Only step by step I can reach #Finiseuropae “the end of Europe”. Of course I just want to see the geographical end of Europe. To reach the Atlantic cost on food sounds good. Like for many others the way is the aim. I want to discover the varied continent. I just have wanderlust and want to see Europe in a kind of excavation research. “In short”: I am walking from Berlin to Santiago de Compostella. But as said only in stages, only when time and my mood alows me. My next destination: Abbey of Corvey in my home region Hochstift Paderborn and by the way… I will see 3 UNESCO World heritage properties: St Mary’s Cathedral and St Michael’s Church at Hildesheim, Fagus Factory in Alfeld and Carolingian Westwork and Civitas Corvey. You can follow me on Komoot, Instragram and Twitter.

My route planner tells me it will be over 3,000 km. I will pass Paderborn, Cologne, Trier, Schengen, Metz,  Dijon, Cluny, Taizé, Le Puy-en-Velay taking the Via Podiensis to Spain and then the Camino Francés. I am really not sure when I will reach Santiago, but I have all the time of the world.

Day 1/100 from Berlin 2 #finiseuropae 🙂 1/3000km #CaminodeSantiago #WayofStJames #jakobsweg pic.twitter.com/Cik22H89at

— Bernd 🇪🇺 Hüttemann (@huettemann) August 12, 2016

And I am faster than I thought. Since 2016 already 20 stages are behind me, which means 430 km. I already crossed Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and I’m now taking the southern part of Lower Saxony. These first stages I could manage to go back and foreward by train. But already in Saxony-Anhalt and near Brunswick there are fine good possibilities to stay over night in pilgrims refugees. But especially between Berlin and the former iron curtain this is not an easy task. Alan Posener is right: the eastern German states compose a region with the most unbelieving people in the world, perhaps after North Korea. But beautiful landscapes, hidden treasures and remarkable historical sights and many many helpful individuals made my first 300 km unforgetable. I made my Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt trip public in German language.

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#finiseuropae 398 km of 3000 km done! #jakobsweg #stjamesway #caminodesantiago #riddagshausen

A post shared by Bernd (@huettemann) on Jul 16, 2017 at 8:59am PDT

Next week I will walk the last stage in Lower Saxony destination North-Rhine Westphalia, my home state. My route with some high lights:

The following region is the first Catholic one on my way west. I will discover Hildesheim with its St Mary’s Cathedral and St Michael’s Church. In the evening I will reach Abbey Marienrode. 10 Benedictine nuns will host me.

In Alfeld I will be guest of the Lutheran parish St. Nicolai. Another Highlight will be an industrial sight: the Fagus Factory a UNESCO World Heritage

Amelungsborn Abbey is a quite remarkable abbey. It’s abbot is Lutharian. I am very curious about my staying there. The hospitality also there will be great.

Then I will be on my way to Höxter in Westphalia. Believe it or not my first time in Corvey Abbey. And this Abbey was the dominion to which a big part of my ancestors tithed until the beginning of the 19th century.

Tour done: My summary in German

My three interviews at  “Der Tag” at Deutsche Welle TV  this week. Dealing with the refugee situation after the latest European Court of Justice ruling, solidarity and German government responsiblity as well as the EU Rule of Law in Poland, and (yes, not my core topic) US sanctions against Russia.

German Summary also  at Europäische Bewegung Deutschland.

Giovanni Sartori underlined rightly that democracy needs to be complicated but must be still easy enough to be explained.

Europe’s landscape of societies is very diverse. The idea that “there are not Member States, but Member Countries,” is an often-undervalued reality in most of the EU and its candidate countries. There are mixed private-public systems including many more actors than just state authorities, with extensive differences. The classic example of a “statist country” is France, with a strong technocratic leadership which gains public support by a simple majority of the electorate. The fifth Republic was created in reaction to a terror-driven civil war and a colonial war; it aimed to provide minimal space for consensus-seeking, self-organized entities, and parliamentarism. Other countries are associated with a traditional European corporatism. The classical example is Austria, where employers’ and employees’ associations are still an integral part of the state’s governance and are criticized as being dusty. The old Scandinavian model, but also the Dutch “polder system” including a strong welfare state, is a pluralistic-corporative model where a “big” parliamentarian democracy is backed by smaller democratic checks and balances throughout society. The Danish call it lille demokrati, meaning “small democracy.” “Big democracy” with elections and parliamentarian decision-making is also based on citizens’ democracy, which is day-in-day-out compromising at school, at the work-place, or in associations. With its strong pluralistic corporatism, Germany is also an example of democratic complication; checks and balances are getting even more complex through federalism.

Read the full text at Turkish Policy Quarterly Spring edition 2017

ll the British glamour is gone. Westminster played the fake anti-EU card too much. My today’s article in The Guardian:

With the result of the EU referendum it is now crystal clear: the game has gone too far. The diagnosis of the “UK illness” – creating a beast you cannot control – was always felt in Germany but seldom spoken about out loud. Whenever I talked to stakeholders in Berlin or even German diplomats in London about British politics in the past decade, they were both fascinated by their shiny rhetoric and annoyed by a great lack of solidarity and the permanent gambling in an attempt to cherry-pick the aspects of the EU that suited Britain. Unlike during the 80s and 90s, boring speeches are far more appreciated by the German people now.House of Cards scares us. As simple as that. Read the full article!

Rough talk before the European Council with Turkey is aimed at the national media, EM Germany’ secretary general explains in Chinese Television CCTV news. Watch the news piece on refugee politics conflict lines in Germany and Europe.

In a report ahead of the European Council with Turkey, Chinese TV station CCTV takes a closer look at Germany’s isolated position in the refugee crisis. CCTV’s Berlin correspondent Guy Henderson is also showing the conflict lines within Germany. “There must be some tough talk and provocations before the Council in Germany because we have state elections coming up here”, EM Germany’s general secretary Bernd Huettemann is quoted. “They are doing it for the national media.” Huettemann expects the row to calm down a bit after the election Sunday.

Watch the news piece here

In an interview with the Serbian news agency Tanjug, I underlined the long reform process an EU accession would require. However, Serbia has gained very positive reputation due to the refugee crisis, particularly in Germany. In times of the massive movement of refugees towards Europe, Serbia’s constructive role affects the perception of the pre-accession country very positively.

Referring to the Serbian question to what extend the Russian interests need to be taken into account, I asked not to mix up the topics. Serbia is clearly on a European path. The EU’s agenda must not consider other country’s interests substantially.

Interview at Tanjug (in English) 

Online article at Channel B92 (in Serbian)

.@huettemann: #SerbiaEU will take longer than 3 years, via @TanjugNews #CSbeyond #EurMove https://t.co/lwoaFePD9O pic.twitter.com/JOU0SdQEMp

— Evropski pokret (@EvropskiPokret) February 29, 2016

So here I go! 12 days ahead for me in the Lebanon. I try to get an inside view into Relief & Reconciliation for Syria, a small but fine NGO which provides humanitarian aid to those who are affected by the Syrian crisis in tiny country. It is my first trip to the Middle East. Apart from Anatolia and Cyprus I never felt Asian ground.

Is it a good idea to start with the Lebanon? Since my childhood I remember this small country in bloody conflicts on a black and white TV screen. Just before Europe raised its iron curtain a ceasefire ended a 16 years old civil war. Coincidence? The Lebanese Civil War was certainly also a proxy war. The cold worriers stopped feeding…

Now walking through Beirut gives a mixed picture. Houses destroyed by the Civil War, Disney-like rich architecture and still enclaves of all kinds of communities protected by checkpoints with heavy weapons. The main common glue seems to be an uncontrolled private capitalism without communal administration.

Martyrs square #Beirut symbol for the cedar recolution = beginning of the end of #Syria ‘s occupation of #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/I1xFCuGnQW

— Bernd Hüttemann (@huettemann) 30. Dezember 2014

It looks all oddly familiar to me. Over decades I got more media information about Lebanon than about Ukraine. For sure this was due to the brutality of the conflicts, both in numbers as in pictures. 150.000 people got killed in 16 years. 1 Mio people were displaced. Although violence came back in 2000 Lebanon remained remarkably stable in its fragility. Who are dominating the state? Muslims or Christians? The situation is far more complicated: Muslims belong half to Shia half to Sunni Islam. The Christian community is also fragmented into many confessions. However within the Christian group Maronites – united with the Catholic Church – are the clear dominating majority. Furthermore, the small and closed religious community of Druze play a pivotal political role. Since the Taif Agreement, the Lebanese political system might be parliamentarian,  but it is highly based on confessionalism, giving each of the major religious groups a political role. It is the only democracy in the world based on religious groups. Unofficially but constantly, the President has to be a Maronite Christian, the Speaker of the Parliament a Shia Muslim, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim etc. In comparison with other countries in the region, Lebanon is – within confessional limits – a politically free country. The diverse groups ensure a certain pluralism of media.  Another division line can be drawn since the Cedar revolution, which led to the end of the Syrian occupation of the country. The March 14 Alliance is considered to be pro-Western, the March 8 Alliance pro-Iranian. But parties were changing sides over the years. The patriarchical leadership of most of the parties and affiliation to family clans might lead to the conclusion that Lebanese leadership goes not so much along religious but rather clanic lines.

However, let it be religious, geo-/political, or clan-driven: existing checks-and balances remain fragile, but remain. And even though the Civil War broke the predominance of Christian forces in the only “Christian state” of the Middle East, the War and the Cedar Revolution in the aftermath made also the Muslim communities more Lebanese. Before, pan-Arabic movements wore predominant. The non-state Lebanon became a little bit more state by outside thread, even though the state infrastructure has not yet recovered from the conflicts of the past. Contradictions everywhere! But perhaps they are more coherent than one might think at first sight.

In the meantime, the former occupier Syria became herself a slaughter house. The outbreak of the civil war in Syria forced over 1.5 Mio refugees to flee into Lebanon, which counts alone just 4.4 Mio Lebanese and some 800,000 Palestinian and other refugees. Lebanon has become the world’s country with the highest number of refugees per capita. Isn’t a negative spill-over of the Syrian humanitarian disaster to the fragile Lebanon inevitable?

For a long time, Syria and its unique religious and linguistic mosaic had been dominated by the Assad regime. The regime as well as other criminal extremists, have pushed the peaceful revolution against its iron grip into a sectarian war. Deliberately, as some presume. A double-faced terror let Christians and especially Sunnis flew to Lebanon.

Tomorrow, I will travel to the North of Lebanon together with Friedrich Bokern, to the Peace Centre of R&R. I am sure some answers to the current situation will lead to many more questions. Read my report on Syrian refugees and their impact on Lebanon’s confessional ballance and my report on traveling in Lebanon in German.