Transatlantic Intelligencer: Gerhard Schröder, Belgian Jihad and French Car Burning

Transatlantic Intelligencer: Gerhard Schröder, Belgian Jihad and French Car Burning

Editor's Note: Today we present the second installment of Transatlantic Intelligencer, a new column written by World Politics Review translations editor John Rosenthal. Drawing from predominantly European foreign-language news sources, Rosenthal posts each "Trans-Int" item on the WPR blog as he uncovers it. At the start of the next week, we publish all of the items in this full column in our news section.

GERARD SCHRÖDER, NOW AND THEN -- With important elections upcoming later this month in the German states of Hesse and Lower Saxony and next month in Hamburg, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has returned to the public eye: campaigning for his Social Democratic Party (SDP) and leading the charge against the rival Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

The incumbent CDU Governor of Hesse, Roland Koch, has come in for particularly severe criticism from the former chancellor. Following a brutal attack on a senior citizen in a Munich subway station last month, the themes of "youth crime" and "foreigner crime" [Ausländerkriminalität] have come to dominate the headlines in Germany. In an interview with the popular German tabloid Bild, Koch took up and joined the themes, saying "We have too many young criminal foreigners [in Germany]," and he appeared to endorse expulsions as a means of dealing with the alleged "problem." "Someone who as a foreigner fails to respect our rules does not belong here," Koch said. It should be noted that in Germany the term "foreigner" [Ausländer] is commonly applied to immigrants or even second- or third-generation descendants of immigrants. (For example, Serkan A., one of the two young "foreigners" accused of the Munich subway attack, was born and raised in Germany.)

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article as well as three free articles per month. You'll also receive our free email newsletter to stay up to date on all our coverage:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having your own personal researcher and analyst for news and events around the globe. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of 15,000+ articles
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday
  • Weekly in-depth reports on important issues and countries
  • Daily links to must-read news, analysis, and opinion from top sources around the globe, curated by our keen-eyed team of editors
  • Your choice of weekly region-specific newsletters, delivered to your inbox.
  • Smartphone- and tablet-friendly website.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review