Sex toys and fries

Between soaring to the skies and being saddened to death. This, or something like it, sums up the traditional summer drink dinners on the balance, already the second one during the Corona pandemics, that keep the political journalists entrusted with parliamentary reporting on their toes every year in mid-July.

More or less punctually at the beginning of the parliamentary summer recess, which officially lasts until the second Tuesday in October, the past chamber session is reviewed and an initial outlook on the respective priorities for the autumn re-entry is given at what the name suggests is a lively get-together followed by a meal in an informal, usually even tie-free atmosphere.

And as is usual in such exercises, the majority parties' assessment is positive to very positive, especially with regard to the work of their own political blood group and their own office-holders, while the opposition – the roles are clearly distributed – does not have a good word to say about the work of the majority.

If, for example, the CSV, as the largest opposition party, now accuses the majority factions of the DP, LSAP and déi gréng at its press conference of not taking the work of the opposition seriously and simply stalling all motions, amendments and legislative proposals submitted by the opposition parties, it is probably right. However, the party forgets to mention that exactly the same criticism came from the DP, the Greens and the adr to the CSV during the long, long years in which the CSV held government responsibility and was the head of government.

The LSAP was rather reticent about such accusations, since the Socialists had almost always been the junior partner of the CSV since the mid-1980s, with the exception of the legislative period from 1999 to 2004, when the DP entered into a life-cycle partnership with the Juncker CSV instead of the LSAP.