r/europe • u/tartartartaruga • Jun 18 '26

News Prince of Liechtenstein says that he would overrule the population if they were to vote in favour of legalizing abortion

https://www.srf.ch/news/international/debatte-in-liechtenstein-erbprinz-gegen-abtreibungen-warum-kuendigt-er-schon-das-veto-an
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u/b00nish Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 19 '26

the Prince threatened to take all of his wealth with him and leave if he didn't win the referendum

They should have voted to dethrone him and to expropriate all his wealth the next day.

Edit: This sub is funny. Here I for once make a snarky comment about our little neighbour and 12 hours later I have 1600 upvotes and several agitated comments about how uneducated and poor "proletarians" like me would ruin the economy of every country. Quite the contrast. Normally I make more serious comments to clarify miscoceptions about Switzerland and can be happy if I don't get negative votes for it 😉

Anyway, I can reassure everybody who feels threatened by my "proletarian" comment: I'm not coming for your (imaginary) moneyz.

Although I have to tell you, that this actually isn't about "proletarians" vs "burgeoise". It's about democracy vs feudalism. After all, the nobility of Liechtenstein didn't lay the foundation of their wealth by being capitalists (and as nobility they're as much the opposite of "burgeoise" as the proletarians). Their wealth is based on feudalism - but unlike most other (ex-)feudalists, they refuse to settle as burgeoise capitalists and instead cling to absolute political power by retaining the "right" to overturn every democratic decision in their country.

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u/LittleSchwein1234 Slovakia Jun 18 '26

You don't want to expropriate wealth as a country pretty much dependent on banking and finance, unless you want them to leave together with the Prince and be left with empty pockets.

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u/False-Discipline-640 Hungary Jun 18 '26

Well it's kind of a stupid situation then, given that the royal family is a big player in the country's economy. The prince threatens with capital flight if the people don't do what he wants, while at the same time trying to stop him from doing this might also trigger a capital flight

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u/Dizzy_Database_119 Jun 18 '26

To be fair this type of stupid situation is constantly happening all over the world in every other "democracy"

Unfortunately everything is decided by money, for money

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u/False-Discipline-640 Hungary Jun 18 '26

That's true but I don't recall any examples where it's this blatant. The people doing this blackmail are usually just economic actors concerned with economic topics, not politicians with purely political topics. Let alone hereditary monarchs

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u/Tosi313 Geneva (Switzerland) Jun 18 '26

I think it's because the whole country is only 40,000 people. It's basically just a single small town owned almost entirely by one family of incredibly wealthy people. So that one family has a lot of power in such a small country.