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Cake day: January 29th, 2025

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  • Back in June, several media reported that Teresa Ribera is refusing to exempt any sort of operational cost when it comes to solar panel, wind turbine, and battery producers from the bloc’s strict state aid regime.

    One such article is here, saying, amongst others:

    The powerful competition directorate of the European Commission is indeed going ahead and blocking a push that would enable the governments to subsidize their production costs when it comes to clean energy technologies, thereby flaring-up the tensions between the EU officials who are enforcing the state-aid rules and the ones who are working on the industry … This internal battle underscores the EU’s executive struggle in order to navigate the barriers of supporting the emerging technologies in the global race between Europe and China as well as the US, but at the same time also holding firm to its traditional free market approaches when it comes to subsidies.














  • All you need is a clickbait headline and an absurdly bad interpretation of a study, and you see doomerism (and some tankies) in full force.

    As someone already wrote in this thread, the study has a different outcome than what the title suggests. I encourage everyone to click the original study link (it’s in German, but there is DeepL and the like …).

    The young European don’t loose faith in democracy, but I have been loosing faith in the Guardian for some time.





  • Fact Sheet: Russia’s Kidnapping and Re-education of Ukraine’s Children – [from March 2025]

    • Yale HRL [Humanitarian Research Lab] has identified more than 8,400 children from Ukraine who have been systematically relocated to at least 57 facilities––including 13 facilities in Belarus and 43 facilities in Russia and Russia-occupied territory.

    • Russia targeted vulnerable groups of children for deportation, including orphans, children with disabilities, children from low-income families, and children with parents in the military.

    • There are documented cases in which children were physically abused, denied communication with their families in Ukraine, and given inadequate access to food and care after being taken to Russia.

    • Russia has refused to give Ukrainian authorities a list of children taken to Russia––as required by international law––and has engaged in various activities to conceal their forced deportation and illegal adoption of children from Ukraine.

    • The** kidnapping and indoctrination, including military training, of children from Ukraine was ordered by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin** and executed by Russia’s federal, regional, and occupation officials. Russia’s security services and criminal investigative agency systematically targeted vulnerable groups of children and transported them to Russia, where regional officials subjected them to re-education and listed children for adoption. Russia’s Investigative Committee has set recruitment quotas and designated a cadet school for children from Ukraine, creating a direct pipeline into federal security service.

    • Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the forced deportation of Ukraine’s children.

    • Hundreds of children––including those with families––were taken from Ukraine and illegally placed for adoption in Russia or placed in Russian families. In at least one case, Russia’s government re-issued the child’s birth certificate, changing the child’s name and place of birth. Such changes in personal information present significant barriers to identifying the child for return.

    Addition:

    The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly just issued a report yesterday (30 June) urging governments to act on the deportation and Russification of Ukrainian children (the report is here as pdf).

    TLDR:

    • Albeit less overtly violent, these crimes consist of the erasure of Ukrainian identity and militarization of children who are forced not only to endure a brutal war of aggression during those formative childhood years, but to have Russian imperialism, aided by Belarus and North Korea, kill their parents, siblings, relatives, friends, language, culture and home. Because of Putin’s war, these children are being robbed of their identity.
    • Sources on the number of Ukrainian children that have been forcibly deported to Russia vary: 19,546 have been confirmed by Ukraine, while the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab places the number closer to 35,000. Maria Lvova-Belova, the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights (wanted for arrest by the International Criminal Court) has claimed that over 700,000 Ukrainian children have been “relocated” to Russia, while her Ukrainian counterpart, Daria Herasymchuk, estimates the true number to be between 200,000—300,000. Russia has consistently refused to provide Ukraine or other international parties with any records of transferred children, in violation of international law.
    • The experiences of these deported children vary, but many are forced to undergo intense efforts to erase their Ukrainian identity. Children are subjected to Russification and militarization, including being forced to speak Russian, sing the Russian national anthem, participate in military marches and handle firearms. Moreover, the few children that have returned from these camps demonstrate signs of having been psychologically and physically abused and of the resulting trauma, including unquestioning obedience of adults and fear of using the Ukrainian language.
    • Adding to the difficulty is the fact that many children have had their birth records and names changed to appear Russian, and the fact that some children were deported at such a young age that they might not remember their origin and home in Ukraine. Most importantly, the Russian Federation needs to agree to return the children – if not, it will be practically impossible, even if the children are identified and located.

    The report makes a range of recommendations to address this nightmare.



  • This year’s Country Report on Hungary have been discussed at the start of June in Budapest, it provides good first insights into the state of Hungary’s economy.

    The report concludes:

    Excessive centralization and intense government intervention are both holding businesses back, with the World Bank also seeing a serious deterioration in government indicators. For example, [Hungary has] dropped to 26th place among EU members in terms of anti-corruption controls and to the last, 27th place in terms of the quality of regulation. The structure of public spending has shifted from traditional tasks to economic intervention both compared to 2010 and when compared with the rest of the region, which she believes is not at all beneficial.

    [Political economist and lecturer at the University of West Hungary] Zoltán Pogátsa stressed that Balázs Orbán, the Prime Minister’s advisor [not related to PM Viktor Orbán], had identified that we [Hungarians] have fallen into the trap of a middle-income economy. […] Many are stuck in this situation, but [Pogátsa] said that there is a wide range of literature on how to get out of it: those who have managed to escape have done so by strengthening human capital. However, the innovative potential of companies here [in Hungary] is severely limited by the fact that Hungary’s human capital indicators are not on a par with those of other Visegrád countries, from healthcare and language skills to reading comprehension. He expects change to come only when the most important ministers will be those responsible for healthcare or education, but these areas currently do not even have their own ministries.

    For a few years, Hungarian productivity did indeed grow, but this is relative. Compared to walking, a horse-drawn carriage is very fast, but not when surrounded by cars – and the Hungarian economy has jumped onto a horse-drawn carriage, while everyone else is driving cars …