HALF CYCLE
The textbook budget. Budgets are a bit like most European commissioners: boring, but (generally) important. We'll all be hearing a lot about the next MFF in the coming months, but before they get to the meat of it, MEPs will be taking off their gloves for a little ideological tussle over the 2026 budget. On Monday, MEPs will debate the thorny issue of whether Palestinian textbooks should be eligible for funding.
Teaching terrorism? The textbooks in question are being distributed to schoolchildren in Gaza by the Palestinian Authority, which relies heavily on EU aid – an average of around €300 million a year over the past four years, some of which has gone to finance books that casually mix grammar lessons with calls to violence.
Counting the “martyrs”. History teaches us that anti-Semitism is a “false claim” that justifies the “colonization” of Palestine — at least according to PA History, Vol. 1, Grade 11. Elsewhere, the sentence “Jihad is one of the gates of paradise” offers a literal example of textbook use of inflectional suffixes. Oh, and while you’re at it, please calculate the average number of “martyrs” killed by Israel in each year between 1994 and 2015, will you?
“Hatred and violence.” IMPACT-se, a nonprofit based in Israel and the U.K. that reviews curricula for extremist content, recently published a new report on EU-funded textbooks, concluding that “these newly created materials contain anti-Semitic content that incites students to acts of violence justified on both nationalist and religious grounds.” The group said the curricula “incite hatred and violence.” Previous IMPACT-se reports have led to parliament freezing funding for the PA.
Follow the money. Moritz Körner, a German MEP from the Renew Europe group and part of the EP’s delegation for relations with Israel, has been on a crusade to stop the flow of European public money to finance anti-Semitism. During a meeting of the Renew group on Wednesday, he made another attempt to gain support for an amendment to the European Parliament’s resolution on the political guidelines for the budget. It resulted in a minor altercation, Euractiv has learned.
In Moritz's corner: his Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Germany's “Free voters” who backed an amendment that effectively calls for making EU money conditional on “removing anti-Semitic content from Palestinian school textbooks.”
On the other hand: basically everyone else who hated “Moritz's tricks” of reopening a case that Renew had already closed without additions that would make it too controversial to accept.
'Freedom fighters': 'There is no point in talking about school textbooks now, all the schools have been bombed,' said one source familiar with the situation. Hamas was repeatedly referred to as 'freedom fighters' at the meeting, one source said, although others present denied this.
“Renewable Europe” is (again) divided along national lines – a persistent problem in a group that brings together spendthrift French MEPs and thrifty Germans, progressive Scandinavians and conservative Germans.
Trouble is coming: the circus will be carried over to the plenary session in Strasbourg, where the European Parliament will vote on the budget, and next week the battle over Gaza will unfold in the EU's lower house.
A man on a mission. Despite opposition from his own group, Koerner collected the necessary 35 signatures to submit the amendment to a vote by all 719 of his colleagues.
Abandoning the main point. Meanwhile, center-right lawmakers have introduced another amendment calling for an end to aid from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), a move that would make criticism of textbooks look like child's play.
Parliament will vote on the 2026 budget on Wednesday.
PILSNER SECTION
Kitchen privacy. Shared office kitchens are risky storage areas, where last night’s leftovers can easily fall prey to hungry colleagues with no regard for the boundaries of private property. The kitchens of the European Parliament are no different – except that the motives for theft can be far more political, especially when beer is involved.
The crime scene: a communal kitchen in Zone F of the European Parliament building on Via Spinelli, which resembles a labyrinth.
Victim: Alexander Jungbluth, a German MEP for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and a member of the parliament's budget committee. The 34-year-old came to Brussels as part of the AfD's record 2024 campaign and made headlines when he called for a ban on imported food products in Europe during the election campaign.
Kebab? No, don't eat it! “We don't want kebab kiosks and hookah bars all over Europe,” Jungbluth once said.
Kultur war . “German culture in Germany,” Jungbluth demanded, “French culture in France and Italian culture in Italy – and not this multicultural uniformity everywhere!”
Patriotic Pils: In an attempt to kick-start Europe's national cultural renaissance, Jungbluth ordered 15 bottles of Hasseröder Premium Pils from East Germany, known for its hazel grouse logo and bitter taste.
German genius. Jungbluth decided to store his drink in the fridge of the communal kitchen, which is almost never used due to the many takeaways, buffets and dinner flights in the European Quarter of Brussels.
Casual conversations . Jungbluth discussed the matter with an assistant in another office, who noticed the beer from their home region: Saxony-Anhalt, in former socialist East Germany.
The conversation was overheard by one of the MEPs, who decided to take the beer for himself “in protest against the AfD’s repeated disrespectful behavior in parliament,” they told the Euractiv portal.
Fall. As a result of theft, Jungbluth and his beer-loving brethren had to contend with the worst of Europe's multicultural excess: Belgian beer.
THE FOURTH ESTATE
Axel-ology. As we closed last week’s issue, our hero, Axel Springer board member Martin Varsavsky, had been quietly removed from Axel Springer’s corporate website. Our suspicions were correct: More than 48 hours after our inquiry, the company confirmed that Varsavsky was sharing the board after more than a decade of public strife with Politico. We unpack the facts for you here and separately analyze Springer’s decision to “bow to the woke crowd.”
CAROUSEL
Speaking of Politico , the publication's former head of European business, Nicolas Sennegon, has been appointed commercial director of International at the Conference Board, an influential New York-based economic think tank. He will be based in Brussels.
That's all for this week. Remember: send your tips to transom@euractiv.com.
Servus!
*Magnus Lund Nielsen contributed reporting.
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