The Guardian / Syrian HTS leader says rebel factions that overthrew Assad will be ‘disbanded’

• Syria’s rebel factions will be “disbanded”, the head of the group that led the ousting of Bashar al-Assad has pledged, as he seeks to reassure minorities at home and abroad that the country’s interim leaders will protect all Syrians, as well as state institutions.

• Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that toppled Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, said all rebel factions would “be disbanded and the fighters trained to join the ranks of the defence ministry” during a meeting with members of the Druze community.

• Assad’s fall has left western countries with the dilemma of how to deal with HTS, which has its roots in al-Qaida. It maintains it has renounced jihadism yet has been accused of human rights abuses and remains proscribed as a terrorist group by the UN and several western countries, including the US and UK.

• The EU’s new foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said on Monday that the bloc should be ready to ease sanctions on Syria if the country’s new leadership takes “positive steps” to establish an inclusive government and respect women’s and minority rights.

    
Bloomberg - Arne Delfs, Michael Nienaber, and Kamil Kowalcze / Germany Faces Policy Gridlock as Campaign Season Heats Up

• Germany is headed for months of political deadlock as voters return to the ballot box for another federal election in February and with coalition negotiations potentially lasting several months after that.     

• Lawmakers in Germany’s lower house on Monday backed a confidence motion pushed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz that will trigger a new election on Feb. 23, seven months ahead of schedule. Scholz lost his majority in parliament after his ruling coalition fell apart in November amid infighting.

• The conservative CDU/CSU alliance under Friedrich Merz leads with support at around 31%, the far-right Alternative for Germany — or AfD — is second with 19.8% and the SPD third at 17%, according to the latest Bloomberg polling average.

• The Greens are fourth with 11.2% and the BSW — a new far-left party founded in January — fifth at 7.5%. Lindner’s FDP remains in danger of missing the 5% threshold for getting into parliament with 4.9%.
   

Euractiv - Natália Silenská / Slovakia accuses EU Parliament of ‘interference’ in Georgia’s elections

• Slovakia opposes "hasty sanctions or interference" in the Georgian election results, said Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár (Smer-SD/NI), criticising European Parliament for politicising the situation and pro-EU President Salome Zurabishvili’s refusal to step down. 

• Citing numerous irregularities, the European Parliament adopted a critical resolution calling on the Georgian government to hold new, fair and transparent parliamentary elections within a year under enhanced international supervision.

• The foreign minister also accused pro-EU President Salome Zurabishvili of "violating the constitution and the law" and failing to help resolve the situation by refusing to step down as her term ends in December.

• Commenting on the pro-EU protests in Georgia, which have lasted for more than three weeks and have been violently repressed by security forces, Blanár said his government condemns "any violence against peaceful protesters” but also “acts by protesters targeting (public) property”, stressing that "all such incidents must be investigated, and lawbreakers must be held accountable”.

Reuters / Exclusive: China plans record budget deficit of 4% of GDP in 2025

• Chinese leaders agreed last week to raise the budget deficit to 4% of gross domestic product (GDP) next year, its highest on record, while maintaining an economic growth target of around 5%, two sources with knowledge of the matter said.

• The new deficit plan compares with an initial target of 3% of GDP for 2024, and is in line with a "more proactive" fiscal policy outlined by leading officials after December's Politburo meeting and last week's Central Economic Work Conference (CEWC), where the targets were agreed but not officially announced. 

• The additional one percentage point of GDP in spending amounts to about 1.3 trillion yuan ($179.4 billion). More stimulus will be funded through issuing off-budget special bonds, said the two sources, who requested anonymity as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

• The summaries of the CEWC and the Politburo meetings also flagged that China's central bank would switch to an "appropriately loose" monetary policy stance, raising expectations of more interest rate cuts and liquidity injections.

   

Our opinion reads for today:

• Foreign Affairs - Daniel H. Rosen, Reva Goujon and Logan Wright / China’s Slowdown Has Changed the Trade War
• Project Syndicate - Slavoj Žižek / What Did We Miss in Syria?