Month: September 2024

The German federal government has “miscalculated” billions in welfare payments, known as citizens’ money, with their initial estimate of €36 billion far short of the €46 billion reportedly needed.

In documents obtained by Bild newspaper, the German labor ministry assumes an average of 2.9 million people are in need of welfare parents in the documents for the “2025 budget,” dated from August 2024. However, this document indicates that the expenditure on standard rates and accommodation costs is expected to total €45.6 billion, which is a far cry from the €36 billion set in the 2025 citizen’s allowance budget.

The huge discrepancy has sparked outrage, but Hubertus Heil’s (SPD) labor ministry told Bild that the figures published “are not comprehensible and are methodologically based on several false assumptions… For example, a significant portion of the costs of accommodation are to be covered by the municipalities and are therefore not relevant to the federal budget in the amount stated.”

However, Heil’s denial did not specify how far off Bild’s figures were, and notably, Bild was citing internal documents from the ministry itself.

The huge sums paid out due to citizens’ money has become a politically explosive subject, first due to the enormous costs it is placing on the German taxpayers, second due to the fact that the German economy is facing a worker shortage, and third due to the huge number of foreigners taking advantage of this welfare system, as half of all recipients are foreigners and many of the others who are German citizens also have a migration background.

“Immigration doesn’t work, not even economically. And if one were to differentiate between Germans based on their migration background, the picture would be even more devastating,” MEP Maximilian Krah, who is a member of the AfD but remains unaffiliated in the European Parliament, wrote on X. He shared a graph showing how few Germans are actually receiving welfare payments.

Einwanderung funktioniert nicht, auch nicht ökonomisch. Und würde man bei den Deutschen noch nach Migrationshintergrund differenzieren, wäre das Bild noch verheerender. pic.twitter.com/2NF3bP22Mf

— Dr. Maximilian Krah MdEP (@KrahMax) September 25, 2024

However, he is not the only one calling into question Heil’s numbers. Most recently, the Federal Audit Office also cast doubt on Heil’s budget, stating that the labor ministry’s figures could only happen as budgeted if “600,000 people entitled to benefits would stop receiving them altogether” in 2025. These experts complained at the time that this was “not very realistic.”

Other parties are also attacking Heil. CDU’s group vice-chairman Jens Spahn said the matter “bordered on deliberate deception.” 

Meanwhile, budget spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Christian Haase, said: “Heil is deliberately budgeting for false figures in order to conceal the problems with the citizens’ allowance,”

“This is a scandal,” he added.

CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann said the ruling left-liberal government “continues to lie to itself, the budget will blow up in its face.”

Even the Free Democrats (FDP), who belong to the ruling government, slammed the budget figures. FDP politician Torsten Herbst said he expected “the labor minister to present realistic figures in his draft budget.”

However, some of the harshest statements came from the AfD, which wrote on social media: “Labor Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) suddenly presents a new budget gap of almost €10 billion in the citizen’s allowance. According to the minister’s documents, his department expects citizen’s allowance costs of almost €46 billion for 2025, although only €36 billion were officially reported.”

The party is now recommending mass deportations totaling 1.3 million people to plug the budget hole, which it claims would bring the welfare payments back in line with the original sum budgeted.

“It must be remembered that around half of the citizen’s allowance recipients are foreign citizens! Simply by deporting the approximately one million Syrians (as of the end of 2023) who no longer have a reason to flee, the citizen’s allowance costs could be reduced enormously. The same applies to the approximately 300,000 foreigners who are required to leave the country (as of mid-2024).

“The Federal Audit Office had already cast doubt on the Minister of Labor’s sugar-coated figures weeks ago, stating that the figures would only be correct if the number of citizens’ allowance recipients fell by around 600,000 in 2025. Either Heil really miscalculated in an amateurish way or – which is much more likely – he deliberately wants to mislead the population. In both cases, such a Minister of Labor is completely unacceptable and underlines that the SPD does not care about our country.”

https://rmx.news/article/immigration-does-not-work-not-even-economically-german-government-needs-e10-billion-more-in-welfare-payments-than-originally-predicted-for-2025/

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) has published a report warning of the danger that “whiteness” and “Europeanness” pose to the European Union.

Titled Welcome to Barbieland: European sentiment in the year of wars and elections, the September 25 report discussed how many people have become “visibly disillusioned with the European project” in a way that has surprised those supportive of the bloc.

Rather than citing economic or energy issues faced by the EU, the report blamed, among other things, how “white” the MEPs elected by EU citizens are following the 2024 European Parliament elections in June.

📣New Report!

Today’s EU resembles a Barbieland: a place prone to regard itself as more perfect than it is. Our 3rd edition of the “European Sentiment Compass” examines Europeans' sense of shared space, future & values. @ECF_tweets
✍️@PawelZerkahttps://t.co/FRheaO1fCc pic.twitter.com/CP5bgZelYb

— ECFR (@ecfr) September 25, 2024

“In most countries, non-white and Muslim people were underrepresented in candidate lists … no more than 20 non-white MEPs were elected this year – less than 3 per cent of the total, and well below the 10 per cent share that racial and ethnic minorities are estimated to account for in the EU population,” the report stated.

One might also wonder whether the EU’s normalised xenophobia may not put some young people off the European project altogether while habituating other young people to an ‘ethnic’ conception of Europeanness, and thus allowing them to feel able to vote for the far-right

Such “whiteness”, it continued, served to leave Muslims and other individuals with migrant backgrounds feeling “alienated”.

The report went on to say that the decision of many Europeans to vote for more right-leaning parties had exacerbated such feelings of alienation, arguing that some parties in Europe ran on the platform of deporting large swathes of the non-white population.

“Far-right parties appeared to be on the rise in almost every member state, usually issuing promises to stop immigration or even planning (as the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, did) to expel large swathes of the population,” it claimed.

“Worse still, parts of the European political mainstream (especially among centre-right and liberal parties) certainly appeared to embrace elements of a xenophobic view of the world – as reflected in the EU’s new migration and asylum pact, adopted in April, or in political proposals to send refugees to third countries, both of which raised major human-rights questions.”

Overall, the ECFR warned that there was a public “drift” towards understanding “Europeanness” in ethnic terms, rather than in a “civic” way it viewed as more constructive.

Such a drift, it added, was becoming more common amongst the EU’s youngest voters, further arguing that this same drift may stop more liberal-leaning young people from supporting Brussels in the future.

“One might also wonder whether the EU’s normalised xenophobia may not put some young people off the European project altogether while habituating other young people to an ‘ethnic’ conception of Europeanness, and thus allowing them to feel able to vote for the far-right,” it said in the report.

Some of the claims used by the ECFR to argue that “whiteness” and “Europeanness” posed a danger to the EU could be deemed suspect, with some of the citations in the report open to question.

One such cited example is an article by French daily Le Monde, included to support the report’s claim that the AfD were at some point “planning … to expel large swathes of the population” of Germany. The Le Monde article itself relied heavily on an investigative piece by Correctiv, which has been questioned.

Court cases aimed at challenging the accuracy of the Correctiv report have since proven successful, with the publication having had to backtrack on several elements included in the initial story.

It is unclear why the ECFR did not cite the original Correctiv article.

‘Whiteness’ and ‘Europeanness’ a danger to EU, ECFR report claims (brusselssignal.eu)

A major police operation in the town centre of Viersen that lasted several hours had a relatively mild outcome. Nobody was injured.

A man had tried to injure another person with a knife in a shopping centre (photo). He also threatened visitors to the shopping centre. The suspect, a 33-year-old man from Viersen with Kosovan roots, was provisionally arrested shortly before 10 pm.

‘The police were called at around 5.30 p.m. because there was a threatening situation involving a knife in the Löhcenter’, explained a police spokeswoman after the incident. An initially unknown man had threatened a visitor to the Löhcenter with a knife. This also resulted in an attempted dangerous assault. The man then left the shopping centre. The officers deployed asked visitors to the Löh-Center to leave the shopping centre and cordoned off the area.

‘We deployed large forces to search for a possible suspect’, the spokesperson continued. Police service dogs were also deployed. The police called in support from a special task force. ‘Following information from witnesses, a 33-year-old man from Viersen was suspected’, said the police spokeswoman.

The special task force overpowered the suspect in his flat and provisionally arrested him and another man in the flat. During the search, officers seized a knife in the flat.

According to the current state of the investigation, the police have ruled out both a terrorist and a possible xenophobic background. It is still unclear why the man threatened with a knife in the shopping centre. The spokeswoman explained: ‘The investigation into the background is ongoing.’

A rescue helicopter that landed near the scene shortly before the attack had nothing to do with the operation itself, according to the police.

Four years ago, there had already been a major police operation at the Löhcenter. A bomb threat was made in July 2020. At the time, the police cordoned off a large area of the shopping centre; a bomb was not found.

Viersen: SEK überwältigt Tatverdächtigen nach Bedrohungslage in Einkaufszentrum (rp-online.de)

France’s new Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, of Les Républicains, is considering ending the controversial AME (Aide Médicale d’Etat), which provides free medical assistance to migrants—including illegal ones. The Left sees this stance as a clear sign of the new team’s benevolence towards the ‘far Right,’ and some ministers have openly expressed their discontent.

Invited to appear on the TF1 television news on Monday, September 23rd, Retailleau asserted that he wanted to “take all possible means to reduce immigration in France.” Among these is the reform, or even abolition, of State Medical Aid (AME). This scheme, which entitles foreigners who have been present on French soil for at least three months to free medical care, is costing the state several billion every year.

🗣️ AME : "On la réforme (…) Je ne veux pas que la France soit le pays le plus attractif d'Europe pour un certain nombre de prestations sociales d'accès aux soins."

Bruno Retailleau (@BrunoRetailleau), ministre de l’Intérieur, invité de @GillesBouleau sur TF1 ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/72XY6n7Or5

— TF1Info (@TF1Info) September 23, 2024

AME reform is a thorny issue that regularly poisons the French public debate. Retailleau, former senator and head of the Les Républicains group in the upper house, declared his determination to overhaul France’s migration policy, which was incompletely reformed during stormy debates at the end of 2023. At that time, his parliamentary group had already tried to reform the AME, without success.

The left-wing coalition of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) is, along with the left wing of Emmanuel Macron’s party, firmly opposed to any changes to the AME. In addition to the humanitarian aspect and the risk to public health, the Left claims that the cost of the programme is overestimated by the Right and that it does not act as the pompe aspirante—literally suction pump—or ‘pull factor’ for immigration that their political opponents claim it does. Yet abuses are well-known, numerous, and well-documented.

Other measures are under consideration, such as an “offence of illegal residence,” which existed in French law but was abolished under the presidency of socialist François Hollande. Bruno Retailleau said he was also in favour of introducing random border controls.

Retailleau explained that his approach was part of a European framework. He said he is keen to study the European legislation of countries faced with massive flows of immigrants to  “form a kind of alliance with countries that want to take a firmer stance on immigration, in order to revise European texts that are no longer at all appropriate”. Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and the Netherlands are clearly identified by the minister of the interior as potential partners.

These statements have not gone unnoticed at the European level. A revision of the EU’s Asylum and Migration Pact seems inevitable, if the new minister is to be believed, but not only that; the Schengen Agreement could also be in his sights.

Finally, Retailleau spoke out in favour of renouncing the agreements between France and its former colonies, notably Algeria, which since independence has allowed Algerian nationals to benefit from a certain number of privileges that today weigh heavily on French security and finances. In an implicit reference to the work implemented by Meloni in Italy, he raised the possibility of “making agreements with the Maghreb countries so that there can be immigration retention.”

This seemingly firm statement will be judged by the actions that follow. From the point of view of pure political calculation, it could simply be a question of sending signals to the Rassemblement National and its blocking minority to attract the goodwill of the group of deputies led by Marine Le Pen and her allies. But it is likely to be a difficult game to play. Retailleau’s stated intentions, apparently supported by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, are far from shared by the entire government team, which means complex arbitration will be called for.

Aware of the possible resistance he may encounter in the National Assembly in the absence of a majority, the Minister of the Interior explained that he wanted to make maximum use of the regulatory power his position gives him. “I can go pretty far,” he explained. 

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/french-interior-minister-calls-for-ending-state-medical-aid-to-migrants/

Her boyfriend’s visit ended fatally!

In Burgdorf (30,000 inhabitants, north-east of Hanover), a 37-year-old woman was the victim of a violent crime in her own home. Natascha G. was stabbed in the neck with a knife by her boyfriend Mustafa A. (32, Iraqi). The knifeman then barricaded himself in the flat.what happened? Late on Wednesday evening, the man phoned the police about the murderous incident in the flat in Heiligenbeiler Straße, a spokesman said. According to investigators, it can be assumed that the caller was the suspect. The police had to call in special forces to arrest him.

When the first officers arrived at the scene, they immediately entered the flat. There they found the dead woman, whose body had several stab wounds and cuts.

The man suspected of the offence was also in the flat at the time, but could not be arrested immediately. He had barricaded himself in the flat and repeatedly threatened to take his own life.

Special forces were then called in. These elite forces were then called in and succeeded in arresting him shortly afterwards. According to a police spokesperson, the man was slightly injured and the police did not initially provide any further details about the motive or background to the violent offence. The police also did not initially say what kind of weapon was involved.

They have started an investigation and the criminal investigation department is on duty.

Burgdorf bei Hannover: Frau getötet, Spezialkräfte nehmen Mann fest | Regional | BILD.de

Two Catholic churches in Strasbourg were vandalised by a person who is currently being sought by the police, according to Jean Werlen, the city councillor responsible for relations with religions. On Wednesday September 25, excrement was indeed thrown at the walls of both churches, Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux and Saint-Jean. The two places of worship are only about 100 metres apart. The police have not yet made any arrests and are still looking for the alleged perpetrator, but a witness was able to give the police a description of the suspect. The man could be suffering from mental health problems. According to Jean Werlen, there is currently ‘no message’ behind the vandalism. The mayor of Strasbourg said she was taking the situation ‘very seriously’ and condemned ‘with the utmost determination any attack on religious freedom’. ‘I trust the forces of law and order to fully clarify what happened and to preserve public calm and coexistence’, Jeanne Barseghian added in a statement.

For several weeks now, Catholic places of worship have frequently been the target and object of vandalism. At the beginning of September, the church of Saint-Omer in the Pas-de-Calais department was set on fire. The church’s bell tower even collapsed under the force of the flames. Fortunately, no one was injured in the fire.

Strasbourg : des excréments jetés sur les murs de deux églises, un suspect activement recherché – Valeurs actuelles

Sophia Chikirou, a prominent MP for the left-wing party La France Insoumise (LFI) and close ally of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was indicted on Tuesday for aggravated fraud and abuse of corporate assets in connection with the 2017 presidential campaign accounts of Mélenchon.

The indictment was confirmed by judicial sources and comes after years of investigation into alleged financial misconduct surrounding Mélenchon’s campaign.

At the heart of the investigation is Mediascop, a communications consulting firm owned by Chikirou, which is accused of overcharging for services provided during the campaign. Chikirou, a 45-year-old MP for Paris, denies the allegations.

The investigation, launched in April 2018, was prompted by suspicions that Mediascop had inflated service costs during the presidential run. Chikirou’s company reportedly billed €54,600 to the left-wing party during the campaign, of which €35,250 was later flagged by the National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP) for “significant discrepancies” between the amounts charged and the firm’s official price list.

Despite these concerns, the CNCCFP approved Mélenchon’s campaign accounts in late 2017 after deducting €434,939 in questionable expenses from the total €10.7 million declared by the campaign. However, the commission had raised specific “questions” regarding the billing practices of both Mediascop and another organization tied to the campaign, L’Ere du peuple.

Initially, the investigation led to the indictment of L’Ere du peuple and Marie-Pierre Oprandi, Mélenchon’s financial agent, in 2021 for charges including “illicit loan of labor” and the use of forgeries. This had been seen as a partial victory for LFI, as it initially steered the inquiry away from the more serious allegations of fraud and overbilling.

However, subsequent revelations suggested a deeper level of misconduct. According to reports in the French media, tasks billed by L’Ere du peuple were allegedly carried out by other service providers, with the association issuing false invoices to cover the costs. This led to further indictments, including LFI deputy Bastien Lachaud, who had served as treasurer for the campaign, and L’Ere du peuple, for aggravated fraud and forgery-related offenses.

The developments are expected to cause further complications for La France Insoumise, with Chikirou’s divisive figure looming over the left-wing alliance known as the New Popular Front which contested the recent general election.

She caused controversy last month by posting a hommage on social media to Ismaël Hanniyah, the former leader of the Hamas group who was assassinated in the Iranian capital of Tehran.

The MP reposted screenshots of Hanniyah which described the leader of the proscribed terror organization as a “resistance” fighter and a “martyr” before deleting the posts from her account.

https://rmx.news/article/french-far-left-mp-sophia-chikirou-indicted-for-aggravated-fraud-in-2017-melenchon-campaign/

Germany’s parliament will be reviewing proposed amendments submitted by a pro-pedophile group tomorrow, sparking concerns from child safeguarding advocates. Krumme-13, a lobby group which advocates for lowering the age of consent and legalizing child pornography, is seeking to add language to the constitution which would establish “pedosexuality” as a protected sexual identity.

Dieter Gieseking, the founder of Krumme-13, announced the upcoming vote to his supporters in a post made to the group’s website last week.

“K13online calls for a ban on discrimination against gays and lesbians AND pedophiles in the constitution,” reads the statement. “The vote… will be broadcast live on Parliamentary TV.”

The post highlights the fact that Krumme-13 intends to continue to pressure the government to normalize pedophilia via the Bundestag’s petition process, a strategy that the pedophile activists have undertaken for several years.

“We are already announcing further petitions on topic-relevant areas. The topic of pedophilia / pedosexuality must constantly be in the political debate. The human rights of this sexual minority are becoming ever more restricted. The political fight for acceptance and recognition will never end. The new generation of pedophile-loving people is just growing up,” he wrote.

Krumme-13 appears to have been emboldened by the success of a previous petition drafted by Gieseking on “children’s rights.”

Last October, the Bundestag accepted an amendment written by the pro-pedophile advocate which would alter Article 6, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law to state that “the child’s well-being is paramount”.

However, further elaboration holds that children ought to be treated as “legal subjects” and have a right to have “a say in all matters concerning their spiritual, mental and physical well-being, as well as the right to freely develop their personality.”

Gieseking made certain to point out to his followers on his website that the intended implication of the phrase is to create a legal framework for establishing sexuality as a children’s right. The phrase “sexual self-determination” is included in Article 2 of the Basic Law under the conditions of the “free development of personality.”

“Sexual self-determination (also for children) is derived from the free development of the personality in Article 2,” Gieseking wrote in 2021. As a reference, the petition as well as the German Bundestag both cite the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Krumme-13 petition was was supported by representatives of the Socialist Democrats, Free Democratic Party, and Green Party.

Germany's Parliament has quietly accepted a constitutional amendment on "children's rights" drafted by a pro-pedophilia activist organization.

The amendment was submitted by a man repeatedly convicted of possessing child pornography.https://t.co/boYuofDRRm

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) November 12, 2023

In April of this year, Gieseking shared the news that his petition to include the “sexual identity of pedophiles” as a protected characteristic under the constitution had been approved for discussion by the Petitions Committee.

“The petition service of the German Bundestag announced that the petition ‘Sexual Identity in the Basic Law’, which also includes the sexual identity of pedophiles, will be discussed as an individual petition within the committee. There will therefore be a separate recommendation for a resolution. The Petitions Committee has thus complied with the petitioner’s request.”

“In addition to all of the proposed children’s rights, sexual self-determination must also be protected and included in the Basic Law,” reads a K13online blog post about the petition dated July 2022.

Gieseking has repeatedly claimed that his campaigns to have pedophilia protected as a sexual identity are not equivalent to legalizing child sexual abuse. The activists of K13online have been demanding that the “pedophile [sexual] identity” be “protected from discrimination, criminalization, exclusion and persecution” under Germany’s equality laws.

“Pedophilia must also be included in sexual identity. Pedophiles in particular must be fundamentally protected from discrimination in the Basic Law. And this is completely independent of sexual criminal law. The vast majority of the estimated 250,000 pedophiles do not commit any of these types of crimes. Pedophilia is a separate sexual identity.”

Again, in April, the pedophile advocate stated that the “pedophile identity in the GG (Basic Law) is not about the legalization of consensual sexuality between children and adults,” thereby reiterating his belief that children can consent to sexual activity. “It’s about protecting the pedophile identity from discrimination and thus the recognition and acceptance of pedophiles as a sexual minority.”

Yet his claims contradict other actions and positions advocated for by Krumme-13. In another petition he sent to the government, Gieseking called for the decriminalization of the possession and distribution of child pornography.

“Legalizing clearly self-determined sexuality between older people and those under 14 is the best protection against actual sexual violence against children,” Gieseking wrote, while calling for the abolition of Sections 176 [Sexual Abuse of Children] and 188 [Dissemination, Acquisition and Possession of Child Pornographic Content] of the legal code.

Gieseking advocates for a distinction to be made between “sexual consent” and “sexual violence” when it comes to sexual acts between adults and children. As it is his belief that children can consent to sex with adults, he promotes the view that only the latter should be criminalized.

Gieseking, a 68-year-old former Federal Border Guard official, founded K13 in Trier in 1993 and promoted the group as a “self-help” organization for “pedosexuals.” He has been repeatedly charged with the possession of child pornography.

In 1996, Gieseking was sentenced to eighteen months, for which he served one year in prison, on charges related to operating a mail order child pornography service from a van. In 2003, Gieseking again appeared in court accused of possession of child sexual abuse materials obtained between July 1999 and January 2001. The pornography was found on Gieseking’s computer after a search of his residence in August 2001. His devices contained a total of 216 image files of naked children, and he was sentenced to eight months in prison.

At the time, Gieseking was also accused of linking to a child pornography page on his website. This link was discovered by jugendschutz.net, an organization set up by the federal government to protect minors online.

In a 2014 interview with Taz Online, Gieseking called for lowering the age of consent to 12 years of age, and said that adult sexual interactions with toddlers would have to be “discussed separately.”

“The taboo of pedophilia must finally be broken at all levels of society. If a pedophile can come out without fear of exclusion or even demonization, then this is the best prevention against child abuse,” Gieseking told the outlet.

In accordance with his views on children’s ability to consent, Gieseking has publicly endorsed Germany’s new gender self-identification law, which takes effect November 1 and allows parents to change the sex marker on their children’s documents from birth. From the age of five years old, it allows for name and sex changes if there is “mutual consent” between the child and their parents.

“Why is gender identity also politically important for pedophiles/pedosophists?” Gieseking wrote in a post to K13online. “Gender and sexual identity does not only begin on the 14th birthday, when the so-called protection age limit ends. Children can and want to experience their childhood sexuality self-determined beforehand.”

https://reduxx.info/exclusive-german-parliament-to-review-petition-to-make-pedosexuality-a-legally-protected-identity/

Seventy per cent of National Trust staff are “progressive activists”, the charity’s director-general has admitted. Speaking at a Labour Party fringe event run by More in Common, Hilary McGrady also revealed the views of her staff risk putting the National Trust at odds with the wider public. More in Common’s research revealed only 22 per cent of “progressive activists” are proud of being British, significantly lower than the 59 per cent national average. There is also a huge discrepancy between the group’s stance on immigration and climate change. Eighty-five per cent of “progressive activists” believe immigration has had a positive impact on the UK, with the national average slumping to 43 per cent. The proportion who are “extremely worried” about climate change stands at 72 per cent but just a third of British respondents share similar fears about the environmental crisis. Discussing the views of “progressive activists”, More in Common’s executive director Luke Tryl said: “Progressive activists do tend to be outliers. When you ask the public, ‘when you see the British flag flying, how does it make you feel?’ “Every other segment, including segments that were a core part of Labour’s base, civic pragmatists, which is sort of the soft left, disengaged battlers, which is urban and economically insecure, they said they feel good about it. Progressive activists are outliers on that.” Our Senior Fellow Rafe Heydel-Mankoo discusses on GB News.

A Brussels bookshop has reversed its decision to host a Conservative event, in the hope of preserving its status as an “inclusive space”, organisers of the gathering have claimed.

European Union think-tank MCC Brussels had planned to host the launch of its executive director Frank Furedi’s new book at the Piola.libri bookstore (photo) , located just a few minutes walk from the European Commission’s Berlaymont building.

Speaking to Brussels Signal on September 25, MCC Brussels said the location had cancelled the launch event for The War Against the Past, citing its desire to remain an “inclusive space”.

“Despite having previously agreed to host the event, the venue withdrew its offer, citing concerns about the ‘political connotation’ of the launch and the bookstore’s commitment to being an ‘inclusive space’,” the think-tank said.

Furedi expressed “complete surprise” at the cancellation before warning that the incident represented what he called more evidence that freedom of speech in the EU was being curtailed.

“It was a bolt out of the blue,” the author and professor told Brussels Signal.

He emphasised that despite his book having been well-received by major intellectuals across the US and Europe — and even selling out soon after release in the UK — some in the “Eurobubble” now appeared to be keen to limit its spread.

“When you talk about the cordon sanitaire, it is not just in the European Parliament, it is present all across Brussels,” he said, voicing concern that pressure may have been applied on the bookstore by external forces who wanted to “have a go” at him and his colleagues.

“Cancel culture can appear in the most unlikely of places,” he added.

Piola.libri has been approached for comment.

MCC Brussels emphasised it was not the first time it had been the subject of politically-motivated cancellation. Earlier this year, the Brussels iteration of the National Conservatism conference was cancelled twice as a result of interference from local mayors in the EU capital.

The event was able to secure a third venue just a day before it was scheduled to begin. Still, this too was condemned by one of the city’s mayors, Emir Kir, who even sent in the police at one point in the hope of shutting the conference down.

Such attempts by Kir were eventually rebuffed by the Belgian justice system, with a court in the city ruling that the country’s constitution grants “everyone the right to assemble peacefully”.

Brussels bookshop axes conservatives to protect ‘inclusive space’ (brusselssignal.eu)