Marco Dani

I don't know if people understand just how insanely egregious this is. First of all, 1) not only are NATO spending targets NOT legally binding (nothing in any NATO-related legal text mandates a specific GDP-based threshold for defense spending), but on top of this 2) Spain requested AND RECEIVED an exemption from the 5% target at the 2025 Hague Summit - NATO changed the declaration's language specifically to allow Spain to sign while publicly declaring it would not comply (jurist.org/news/2025/06/n…) This means that, legally speaking and according to NATO's own rules, Spain is doubly within its rights: there is no binding obligation to begin with, and Spain was excused from even this non-binding obligation. That's the first point: Germany's chancellor just endorsed - from the Oval Office - the U.S. punishing a fellow EU nation for refusing to comply with an obligation that doesn't exist in law, under a political pledge Spain was excused from at a NATO summit. The second point is that this 5% target has nothing to do with "defense", quite the contrary in fact: it is pretty explicitly an imperial tribute to the U.S. that will actually **weaken** European defense. That was Spain's main argument for refusing to comply: Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said that "committing to 5% would not make us any safer" because it "would only reinforce our dependence" on the U.S. (tiempoar.com.ar/ta_article/ped…) That's the insane thing about EU defense spending: in recent years, the more it has spent on defense, the more that spending has flowed to American contractors as opposed to European ones, making the EU defense industry weaker (x.com/adam_tooze/sta…). Increasing spending to 5% doesn't strengthen European defense: it accelerates exactly this transfer. All the more insane given the well-documented production backlogs in the U.S. defense industry and its inability to produce at scale: US defense analysts - including from Trump-adjacent think tanks like AEI (aei.org/research-produ…) - openly acknowledge that European customers would be deprioritized behind U.S. ones in any real conflict. AND, critically, a defense industry from a country that's increasingly hostile to Europe - explicitly so in its National Security Strategy - and whose weaponry has "kill switches" that allows for remote disabling. I mean, the sheer madness of it: anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that DOUBLING your defense spending to enrich a foreign arms industry that has kill switches on your weapons, can't meet its own military's needs, and increasingly treats you as an adversary, is not even remotely a defense strategy - it's suicide. That's why having Merz - in the oval office, sitting next to Trump - endorse economic coercion against the one EU country that's still sane enough to see through this madness is so egregious, and frankly straight-up traitorous. For those who know Asterix and Obelix, Spain is the "one small village still holding out against the invaders" and Merz is Cassius Ceramix, the self-described "gallo-roman" Gaul village chief who's the incarnation of all sycophants after his tribe were conquered by the Romans. I'm with Asterix, and all Europeans should be too.

The most independent of the central banks

@maxdantoni Nel primo caso c'è un rinvio alla legge. L' indebolimento semmai c'è per l'istituzione dell'alta corte. Detto questo il sorteggio è soluzione punitiva e solo all'apparenza neutrale

@marcogdani Be', in un caso all'intera platea di magistrati idonei, nell'altro a una lista definita dal Parlamento. Diciamo comunque che l'effetto più ovvio è l'indebolimento dell'organo di autogoverno, con l'effetto di rafforzare il ruolo di chi è chiamato a presiederlo

Alessandro Barbero spiega, con la chiarezza che lo contraddistingue, le ragioni del NO al referendum sulla riforma della giustizia

Hello, this is Yanis Varoufakis with a piece of news that would have been hilarious if it weren’t so scary. This morning, two policemen appeared on my doorstep to serve a summons ordering me to the police headquarters to be interrogated by the Greek DEA, our drug busting police department. Not as a witness, expert or not, but as the accused. Accused of what? Shortly after New Year’s, I appeared on a podcast organised by young people to answer their questions on everything that concerns Gen Z today: social media, the meaning of life, their job prospects, what I call technofeudalism etc. At some point, they asked me if I had ever used drugs. Determined not to do a Bill Clinton (remember the laughable “I didn’t inhale”?), I said I had. Apart from pot, I told them, I had one experience of taking ecstasy in Sydney 36 years ago. It was pleasant, I danced for 16 hours effortlessly but then, I added, it gave me a migraine for a week – and so I never used again. That was my introduction to making the point that, however pleasant drug taking may seem, there is a price to pay. And that the ultimate price is dependence, addiction – “the end of liberty”, I said emphatically. Do you see where this is going? Yes, the Greek police have opened an investigation of me under the charge of... aiding and abetting the narco-mafia. [Do me a favour folks: Please don’t tell Trump, OK?] Seriously now, at a time of war, genocide, stupendous exploitation and so on, my little trouble with the inane Greek police is neither here nor there. But it is important. Here, in Europe, many people still live under the illusion that we have liberty, rationality and freedom. We don’t. Dark forces are at work, pushing us into a postmodern version of the Dark Ages. So, beware, people! They are out to take away the last remnants of autonomy and freedom we have left. Resistance is, literally, existence.

People think of central bank independence as a natural state of affairs. It absolutely is not. In most countries, it is fairly recent. Over the course of the last 30 years, western countries have taken monetary policy, and increasingly fiscal policy too, out of the political processes. US politics is reclaiming it back. Once gone, it won't return. We expect this trend to hit a central bank near you too. Story outside off the paywall today. eurointelligence.com

There is a lot of sugar-coating going on this morning. The sequestration deal is truly dead. The EU will pay the €90bn for Ukraine out of its own pockets. Now that it is the EU’s own money at stake, diplomacy is already starting to shift. Macron said last night EU should reconnect with Putin. The war-mongering in the EU was to a large extent a money illusion - other people paying for it. Now that the EU is having to put its own money where its mouth is, expect to hear to a lot more people calling for peace. eurointelligence.com

@PontiBenedetto Il tuo commento presuppone una direzione politica della magistratura, assunto che non solo non è dimostrato, ma che è smentito dal fatto che a suo tempo alcuni tentativi di mobilitare i controlimiti in materia sociale ci furono

@marcogdani caro Marco, come ben sai, e come appare evidente, qui non si tratta di "quando" (da un certo momento in poi li facciamo valere). Si tratta invece di una applicazione "selettiva", cioè politica.

altro Q.E.D. quasi istantaneo i mitologici "controlimiti", che sono scomparsi all'orizzonte quando si è trattato di fare carne di porco di TUTTI i diritti sociali protetti dalla Costituzione (salute, previdenza, istruzione, pensione, risparmio, etc. etc.), ecco che improvvisamente tornano fuori se si tratta di salvaguardare il diritto pieno e incondizionato di sbarcare sulle nostre coste. "le regole UE a rischio di incostituzionalità": letteralmente così! 🤡🤡🤡

Jay Powell/ Fed have quietly caved to Trump. US central bank independence is now a smokescreen. not because the Fed lowered interest rates yesterday, as Trump demanded. Less publicised, but more important, is the Fed decision to purchase USD 40bn of Treasury bills monthly.

A critique of the EU rarmament agenda from a constitutional perspective -- The EU’s (not so) cheap talk on defence | European Law Open | Cambridge Core - bit.ly/44yLQNm

"Elettrizzante", il termine adatto.

Steve Bannon: Trump is gonna get a third term and people ought to just get accommodated with that. At the appropriate time we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there’s a plan and President Trump will be the president in ‘28

Ernesto Galli della Loggia, storico.

If the government was truly horrified by Israel’s occupation of Gaza, it would stop supplying them with the weapons they need to carry it out. The Prime Minister can condemn Israel’s plans all he wants. He cannot hide the truth: his government is complicit in genocide.

@maxdantoni @AlbertoBagnai Moravcsik, The choice for Europe (1998 o giù di lì)

@AlbertoBagnai @marcogdani Questo è vero, almeno per quel che conosco

Qualcuno da anni vi parla di un sistema che vive di dumping. Ora lo fa anche il Max Planck Institut. Va bene così? Occorre altro? mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/20…

Un post in due puntate sui profili istituzionali del piano di riarmo

@nelloscavo Una pace che comporti una qualsiasi cessione territoriale da parte dell'Ucraina sarà sempre ingiusta. Ma allo stato attuale continuare la guerra significa esporre l'Ucraina al rischio di ulteriori e più dolorose cessioni. Vale davvero la pena continuare?

Adesso è chiaro cosa vuole la gang del Cremlino? Cioè #Ucraina deve lasciare l’Ucraina, non solo rinunciare ai territori rapinati da #Mosca ma cedere ciò che ancora #Putin non ha conquistato. Qualcuno andrà a manifestare sotto le ambasciate #Russia per denunciare la pirateria?

<<Per combattere questa «guerra di guerriglia» o contro-intellettualismo, poiché «le idee sono armi – le sole armi con cui altre idee possono essere combattute», Powell discute di come «riequilibrare» le facoltà, attraverso il finanziamento di corsi, dipartimenti, cattedre, 1/

regalatevi la lettura di questo fascicolo appena uscito a cura di @marcogdani -e con contributo tra gli altri di @l_u_s_q - su Europa, stato interventista, e assonanze tra New Deal e Stato costituzionale europeo