they've had to adopt to their new regions, somehow reminds myself about all the predjuces/problems German -Turks, German Russians and so on face today.

It's all due to Germany having rather closed circles of local society/history, which are not really open to strangers (often it doesn't matter whether your a fucking non German or a German from just 100 km away).

I guess people ignoring this, have either never moved in Germany (especially in a rural area) or are ignorant of our local customs/traditions.

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

They´ve created "Landsmannschaften" as far back as 1934.

These groupings still exist with exactly the same goals as at their foundation:

to integrate Silesia into Germany, take back "their" land and get the Czechs out of Sliesia.

These groups still have some 150 000 members.

__________________
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse
of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion.
The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner
as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion,
or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises

Since my german grandmother was a Moravian - German and survived a long refugee treck in the winter decimated by russians raping women, czech militias trying to kill as many Germans as possible, hunger, cold and exhaustion, that ended up in Bavaria, I happen to be aware of the tensions the refugees awaited there. ( which was not actually surprising given their number and the fact that the bavarian population was also barely able to survive directly after the war)
My point was that the Sudeten Germans are largely gone as a huge political force now, that they , together with other expellee unions formed in the decades after WW II, mostly for the conservative parties.
What remains of them today are many family names all over Bavaria and a shrinking number of grayheads wearing old costumes and singing old songs on the meetings of the Landmannschaften. But german Bohemia and Silesia has lost all appeal for a younger generation that is living in the EU and is not defining them via their grandparents traditions anymore.
That was what I was trying to say.

Honestly I have never given a shit about them and so for me they have always been just another set of early foreigners (re-) immigrating into our fatherland.

In a way it was good that they settled here ( as a replacement for all the millions of Germans, we had lost during WW2), but reading Anobsitar's Nazi positions makes one question this and so I understand your problem with him.

Hell I don't need a fucking de facto foreigner, social parasite and especially during the first years social welfare child to lecture us real Germans about our history and even more about our politics with their former neighbours.

Guys like anob are a relict of the past and if they don't like the current German foreign policy or the way their former home is governed, they should just shut the hell up and/or move elsewhere.

Unhappily there are few nutcase countries left for them, but that doesn't mean one should stop trying them from searching for it.

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

I share your view and I hope I haven't offended you by my comments, which are more aimed at a guy like anobsitar, who expressed his unwillingness to accept that history had hit hard on the Sudetendeutsche/Czechs and so that it's nowadays the best for all parties involeved to get over it.

For all the trouble people have had in the past the current EU offers the best answers. I think it's a gift of history that soon all Chechz can move freely to Germany to find work and happiness and eager (Sudeten-) German entrepreneurs can retry to make a living in the reigion.

Anyway the last thing we need now are stupid backward fights, who has done what or why one side was more of a victim than the other.

People should get over it and enjoy the future benefits a mone combined, peacefull EU has to offer!

__________________
"Homo Homini Lupus"
Thomas Hobbes

I am not that easy to offend, don´t worry
And I have no problem with old people celebrating traditions that will be gone with them.
But a group of former expellees and their descendants is missing in the discussion. Those that have never seen themselves represented by the Landmannschaften ( like my grandma). Those that directly after 1990 tried to build bridges to their former home countries without silly claims of compensation or return, initiated sister city and town agreements, student exchanges, cultural tours and by that helped enormously to reduce mistrust and paved the way to what you so eagerly and completely correct describe : All those countries united in the EU. I am happy to say that my grandma has found a huge field of activity in that in her later years and was able to return many times to her parents house, with whose modern owners my family is still friends. I was just recently able to visit it with my girlfriend and we were sipping hungarian wine in the dining room that my grandmother had to flee in a winters night in 1945 , also leaving the furniture that we were using behind.
The house is in the Hultschiner Ländchen ( Hlucin) by the way, on the Czech/ Slowakian, and not far from the polish border.

Hlu?ín Region - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yes, you´re absolutely right.

While the sudetendeutsche lived in a foreign country, Bemen was always considered Austrian.
A jovial people, very validly described in Schweijk.
As they were considered Austrian or Reichsdeutsch, they were consistantly "Übersehen" in the hand-outs after the war.
They did not complain, they did not agitate, it´s simply against their nature.

I have some in my neighborhood, but I cannot remember a single one of them losing a word about the war or anything that happened after.
Yet most of them, at least the older ones, frequently "go home" to put flowers on a grave (Ich muss der Mutter Blumen bringen) and chat with old neighbors.

Quite different from the Sudeten crew.

__________________
"There is no means of avoiding the final collapse
of a boom brought about by credit (debt) expansion.
The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner
as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit (debt) expansion,
or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved." - Ludwig von Mises