标签： Europe

OSLO — Nearly two weeks after the passing of Norway’s King Harald V at the age of 89, dignitaries from across the globe gathered in the Norwegian capital Wednesday to lay to rest one of the nation’s most popular modern monarchs, closing 13 days of national mourning with a day of full ceremonial honors.

The day of remembrance began with ceremonial troops assembling at Akershus Fortress, the medieval hilltop castle that would become Harald’s final resting place. A formal procession then carried the late king’s casket from the Royal Palace through central Oslo to Oslo Cathedral, where the public funeral service was held. Tens of thousands of Norwegians lined the procession route to pay their final respects, as members of the royal family followed the coffin through the city streets. Newly ascended King Haakon, Harald’s only son, walked alongside his sister Princess Märtha Louise and their children, Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus. Queen Sonja, Harald’s 89-year-old widow, and Queen Mette-Marit, Haakon’s wife who recently underwent a successful lung transplant, followed behind in a motor vehicle.

More than 30 senior royal figures from 10 nations around the world joined the ceremony, alongside multiple heads of state and government. The United Kingdom’s delegation included Prince William, the Prince of Wales, who represented his father King Charles III, and Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, who attended in a personal capacity as King Haakon’s godmother. Nordic neighbors were represented by Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf and Denmark’s King Frederik X, completing the group of three reigning Nordic monarchs in attendance. Other high-profile guests included Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, alongside five foreign prime ministers and royals from Jordan, Monaco, Belgium, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands.

During the service inside Oslo Cathedral, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre delivered a moving eulogy honoring the late king’s 35-year reign. Støre praised Harald for his rare ability to strike a balance between regal dignity and approachable groundedness, noting that he had “made Norway greater” through his steady leadership. Queen Sonja placed a single red rose atop her late husband’s casket, and both she and Mette-Marit were visibly emotional throughout the ceremony, with Mette-Marit seen wiping tears from her eyes. A brief, poignant moment of unintended disruption occurred when a mobile phone alarm interrupted three tolling bells marking the end of a national minute’s silence, which had been observed across every corner of Norway.

A notable guest at the service was Marius Borg Høiby, Mette-Marit’s son, who is not a working royal but was raised in the royal household. Høiby, who was sentenced to four years in prison in June on two counts of rape and is currently under house arrest pending an appeal, received special court permission to attend his step-grandfather’s funeral, and sat in the second row alongside Märtha Louise’s children. The service concluded with a dramatic flyover of four F-35 fighter jets in the “missing man” formation, a traditional tribute to fallen leaders.

Following the cathedral service, the casket was processed back to Akershus Fortress for a private interment ceremony in the Palace Chapel, attended by close family, visiting dignitaries and Norwegian political leaders. Harald was laid to rest alongside generations of Norwegian royal predecessors, including his father King Olav V, his mother Crown Princess Märtha, and his grandparents King Haakon VII and Queen Maud.

After the burial, Norwegian flags across Oslo were raised from half-mast to full staff to mark the close of the national mourning period. The new royal leadership — King Haakon, Queen Mette-Marit, Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra, Prince Sverre Magnus and Queen Sonja — returned to the Royal Palace, where they appeared on the palace balcony to greet the tens of thousands of Norwegians gathered outside. The appearance was a gesture of gratitude for the outpouring of public support the family has received since Harald’s death on August 28.

Long remembered by Norwegians as a unifying, modernizing force who brought the Norwegian monarchy into the 21st century, Harald was widely described by royal observers as the “grandfather of the nation,” deeply respected and beloved across the political and social spectrum. In a statement released the day after his father’s passing, King Haakon thanked Harald for “being such a good dad” and praised him for remaining “always stayed true” to his core values and public commitments throughout his decades on the throne. The late king’s final months were marked by private and public turmoil for the family: earlier this year, documents revealed Mette-Marit’s past frequent contact with disgraced late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a connection she later said she regretted, alongside Høiby’s June conviction, which cast a shadow over the final period of Harald’s reign.

Ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned visit to Ireland this coming weekend, Ireland’s largest opposition party Sinn Féin has confirmed it will participate in widespread public demonstrations against the trip, citing Washington’s ongoing facilitation of Israeli military actions in Palestine that the party leadership describes as genocide. The visit, which will see Trump hold formal meetings with Ireland’s head of state and top elected official before heading to a private golf resort, has sparked significant public and political backlash across the country, which holds one of the most pro-Palestinian policy stances in the European Union.

During Sinn Féin’s annual pre-parliamentary term policy think-in in Dublin this week, party president Mary Lou McDonald told reporters that public outrage over the crisis in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank has made protests against the visit not just inevitable, but entirely justified. “I’m not surprised that there will be protests at this visit,” McDonald stated. “I think that is quite correct given the scale of the breaches of international law, given the genocide in Palestine, events in Gaza and on the West Bank, we are seeing settler violence at a rate that is literally unspeakable.”

McDonald emphasized that the United States bears direct responsibility for the ongoing crisis, saying “The United States, and I say this with deep, deep regret and some anger, facilitates that, facilitates Israel in its onslaught against the Palestinian people. So quite correctly there will be a protest against some of that. I would be deeply shocked if there weren’t and, yes, Sinn Féin will be there.”

Beyond joining the street demonstrations, McDonald has publicly pressured Irish President Catherine Connolly and Taoiseach Micheál Martin to openly raise the Palestinian crisis during their scheduled meetings with Trump. Connolly, who was a vocal critic of U.S. policy prior to her election to the presidency last year, will hold a short introductory meeting with Trump at the Áras an Uachtaráin, the official presidential residence. McDonald said she expects Connolly to use even that brief encounter to address the issue of U.S. military and political support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza. “I would imagine and I would hope that given the opportunity, that she would raise the matter particularly in regards to Palestine and the United States ongoing facilitation and arming of Israel,” McDonald said, adding that she made the call aware of the limited time available for the meeting.

For Martin, who is set to hold a full bilateral meeting with the U.S. president, McDonald said the taoiseach has a clear obligation to reflect the widespread public opposition to Israeli actions in Ireland. “The taoiseach will have every opportunity again to set out the views and the position of the Irish State and the Irish people and I believe he must do so very, very clearly and very firmly,” she added.

Trump’s itinerary for the weekend confirms he will first meet with Connolly and Martin in Dublin before traveling to his private golf resort in Doonbeg, County Clare, where he will attend the Amgen Irish Open golf tournament. Opposition politicians across Ireland have argued that the Irish government should not extend a warm welcome to Trump, amid widespread public anger over his administration’s unwavering support for Israel.

The call for Irish leaders to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes just days after the United Kingdom announced new sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband framed the move as the start of a new approach to the conflict that backs up criticism of injustice with concrete action, accusing the Israeli government of ignoring settler-driven ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities. Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded by calling Miliband’s accusation an outrageous lie, and announced retaliatory measures including the closure of the UK’s consulate in East Jerusalem.

This week marks the annual pre-session think-in period for all major Irish political parties, held ahead of the new term of the Dáil, Ireland’s national parliament. The closed-door gatherings bring together parliamentary party members, TDs (the Irish equivalent of members of parliament) and senators to map out policy priorities and legislative strategies for the coming year.

The political landscape of Germany shifted dramatically this week, following a landmark electoral upset that has reignited fierce ideological battles in the country’s federal parliament. Just days after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured a sweeping victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt — capturing nearly 44% of the popular vote, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) saw its support cut in half to just 17.2% — Merz and AfD leader Alice Weidel faced off in their first high-stakes parliamentary debate since the election result.

In a charged address to the Bundestag, Merz launched a scathing attack on the AfD, labeling the party a fundamental “destructive force” for German democracy and society. His sharpest criticism targeted the AfD’s flagship “remigration” policy, a hardline agenda that prioritizes mass deportations of irregular migrants and has been repeatedly flagged by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, which already classifies the Saxony-Anhalt AfD branch as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement. Merz argued that the policy would strip Germany of one-sixth of its skilled labor force, many of whom have migrant backgrounds. He called the proposal “nothing other than ethnic cleansing in the skilled trades, based on skin color and national origin.”

Weidel, who opened the debate, struck back at Merz’s three-party coalition government with center-left Social Democrats, framing the Saxony-Anhalt result as a clear public rejection of the administration’s agenda. She told assembled MPs that voters had delivered a definitive verdict: Merz’s government was a complete failure, and its time in power had run its course. She blamed mass, unregulated migration for rising public insecurity, citing repeated incidents of knife violence in public spaces including trains and transit stations. Weidel also accused the coalition of driving Germany’s national finances toward bankruptcy, noting that the CDU had been “pulverized” at the polls in the eastern state.

The debate quickly descended into chaos, with repeated heckling from AfD MPs that grew so disruptive that Bundestag President Julia Klöckner was forced to intervene, threatening to expel unruly members from the chamber. “We are not on a football pitch,” she warned.

Beyond the acrimonious verbal exchange, the election result has upended decades of political convention in post-World War II Germany. No far-right party has held executive power in any of Germany’s 16 federal states since 1945, and the AfD fell three seats short of an outright parliamentary majority in Saxony-Anhalt, leaving the path to forming a state government unclear. The party has already begun exploring coalition options, opening talks that could see it govern with the left-wing populist BSW, while local AfD officials have even floated the possibility of working with Merz’s CDU — if the mainstream party abandons its longstanding “firewall” policy that bans any formal cooperation with the far-right.

Merz rejected that prospect outright, dismissing the AfD’s claims of a mandate and accusing the party of breaking its pre-election promise to only govern if it won an outright majority. He also criticized the AfD for its pro-Russia stance, arguing that the party’s foreign policy positions actively harm German national interests, and warned that its remigration agenda would cripple core public and private services: if the policy was implemented, Merz said, not a single care home, hospital, or restaurant would be able to function normally. While he acknowledged that targeted deportations of undocumented migrants are a necessary policy, Merz stressed that the government maintains a critical distinction between people who contribute to German prosperity and those without legal permanent residency.

Internationally, the AfD’s historic gains have already drawn high-profile praise from former U.S. President Donald Trump, who hailed the outcome as a victory for global populism. Trump linked the result to widespread public anger over what he called “absolutely horrible immigration rules and regulations” in Germany. Merz, for his part, acknowledged that the result represents a “seismic” shift that has permanently altered the country’s political terrain.

BERLIN – A historic electoral upset by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has escalated into a fierce public confrontation in the federal parliament, deepening political turbulence just weeks ahead of two more key regional votes.

Last Sunday, the AfD secured its largest-ever electoral victory in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, delivering a crippling blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which saw its voter support cut roughly in half. The outcome has cemented the AfD’s rising momentum across eastern Germany, exposing widespread public discontent with Germany’s struggling national coalition government and its failure to reverse years of sluggish economic growth. Unlike the party’s early focus centered almost exclusively on restricting immigration, analysts note the AfD has successfully broadened its appeal to tap into voter anger over a wide range of unaddressed policy failures.

Opening the annual federal budget debate on Wednesday, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel used the upset victory to openly taunt Merz, declaring that Saxony-Anhalt’s voters did not merely punish the CDU – they “pulverized” the party. Weidel argued that Merz’s administration had completely failed to grasp the message sent by voters, adding that “your time has run out anyway. Citizens want a change of policy and they will get it.” She predicted upcoming national elections would deliver a clear governing mandate to the AfD, and pushed back against Merz’s criticism of the party’s Russia and Ukraine stance, accusing the chancellor of escalating unnecessary confrontation with Moscow to distract from his own government’s poor performance.

A combative Merz pushed back sharply against Weidel’s taunts, acknowledging the AfD’s “remarkable” result but noting the party fell just short of the absolute majority it had campaigned for in Saxony-Anhalt. The chancellor insisted the far-right party would never secure a national governing majority, dismissing it as a “destructive force” that poses a fundamental threat to Germany’s democratic and foreign policy commitments.

Merz zeroed in on the AfD’s longstanding opposition to military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine, and its call to lift international sanctions on Russia. He accused the party of a “grotesque inversion of perpetrator and victim” in the war, noting it openly aligns with Russia even after German authorities blamed Moscow for a recent attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport. The chancellor also condemned the AfD’s inflammatory “remigration” policy, which calls for mass deportations of foreign-born residents. Merz argued the term is nothing less than a coded reference to ethnic cleansing based on ancestry and skin color, warning that implementing the policy would collapse critical sectors of Germany’s economy including healthcare, hospitality and elder care. While Merz confirmed his governing coalition supports expanding deportations for undocumented residents with no legal right to stay, he drew a clear line between that policy and the AfD’s blanket call for forced expulsion.

The AfD’s landmark victory has already drawn international attention and praise from far-right actors across the globe. Far-right nationalist parties across Europe have celebrated the result, and former U.S. President Donald Trump highlighted the upset in a post Tuesday to his Truth Social platform. Though he did not name the AfD explicitly, Trump wrote that “the Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly. THEY ARE ON THE RISE, and not going to take it anymore!”

The political showdown comes as Germany prepares for two more regional elections on September 20, to be held in Berlin and the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Polling has long shown the CDU is deeply unpopular in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the AfD already holds strong support in the state, raising fears among mainstream parties of another far-right upset that would further erode the CDU’s standing nationally.