By John Lloyd
Published: October 2 2009 21:00 | Last updated: October 2 2009 21:00
September was the cruellest month for Europe’s centre-left. The greatest bloodbath came a week ago, when the Social Democratic party – Germany’s oldest, the foundation stone of social democracy across the continent – garnered less than a quarter of votes cast. Britain’s Labour party, whose polls are little better than the SPD’s result, put on a creditable show at its annual conference. But Gordon Brown’s generally well-received speech was instantly undercut by The Sun newspaper, which ended a 12-year policy of New Labour support with a front page proclaiming: “Labour’s lost it.”
In Italy, the continuing weakness of the left was exacerbated by a book published this past week – La Svolta (the turning point) – in which Francesco Rutelli, a former leader of the left in the 2001 parliamentary elections and co-founder of the Democratic party, the main left group, flatly states that “if the party turns to the left, it’s finished”. In a talk in Rome last week, Mr Rutelli told me he thought such a turn was overwhelmingly likely.
In France, the Socialist party remains transfixed by the feud between its former leader, Ségolène Royal, and the woman who narrowly secured a fiercely disputed succession, Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille. The latter has sought a working truce with her rival; but, as the commentator Michel Noblecourt wrote in Le Monde, this “will be tainted with distrust, each doubting the legitimacy of the other and staying on guard”.
The irony – that the left fails together with the banks – has been much noted, but may be less of a contradiction than is apparent. In different ways, European social democracy was pro-market and pro-globalisation – especially New Labour, which in Tony Blair’s early years in power was both leader and exemplar. Liberal social reforms, a lesser role for trade unions and, above all, mass immigration were all part of centre-left politics and were broadly acceptable to the mass of the people so long as living standards rose and public services improved. Now, that implicit deal is threatened.
In this situation, it is not only the right that exults. The left, within these mainstream parties and outside, now sees a chance. The times are propitious: those charged with writing a manifesto for a party such as Die Linke (The Left, founded by Oskar Lafontaine, the renegade former SPD finance minister whose vote increased last week) would have a pleasant task. The widely mooted collapse of capitalism; rapidly rising unemployment; the determined resumption of the habits of greed by bankers and others able to skim off fresh supplies of cream; the present or coming cuts in public services and pay; the continuing human cost and fiscal drain of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – these are a rich menu on which to make a meal of a centre-left that did well out of a successful capitalism’s surplus and now struggles in its decline. John Harris, the left-Labour commentator, encapsulated his position’s scorn for New Labour in the current issue of Prospect magazine, describing its policies as “a mishmash of beliefs that only entrenched the changes wrought by Margaret Thatcher”.
It will be no balm to centre-left leaders to observe that they are victims of the success of many of their central projects – in particular, the maintenance of generous welfare states. No governing party of the right in Europe, from Sweden to Italy, has sought radically to reduce taxes or make cuts to big social programmes; and though the latter may increasingly be the order of the day as the cost of anti-recessionary measures must be paid, the centre-left governments of Britain and Spain are as much implicated in this as the right.
Further, the right steals leftist clothes: an anti-elitist populism in Italy; a co-option of admired figures of the left into government in France; and in Britain, a resurgent Conservative party rails against Labour’s “top down” and “bureaucratic” reforms and talks of helping communities to help themselves. In ground long scorched for Conservatives – the constituency of Glasgow Central – the Tory candidate John Bradley brought in young Conservative students to work with local residents to clean up the Strathbungo area of the constituency. Mr Bradley claimed, on the website Conservative Home, that “bringing in local communities, and seeing their delight at what all of us have achieved at the end of a day’s work, is simply magnificent.”
The great causes – race, women’s and homosexual equality, community involvement, the spread of democratic practice – which had been significantly dominated by the left, are now largely uncontroversial on the western European right, except on its fringes and in parts of Italy’s governing coalition. The very success of decades of struggle render archaic the feminist rhetoric of Harriet Harman, Labour’s deputy leader, and has caused a debilitating split in Britain’s Equality Commission between those who, like Ms Harman, believe the struggle must continue and those who seek a targeted, post-equality agenda.
Neither success nor failure are permanent in politics; and in the gross inequalities of contemporary market societies, the centre-left may – as Mr Brown sought to do with his appeal to the “squeezed middle” of British society – recover a cause. But a remedy will be harder. For now, their party is over.
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Sarkozy ve küçük Bonapart
AHMET İNSEL
Türkiye'ye 'üyelik değil ayrıcalıklı ortaklık verelim' önerisi olan Akdeniz İşbirliği, bir iki çırpınıştan sonra tozlu raflarda yerini aldı. Şimdi bunun yerine Sarkozy, Türkiye ile ortak güvenlik ve ekonomi alanı oluşturulması için görüşmelere hemen başlanmasını öneriyor
Fransa, bir buçuk yüzyıl sonra yeniden Bonapartizm’e mi döndü? Bu soruyu Nicolas Sarkozy iki yıl önce cumhurbaşkanı seçilmeden önce birçok siyaset bilimci sormaya başlamıştı. İki yıl zarfında yaşananlar bunun akademik bir varsayım değil, elle tutulur bir gerçek olduğunu gösteriyor. Siyasal otoriterizmle iktisadi liberalizmin izdivacından doğan bir modernleşme projesinin yürütücüsü olan Sarkozy, Victor Hugo’nun “Napolyon’un küçük olanı” adını verdiği III. Napolyon’u yakından andıran yönetim anlayışla ortalığı karıştırmaya devam ediyor. 1848’de seçimle geldiği cumhurbaşkanlığını 1851’de darbeyle 20 yıl koruyan, yitirilmiş imparatorluk nostaljisiyle orta sınıfların sırtını sıvazlayan ve bu arada muhafazakâr-otoriter reform girişimlerini devreye sokan Napolyon Bonapart’ın yeğeninin yönetim tarzı, içi boş büyük laflar ederek gözboyama kültürünün, iktidarın bütünüyle başkanın elinde toplanmasının ve güçlü ve zengin dost kliği dayanışmasının sentezi olarak tanımlanır. Bunlar gerçekten de iki yıllık Nicolas Sarkozy yönetiminde var olan özellikler.
Fransa’nın başına gelenler
Önemli olan, bu otoriter yönetimin halkoyuyla meşruiyetini düzenli tazeleyebilmesidir. Bonapartizm’in önemli özelliklerinden birisidir bu. Plebisiter bir otoriterizmdir. Yıkım tehlikesi altında olduğu iddia edilen düzeni otoriter ve popüler bir şef aracılığıyla koruma gösterisini, küçükleri gözetme adı altında zenginlerin çıkarlarını kollamayı, korkuları canlı tutarak piyasa modelinden esinlenmiş modernleşme reformlarını dayatmayı içerir. Bu arada kendi ve yakın çevresinin yaşamından pembe dizi kültürünün ağzını sulandıracak kesitleri bol bol sergilemeyi ihmal etmez. Cehaletle küstahlığın birbirini beslediği bir gözüpeklik bunu tamamlar. Nicolas Sarkozy’nin pilli bebeğin jest ve mimikleriyle bezediği hiperaktif ergen halleri bu tür bir gözüpekliğin ete kemiğe bürünmüş hali gibidir. Ender bulunur bir zihniyet ve vücut bütünleşmesi sunar.
Bonapartizm’in bulanık sularında yeniden seyretmeye başlayan Fransa’da, her gün yeni bir cin fikirle ortaya çıkan, bizim Zihni Sinir’in projeciliğine benzer bir yönetim tarzı bugün egemen. Bugün Fransa, eğitim reformu adı altında üniversitelerin bir kaosa sürüklendiği, devlet kurumlarının yılların süzgecinden geçmiş çalışma geleneklerinin “ben yaptım oldu” zihniyetiyle altüst edildiği, neredeyse her şeyin cumhurbaşkanlığı sarayından tayin edilip belirlendiği bir Bonapartist cumhuriyet manzarası sergiliyor.
Hayata geçme şansı olmadığı baştan belli olan ve kısa zamanda bir kenara bırakılmak zorunda kalınan bu cin fikirli projelerin bir örneği, Akdeniz İşbirliği idi. Türkiye’ye, “üyelik değil ayrıcalıklı ortaklık verelim” önerisini allayıp pullayarak sunmak için ortaya atılan bu proje, bir iki çırpınıştan sonra tozlu raflarda yerini aldı. Şimdi bunun yerine Sarkozy, Türkiye ile bir ortak güvenlik ve ekonomi alanı oluşturulması için görüşmelere hemen başlanmasını öneriyor. Böyle bir görüşmeye Rusya’yı da davet ederek, 800 milyon nüfuslu bir ortak güvenlik ve iktisadi işbirliği alanı yaratma projesinden bahsediyor. Sarkozy bunu söylerken, dönemin AB başkanlığını yürüten Çek Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanı, Rusya’nın öfkeli bakışları arasında, altı eski SSCB üyesiyle bir “Doğu işbirliği” projesini başlatıyordu. Ukrayna, Beyaz Rusya, Moldavya, Gürcistan, Ermenistan ve Azerbaycan’a AB üyeliği vaat etmeden, vize kolaylıkları ve serbest ticaret anlaşmaları içeren bir paket sunuluyordu. Rusya ise bunu kendi etki alanına karşı bir saldırı olarak kabul ettiğini ilk andan itibaren ilan etmişti. Ortak güvenlik ve ekonomi alanının da ölü doğduğu belliydi.
Aşılamaz sınır
Nicolas Sarkozy, 7 Haziran’da yapılacak olan Avrupa Parlamentosu seçimlerinin kampanya başlangıcı işaretini, 5 Mayıs’ta iktidardaki partinin mitinginde yaptığı bir konuşmayla verdi. Böylece, bir partinin seçim kampanyası başlangıç mitingi Cumhurbaşkanı’nın konuşmasıyla açılıyor ve Cumhurbaşkanı’nın aynı zamanda fiilen parti başkanı olduğu tescil edilmiş oluyordu. İşte bu konuşmada, Sarkozy salonda bulunan 4 bine yakın sağcı militandan en büyük alkışı, Türkiye’nin AB üyeliğinin söz konusu olmadığını vurguladığında aldı. O ana kadar terbiyeli biçimde zaman zaman alkışlayan kalabalık, birdenbire zincirlerinden boşandı ve büyük bir coşkuyla Sarkozy’nin Türkiye’ye ne olursa olsun hayır demesini alkışlamaya başladı. Avrupa’nın kendini bir güç olarak var etmesi için önce bunu istemesi gerektiğini, bunu isteyebilmesi için de ucu bucağı olmayan bir genişleme süreci içinde kendi kendini eritmekten vazgeçmesinin önemine işaret ediyordu Sarkozy. “AB ile kısmi bir ortak kaderi paylaşan” Türkiye gibi ülkelerle ayrıcalıklı ilişki kurmaya, bu ülkeleri Avrupa ile mümkün olan en yakın işbirliği içinde tutmaya evet derken, aşılamaz sınırının üyelik olduğunu bir kez daha vurguluyordu. Neden mi? Türkiye Türkiye olduğu için üye olamazdı.
Bu konuşmasındaki tonu, bundan dört ay önce Fransa’da üniversite rektörleri ve büyük araştırma kurumlarının başkanlarını cumhurbaşkanlığı sarayında toplayıp, çoğu doğru bilgilere dayanmayan ama aşağılayıcı bir üslupla dile getirdiği eleştiriler eşliğinde sunduğu reform konuşmasına benziyordu. Yaptığı dönem başkanlığındaki icraatını, AB’nin kurtarıcısı sıfatını hak etmek için yeterli bulan, egosu son derece şişmiş bir küçük şefti konuşan. Diğer dönem başkanlarının bu küçük şef hakkında ne düşündüklerini tahmin etmek zor değil.
Sarkozy türü yenilikçilik, bir yandan “yenilik” sloganının albenisine sarılmış radikal liberal reformlarla toplumda elektroşok tedavisi uygulamayı cesaret olarak tanımlarken, diğer yandan muhafazakâr temalara da sırtını yaslamayı ihmal etmiyor. Sarkozy’nin AB konuşması, “Hıristiyan mirasa” vurgu yapmaya da özen gösteriyordu. Yazılı metinde olmayan bir vurguyu konuşma sırasında ilave etmişti: “Bundan özür dilememiz gerekmeyen Hıristiyan miras”! Tarihi ve sosyal tespiti aşan, militan sahiplenmeye işaret eden bir vurguydu bu. 2008’de Vatikan ziyareti sırasında yaptığı Fransa’daki laiklik ilke ve geleneklerine aykırı değerlendirmelerin tınısı vardı.
Fransa’da elbette, Sarkozy’nin oligarşik yönetiminin ülkenin başına gelmiş büyük bir bela olduğu konusunda hemfikir olan önemli bir kesim var. Üç yıl daha sabır diyerek, gelecek seçimlerde Sarkopart’ın devrilmesi umuduyla yaşıyorlar. Bunların içinde Türkiye dostu olanlar ise, Sarkopart’ın yapıp ettiklerinden, söylediklerinden dolayı özür dileyerek Türkiye’nin de üç yıl daha sabretmesini önerip, Türkiye’nin üyelik sürecinin nasıl olsa bu hiperaktif şahsiyetin öngörülür siyasal kariyerinden daha uzun olduğunu hatırlatıyorlar. Ayrıca durup durup tam Avrupa parlamentosu seçimleri öncesinde yeniden “Türkiye’yi istemeyiz” diye ortaya fırlamasının, seçim taktiği olduğunu da belirtiyorlar. Bu söylenenlerin çoğu elbette doğru. Ama insan gene de, Fransa’da Türkiye’nin üyeliği deyince tüyleri diken diken olan insan sayısının, Sarkozy’ye oy verenlerden çok daha büyük bir kitle oluşturduğunu bilince, “başınıza gelen bu azim belaya müstahak değil misiniz?” diye düşünmeden edemiyor. Bu da elbette bir tür züğürt tesellisi...
Türkiye'ye 'üyelik değil ayrıcalıklı ortaklık verelim' önerisi olan Akdeniz İşbirliği, bir iki çırpınıştan sonra tozlu raflarda yerini aldı. Şimdi bunun yerine Sarkozy, Türkiye ile ortak güvenlik ve ekonomi alanı oluşturulması için görüşmelere hemen başlanmasını öneriyor
Fransa, bir buçuk yüzyıl sonra yeniden Bonapartizm’e mi döndü? Bu soruyu Nicolas Sarkozy iki yıl önce cumhurbaşkanı seçilmeden önce birçok siyaset bilimci sormaya başlamıştı. İki yıl zarfında yaşananlar bunun akademik bir varsayım değil, elle tutulur bir gerçek olduğunu gösteriyor. Siyasal otoriterizmle iktisadi liberalizmin izdivacından doğan bir modernleşme projesinin yürütücüsü olan Sarkozy, Victor Hugo’nun “Napolyon’un küçük olanı” adını verdiği III. Napolyon’u yakından andıran yönetim anlayışla ortalığı karıştırmaya devam ediyor. 1848’de seçimle geldiği cumhurbaşkanlığını 1851’de darbeyle 20 yıl koruyan, yitirilmiş imparatorluk nostaljisiyle orta sınıfların sırtını sıvazlayan ve bu arada muhafazakâr-otoriter reform girişimlerini devreye sokan Napolyon Bonapart’ın yeğeninin yönetim tarzı, içi boş büyük laflar ederek gözboyama kültürünün, iktidarın bütünüyle başkanın elinde toplanmasının ve güçlü ve zengin dost kliği dayanışmasının sentezi olarak tanımlanır. Bunlar gerçekten de iki yıllık Nicolas Sarkozy yönetiminde var olan özellikler.
Fransa’nın başına gelenler
Önemli olan, bu otoriter yönetimin halkoyuyla meşruiyetini düzenli tazeleyebilmesidir. Bonapartizm’in önemli özelliklerinden birisidir bu. Plebisiter bir otoriterizmdir. Yıkım tehlikesi altında olduğu iddia edilen düzeni otoriter ve popüler bir şef aracılığıyla koruma gösterisini, küçükleri gözetme adı altında zenginlerin çıkarlarını kollamayı, korkuları canlı tutarak piyasa modelinden esinlenmiş modernleşme reformlarını dayatmayı içerir. Bu arada kendi ve yakın çevresinin yaşamından pembe dizi kültürünün ağzını sulandıracak kesitleri bol bol sergilemeyi ihmal etmez. Cehaletle küstahlığın birbirini beslediği bir gözüpeklik bunu tamamlar. Nicolas Sarkozy’nin pilli bebeğin jest ve mimikleriyle bezediği hiperaktif ergen halleri bu tür bir gözüpekliğin ete kemiğe bürünmüş hali gibidir. Ender bulunur bir zihniyet ve vücut bütünleşmesi sunar.
Bonapartizm’in bulanık sularında yeniden seyretmeye başlayan Fransa’da, her gün yeni bir cin fikirle ortaya çıkan, bizim Zihni Sinir’in projeciliğine benzer bir yönetim tarzı bugün egemen. Bugün Fransa, eğitim reformu adı altında üniversitelerin bir kaosa sürüklendiği, devlet kurumlarının yılların süzgecinden geçmiş çalışma geleneklerinin “ben yaptım oldu” zihniyetiyle altüst edildiği, neredeyse her şeyin cumhurbaşkanlığı sarayından tayin edilip belirlendiği bir Bonapartist cumhuriyet manzarası sergiliyor.
Hayata geçme şansı olmadığı baştan belli olan ve kısa zamanda bir kenara bırakılmak zorunda kalınan bu cin fikirli projelerin bir örneği, Akdeniz İşbirliği idi. Türkiye’ye, “üyelik değil ayrıcalıklı ortaklık verelim” önerisini allayıp pullayarak sunmak için ortaya atılan bu proje, bir iki çırpınıştan sonra tozlu raflarda yerini aldı. Şimdi bunun yerine Sarkozy, Türkiye ile bir ortak güvenlik ve ekonomi alanı oluşturulması için görüşmelere hemen başlanmasını öneriyor. Böyle bir görüşmeye Rusya’yı da davet ederek, 800 milyon nüfuslu bir ortak güvenlik ve iktisadi işbirliği alanı yaratma projesinden bahsediyor. Sarkozy bunu söylerken, dönemin AB başkanlığını yürüten Çek Cumhuriyeti Cumhurbaşkanı, Rusya’nın öfkeli bakışları arasında, altı eski SSCB üyesiyle bir “Doğu işbirliği” projesini başlatıyordu. Ukrayna, Beyaz Rusya, Moldavya, Gürcistan, Ermenistan ve Azerbaycan’a AB üyeliği vaat etmeden, vize kolaylıkları ve serbest ticaret anlaşmaları içeren bir paket sunuluyordu. Rusya ise bunu kendi etki alanına karşı bir saldırı olarak kabul ettiğini ilk andan itibaren ilan etmişti. Ortak güvenlik ve ekonomi alanının da ölü doğduğu belliydi.
Aşılamaz sınır
Nicolas Sarkozy, 7 Haziran’da yapılacak olan Avrupa Parlamentosu seçimlerinin kampanya başlangıcı işaretini, 5 Mayıs’ta iktidardaki partinin mitinginde yaptığı bir konuşmayla verdi. Böylece, bir partinin seçim kampanyası başlangıç mitingi Cumhurbaşkanı’nın konuşmasıyla açılıyor ve Cumhurbaşkanı’nın aynı zamanda fiilen parti başkanı olduğu tescil edilmiş oluyordu. İşte bu konuşmada, Sarkozy salonda bulunan 4 bine yakın sağcı militandan en büyük alkışı, Türkiye’nin AB üyeliğinin söz konusu olmadığını vurguladığında aldı. O ana kadar terbiyeli biçimde zaman zaman alkışlayan kalabalık, birdenbire zincirlerinden boşandı ve büyük bir coşkuyla Sarkozy’nin Türkiye’ye ne olursa olsun hayır demesini alkışlamaya başladı. Avrupa’nın kendini bir güç olarak var etmesi için önce bunu istemesi gerektiğini, bunu isteyebilmesi için de ucu bucağı olmayan bir genişleme süreci içinde kendi kendini eritmekten vazgeçmesinin önemine işaret ediyordu Sarkozy. “AB ile kısmi bir ortak kaderi paylaşan” Türkiye gibi ülkelerle ayrıcalıklı ilişki kurmaya, bu ülkeleri Avrupa ile mümkün olan en yakın işbirliği içinde tutmaya evet derken, aşılamaz sınırının üyelik olduğunu bir kez daha vurguluyordu. Neden mi? Türkiye Türkiye olduğu için üye olamazdı.
Bu konuşmasındaki tonu, bundan dört ay önce Fransa’da üniversite rektörleri ve büyük araştırma kurumlarının başkanlarını cumhurbaşkanlığı sarayında toplayıp, çoğu doğru bilgilere dayanmayan ama aşağılayıcı bir üslupla dile getirdiği eleştiriler eşliğinde sunduğu reform konuşmasına benziyordu. Yaptığı dönem başkanlığındaki icraatını, AB’nin kurtarıcısı sıfatını hak etmek için yeterli bulan, egosu son derece şişmiş bir küçük şefti konuşan. Diğer dönem başkanlarının bu küçük şef hakkında ne düşündüklerini tahmin etmek zor değil.
Sarkozy türü yenilikçilik, bir yandan “yenilik” sloganının albenisine sarılmış radikal liberal reformlarla toplumda elektroşok tedavisi uygulamayı cesaret olarak tanımlarken, diğer yandan muhafazakâr temalara da sırtını yaslamayı ihmal etmiyor. Sarkozy’nin AB konuşması, “Hıristiyan mirasa” vurgu yapmaya da özen gösteriyordu. Yazılı metinde olmayan bir vurguyu konuşma sırasında ilave etmişti: “Bundan özür dilememiz gerekmeyen Hıristiyan miras”! Tarihi ve sosyal tespiti aşan, militan sahiplenmeye işaret eden bir vurguydu bu. 2008’de Vatikan ziyareti sırasında yaptığı Fransa’daki laiklik ilke ve geleneklerine aykırı değerlendirmelerin tınısı vardı.
Fransa’da elbette, Sarkozy’nin oligarşik yönetiminin ülkenin başına gelmiş büyük bir bela olduğu konusunda hemfikir olan önemli bir kesim var. Üç yıl daha sabır diyerek, gelecek seçimlerde Sarkopart’ın devrilmesi umuduyla yaşıyorlar. Bunların içinde Türkiye dostu olanlar ise, Sarkopart’ın yapıp ettiklerinden, söylediklerinden dolayı özür dileyerek Türkiye’nin de üç yıl daha sabretmesini önerip, Türkiye’nin üyelik sürecinin nasıl olsa bu hiperaktif şahsiyetin öngörülür siyasal kariyerinden daha uzun olduğunu hatırlatıyorlar. Ayrıca durup durup tam Avrupa parlamentosu seçimleri öncesinde yeniden “Türkiye’yi istemeyiz” diye ortaya fırlamasının, seçim taktiği olduğunu da belirtiyorlar. Bu söylenenlerin çoğu elbette doğru. Ama insan gene de, Fransa’da Türkiye’nin üyeliği deyince tüyleri diken diken olan insan sayısının, Sarkozy’ye oy verenlerden çok daha büyük bir kitle oluşturduğunu bilince, “başınıza gelen bu azim belaya müstahak değil misiniz?” diye düşünmeden edemiyor. Bu da elbette bir tür züğürt tesellisi...
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Czech MPs oust government over economy
The Czech government collapsed on Tuesday night after losing a vote of confidence over its handling of the economic crisis.
The 101-96 vote marks the end of the coalition government of Mirek Topolanek, the centre-right prime minister, as well as the effective conclusion of the already bumpy and crisis-ridden Czech presidency of the European Union, which formally expires on June 30. The vote comes ahead of a visit to Prague next month by Barack Obama, US president.
“How can a government which has no support in the country be able to lead the European Union?” said Jiri Pehe, a Prague-based political scientist.
Mr Topolanek said he planned to resign after returning from a trip to Brussels. Jiri Paroubek, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats, has said that he will push for fresh elections only after the Czech Republic’s current presidency of the European Union expires.
The EU tried to put the best face possible on the embarrassing failure of the government leading the Union, issuing a statement that said: “It is for the Czech Republic’s democratic process under the constitution to resolve the domestic political issues; the Commission is confident that this is done in a way which ensures the full functioning of the council presidency.”
The unexpected fall of Mr Topolanek’s government adds strength to the French argument that the presidency of a 27-member union that forms the world’s largest economy is unsuited for smaller and ill-prepared countries.
Mr Topolanek, facing the fifth vote of confidence in his third year as prime minister, was unable to win over enough independent MPs to save his government.
The initiative now passes to Vaclav Klaus, the euro-sceptic Czech president, who will have to name a caretaker administration to govern the country. If three attempts to form a new government fail, then new elections are called.
The difficulty in forcing new elections raises the possibility that a technocratic government will limp along in power until the next election, set for June 2010.
The opposition Social Democrats currently lead Mr Topolanek’s Civic Democrats (ODS) in opinion polls.
That would leave Prague ill-prepared to deal with the fall-out from the economic downturn, which is hitting the export-orientated Czech economy with increasing force. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Zdenek Tuma, the governor of the Czech central bank, said the economy could shrink by as much as 2 per cent this year if the situation did not improve in western Europe.
Mr Topolanek had resisted calls to increase spending, arguing that the government did not have the wherewithal to bail the country out of the recession. However, that approach was unpopular with the left-leaning Social Democrats, and helped galvanise opposition.
The final straw was a domestic political scandal relating to accusations of inappropriate pressure to force a television station to stop a story criticising an opposition MP who had joined the government side.
It was a huge embarrassment for Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, just halfway through the country’s presidency of the European Union and ahead of a visit next month by Barack Obama, the US president, to Prague.
Mr Topolanek said he would resign after returning from a trip to Brussels.
The European Commission said it believed the Czech Republic could continue to hold and run the rotating EU presidency. Its term – which has been bumpy and beset by various crises – is due to finish in June. “It is for the Czech Republic’s democratic process under the constitution to resolve the domestic political issues; the Commission is confident that this will be done in a way which ensures the full functioning of the Council presidency,” the office of José Manuel Barroso, Commission president, said.
The timing is unfortunate given that there is significant legislation in the pipeline in Brussels – some in response to the financial and economic crisis.
Officials would like to see texts finalised in negotiations between member states and lawmakers before the European parliament breaks up for elections in June, and the presidency often plays a key role in this process.
The government fell after the Social Democratic opposition managed to galvanise support over the government’s management of the economic crisis.
The collapse came days after Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary’s prime minister, tendered his resignation over his government’s handling of the financial crisis.
The Czech government lost the vote by 101-96 in the 200-member parliament. Mr Topolanek has seen a steady ebbing of his parliamentary support since coming to power in 2006 following elections that resulted in a hung parliament. He could only count on the support of 96 MPs and was unable to rally rebel members of the Green party, a minority member of the governing coalition.
Jiri Paroubek, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats, has said that he will only push for fresh elections after the Czech Republic’s presidency of the EU expires.
Vaclav Klaus, the country’s eurosceptic president, now holds the balance of power and will get to name a new government leader.
The Czech Republic has seen a rapid deterioration of its export-dependent economy, with the central bank governor recently predicting that the economy could shrink by as much as 2 per cent this year.
Mr Topolanek had survived four previous motions of no confidence in his government.
The 101-96 vote marks the end of the coalition government of Mirek Topolanek, the centre-right prime minister, as well as the effective conclusion of the already bumpy and crisis-ridden Czech presidency of the European Union, which formally expires on June 30. The vote comes ahead of a visit to Prague next month by Barack Obama, US president.
“How can a government which has no support in the country be able to lead the European Union?” said Jiri Pehe, a Prague-based political scientist.
Mr Topolanek said he planned to resign after returning from a trip to Brussels. Jiri Paroubek, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats, has said that he will push for fresh elections only after the Czech Republic’s current presidency of the European Union expires.
The EU tried to put the best face possible on the embarrassing failure of the government leading the Union, issuing a statement that said: “It is for the Czech Republic’s democratic process under the constitution to resolve the domestic political issues; the Commission is confident that this is done in a way which ensures the full functioning of the council presidency.”
The unexpected fall of Mr Topolanek’s government adds strength to the French argument that the presidency of a 27-member union that forms the world’s largest economy is unsuited for smaller and ill-prepared countries.
Mr Topolanek, facing the fifth vote of confidence in his third year as prime minister, was unable to win over enough independent MPs to save his government.
The initiative now passes to Vaclav Klaus, the euro-sceptic Czech president, who will have to name a caretaker administration to govern the country. If three attempts to form a new government fail, then new elections are called.
The difficulty in forcing new elections raises the possibility that a technocratic government will limp along in power until the next election, set for June 2010.
The opposition Social Democrats currently lead Mr Topolanek’s Civic Democrats (ODS) in opinion polls.
That would leave Prague ill-prepared to deal with the fall-out from the economic downturn, which is hitting the export-orientated Czech economy with increasing force. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Zdenek Tuma, the governor of the Czech central bank, said the economy could shrink by as much as 2 per cent this year if the situation did not improve in western Europe.
Mr Topolanek had resisted calls to increase spending, arguing that the government did not have the wherewithal to bail the country out of the recession. However, that approach was unpopular with the left-leaning Social Democrats, and helped galvanise opposition.
The final straw was a domestic political scandal relating to accusations of inappropriate pressure to force a television station to stop a story criticising an opposition MP who had joined the government side.
It was a huge embarrassment for Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, just halfway through the country’s presidency of the European Union and ahead of a visit next month by Barack Obama, the US president, to Prague.
Mr Topolanek said he would resign after returning from a trip to Brussels.
The European Commission said it believed the Czech Republic could continue to hold and run the rotating EU presidency. Its term – which has been bumpy and beset by various crises – is due to finish in June. “It is for the Czech Republic’s democratic process under the constitution to resolve the domestic political issues; the Commission is confident that this will be done in a way which ensures the full functioning of the Council presidency,” the office of José Manuel Barroso, Commission president, said.
The timing is unfortunate given that there is significant legislation in the pipeline in Brussels – some in response to the financial and economic crisis.
Officials would like to see texts finalised in negotiations between member states and lawmakers before the European parliament breaks up for elections in June, and the presidency often plays a key role in this process.
The government fell after the Social Democratic opposition managed to galvanise support over the government’s management of the economic crisis.
The collapse came days after Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary’s prime minister, tendered his resignation over his government’s handling of the financial crisis.
The Czech government lost the vote by 101-96 in the 200-member parliament. Mr Topolanek has seen a steady ebbing of his parliamentary support since coming to power in 2006 following elections that resulted in a hung parliament. He could only count on the support of 96 MPs and was unable to rally rebel members of the Green party, a minority member of the governing coalition.
Jiri Paroubek, the leader of the opposition Social Democrats, has said that he will only push for fresh elections after the Czech Republic’s presidency of the EU expires.
Vaclav Klaus, the country’s eurosceptic president, now holds the balance of power and will get to name a new government leader.
The Czech Republic has seen a rapid deterioration of its export-dependent economy, with the central bank governor recently predicting that the economy could shrink by as much as 2 per cent this year.
Mr Topolanek had survived four previous motions of no confidence in his government.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Ancient city's Nazi past seeps out after stabbing
By Nicholas Kulish
Thursday, February 12, 2009
PASSAU, Germany: The stabbing of the police chief here in December provoked a nationwide furor because the victim, Alois Mannichl, was known as a staunch opponent of neo-Nazis, who were immediately blamed for the attack.
But the loud public protests and demonstrations in the streets of Passau gave way to silence, as days stretched into weeks and the case remained unsolved. Speculation that the perpetrator was a member of the police chief's family ran rampant, from local gossip all the way up to the leading newspapers and magazines in Germany.
What had become an instant symbol of out-of-control right-wing violence quickly turned into an investigation under the microscope. Here in this ancient city, which traces its history back to Roman times and earlier, the case and its aftermath have dredged up a reputation for ties to Nazism that civic leaders had worked hard to shed.
Now two months after the crime shook the country, the police and prosecutors here said Wednesday in a statement that they were more or less back to square one, ruling out Mannichl's wife and children while still searching for a man who is 6-foot-3, powerfully built, with close-cropped hair and possibly a tattoo on his neck, the same description released Dec. 14, the day after the attack.
"At this point, there is no evidence that the crime was committed by anyone in the family circle," said the statement. The 50-member special investigative commission established in the days after the attack is investigating "in all directions," but has no "hot lead" at this stage, the statement said.
The attack on Mannichl, which was serious but not fatal, renewed calls nationwide for a ban against the far-right National Democratic Party, known by its German initials as the NPD It also further inflamed concerns about a rise in violence by the extreme right.
In the state of Bavaria, where Passau is located, the number of right-wing-motivated assaults rose to 76 in 2007 from 42 in 2006, the most recent government figures available. But the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau has reported unreleased figures that through the first 10 months of 2008, right-wing violent crimes increased 15 percent nationwide.
Mannichl has been known for his hard line against the extreme right, but earned the particular enmity of neo-Nazi groups after ordering the opening of the grave of a prominent former Nazi, Friedhelm Busse, after his death last July. Busse was buried with a flag bearing a swastika, which is outlawed in Germany, and the police removed the flag as evidence.
Around 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 13, an attacker plunged a knife into Mannichl's chest outside his home on a quiet residential street in the tiny town of Fürstenzell near Passau, narrowly missing his heart, according to news reports. Mannichl said after the attack that his attacker yelled, "Greetings from the national resistance" and "You won't be trampling on the graves of our comrades anymore."
The attack made headlines nationwide, as did a candlelight vigil in Mannichl's honor. "When anyone is attacked by a right-wing extremist, it is an attack on us all," said Chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview the next week.
The day after the attack, the police arrested two men, ages 26 and 27, in connection with the crime. Two days later, a couple from Munich were detained for questioning as potential accomplices.
Yet all four were quickly released. And the questions began to mount, in particular around the fact that the knife used in the attack reportedly came from Mannichl's house. He explained that it had been used for cutting gingerbread during a neighborhood Advent celebration and that it had been left outside, where the assailant could have picked it up.
Heinz Fromm, the president of the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said publicly that the office had no evidence linking the crime to right-wing extremists. And conjecture about the case, and Mannichl, evolved into a popular parlor game from Passau clear to the capital, Berlin.
The national news magazine Stern later reported that it was "more or less being openly speculated that the police chief could have been the victim of a family drama" and might have sent his own police force on a wild goose chase.
Other possibilities aired publicly included the attacker was from the punk or goth scene or was an angry criminal out for revenge who only pretended to be a neo-Nazi to disguise his identity.
Mannichl declined to be interviewed for this article, but told a Munich newspaper last month that he was trying to live with the "virulent speculation." He described the questions surrounding the case as "a deep valley" in his life.
Members of the local NPD, who have long accused Mannichl of harassment, organized a protest against what they called unfair "baiting" of the right wing in connection with the case. On Jan. 4, some 200 far-right demonstrators from all over Germany gathered in Passau, where they were confronted by roughly 1,000 counterprotesters and nearly as many police officers. There were several arrests but no violence.
For Passau, a city of 50,000 that sits at the confluence of three rivers, the Inn, the Ilz and the Danube, and seeks to lure tourists to the narrow lanes of its quaintly lovely medieval old town, it was all an unwelcome return to what officials call an unfair reputation as a "brown city," a reference to the brown shirts that came to identify the Nazi party.
Passau gained international notoriety as a symbol of Germany's uneasy relationship with its past in the Academy Award-nominated film "The Nasty Girl," based on the true story of Anna Rosmus, who faced death threats when she began looking into the Nazi past of her hometown in 1980 when she was 19.
Passau remained a popular gathering spot for the far right, both the NPD and the German People's Union, until just a few years ago, because of its connection to famous Nazis (Hitler lived here for two years as a child) but also because they could hold their local gatherings in Nibelung Hall, a 1934 example of Nazi architecture.
But the city has steadily evolved into a more cosmopolitan, open place. A university established here in 1978 brought 8,000 students and a cultural shot in the arm.
The fall of the Iron Curtain and the integration of Europe has turned Passau's location in what was once an isolated corner of Germany into a crossroads and a destination. Nibelung Hall was torn down in 2004, and its replacement is called the Dreiländerhalle, or Hall of Three Lands.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
PASSAU, Germany: The stabbing of the police chief here in December provoked a nationwide furor because the victim, Alois Mannichl, was known as a staunch opponent of neo-Nazis, who were immediately blamed for the attack.
But the loud public protests and demonstrations in the streets of Passau gave way to silence, as days stretched into weeks and the case remained unsolved. Speculation that the perpetrator was a member of the police chief's family ran rampant, from local gossip all the way up to the leading newspapers and magazines in Germany.
What had become an instant symbol of out-of-control right-wing violence quickly turned into an investigation under the microscope. Here in this ancient city, which traces its history back to Roman times and earlier, the case and its aftermath have dredged up a reputation for ties to Nazism that civic leaders had worked hard to shed.
Now two months after the crime shook the country, the police and prosecutors here said Wednesday in a statement that they were more or less back to square one, ruling out Mannichl's wife and children while still searching for a man who is 6-foot-3, powerfully built, with close-cropped hair and possibly a tattoo on his neck, the same description released Dec. 14, the day after the attack.
"At this point, there is no evidence that the crime was committed by anyone in the family circle," said the statement. The 50-member special investigative commission established in the days after the attack is investigating "in all directions," but has no "hot lead" at this stage, the statement said.
The attack on Mannichl, which was serious but not fatal, renewed calls nationwide for a ban against the far-right National Democratic Party, known by its German initials as the NPD It also further inflamed concerns about a rise in violence by the extreme right.
In the state of Bavaria, where Passau is located, the number of right-wing-motivated assaults rose to 76 in 2007 from 42 in 2006, the most recent government figures available. But the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau has reported unreleased figures that through the first 10 months of 2008, right-wing violent crimes increased 15 percent nationwide.
Mannichl has been known for his hard line against the extreme right, but earned the particular enmity of neo-Nazi groups after ordering the opening of the grave of a prominent former Nazi, Friedhelm Busse, after his death last July. Busse was buried with a flag bearing a swastika, which is outlawed in Germany, and the police removed the flag as evidence.
Around 5:30 p.m. on Dec. 13, an attacker plunged a knife into Mannichl's chest outside his home on a quiet residential street in the tiny town of Fürstenzell near Passau, narrowly missing his heart, according to news reports. Mannichl said after the attack that his attacker yelled, "Greetings from the national resistance" and "You won't be trampling on the graves of our comrades anymore."
The attack made headlines nationwide, as did a candlelight vigil in Mannichl's honor. "When anyone is attacked by a right-wing extremist, it is an attack on us all," said Chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview the next week.
The day after the attack, the police arrested two men, ages 26 and 27, in connection with the crime. Two days later, a couple from Munich were detained for questioning as potential accomplices.
Yet all four were quickly released. And the questions began to mount, in particular around the fact that the knife used in the attack reportedly came from Mannichl's house. He explained that it had been used for cutting gingerbread during a neighborhood Advent celebration and that it had been left outside, where the assailant could have picked it up.
Heinz Fromm, the president of the domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, said publicly that the office had no evidence linking the crime to right-wing extremists. And conjecture about the case, and Mannichl, evolved into a popular parlor game from Passau clear to the capital, Berlin.
The national news magazine Stern later reported that it was "more or less being openly speculated that the police chief could have been the victim of a family drama" and might have sent his own police force on a wild goose chase.
Other possibilities aired publicly included the attacker was from the punk or goth scene or was an angry criminal out for revenge who only pretended to be a neo-Nazi to disguise his identity.
Mannichl declined to be interviewed for this article, but told a Munich newspaper last month that he was trying to live with the "virulent speculation." He described the questions surrounding the case as "a deep valley" in his life.
Members of the local NPD, who have long accused Mannichl of harassment, organized a protest against what they called unfair "baiting" of the right wing in connection with the case. On Jan. 4, some 200 far-right demonstrators from all over Germany gathered in Passau, where they were confronted by roughly 1,000 counterprotesters and nearly as many police officers. There were several arrests but no violence.
For Passau, a city of 50,000 that sits at the confluence of three rivers, the Inn, the Ilz and the Danube, and seeks to lure tourists to the narrow lanes of its quaintly lovely medieval old town, it was all an unwelcome return to what officials call an unfair reputation as a "brown city," a reference to the brown shirts that came to identify the Nazi party.
Passau gained international notoriety as a symbol of Germany's uneasy relationship with its past in the Academy Award-nominated film "The Nasty Girl," based on the true story of Anna Rosmus, who faced death threats when she began looking into the Nazi past of her hometown in 1980 when she was 19.
Passau remained a popular gathering spot for the far right, both the NPD and the German People's Union, until just a few years ago, because of its connection to famous Nazis (Hitler lived here for two years as a child) but also because they could hold their local gatherings in Nibelung Hall, a 1934 example of Nazi architecture.
But the city has steadily evolved into a more cosmopolitan, open place. A university established here in 1978 brought 8,000 students and a cultural shot in the arm.
The fall of the Iron Curtain and the integration of Europe has turned Passau's location in what was once an isolated corner of Germany into a crossroads and a destination. Nibelung Hall was torn down in 2004, and its replacement is called the Dreiländerhalle, or Hall of Three Lands.
Friday, February 6, 2009
EU visits Moscow as concerns mount over crisis
Commission sources and leading experts said the main intention of the meeting will be to reach mutual understanding on how to tackle the ongoing economic crisis, which is threatening to hit emerging economies such as Russia and China even harder.
Speaking at a conference in Brussels yesterday (5 February), Thierry de Montbrial, president of IFRI, the French Institute of International Relations, warned of a doom-like scenario in which falling oil prices would cripple Russia's economy.
"The biggest danger is that we pass from one extreme to another. In mid-July 2008 previsions for prices of petrol were at $200. A few months later, we wonder if petrol prices will not return to the level of $15-20, as they were in 2000, when Mr. Putin was elected, and under the level of which Russia is estimated not able to buckle its budget," De Montbrial said.
He further explained that such "swings in thinking" are extremely detrimental, because they can paralyse much-needed investment planning in the energy sector. "The biggest danger before us if we start thinking along the following lines: since we are in a crisis, then we drop investments in the energy sector, or we postpone them for better times. But then we risk to prepare the next phase of petrol price explosion, similar to the one of the seventies, and in addition, we risk abandoning the other major problem of the beginning of the 21st century, namely climate change and CO2 reductions, that is, a concept of investment in a much wider public policy," the head of the French think tank further elaborated.
But Montbrial also warned about risks in China, which had up till now been considered relatively immune from the crisis. Such views are "extremely naïve", he said.
"We have a double risk of a particularly strong crisis in China and India. I am particularly worried for China," he said, explaining that in case of a serious economic slowdown in China, with the country politically fragile, the legitimacy of the Communist party, which up to know has been founded on the economic growth, will be challenged.
"Although some fear an overly powerful China, a overly weak China is a much bigger threat," he said.
Diplomats confirmed that the thoughts expressed by Montbrial reflected the state of mind of the EU executive, and that coordination of macroeconomic policies is seen as fundamental to facing the challenges to come.
Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, who attended the event, completely dismissed the view that the last gas crisis had harmed EU-Russia relations.
"I think we should discuss how to better work against the economic crisis, how to deal with energy relations so that they could be better, more predictable. And I would say: they are not as bad as people think. We are not fighting. Yes, accidents happen. Yes, we could do better. But fundamentally, this is a Russian resource and Russian legislation regulates it. Does it give us access to the resources? Yes, it does. Does it sell to the European market? Yes, it does. Is it used for political purposes in the EU? No," Piebalgs stated.
Speaking at a conference in Brussels yesterday (5 February), Thierry de Montbrial, president of IFRI, the French Institute of International Relations, warned of a doom-like scenario in which falling oil prices would cripple Russia's economy.
"The biggest danger is that we pass from one extreme to another. In mid-July 2008 previsions for prices of petrol were at $200. A few months later, we wonder if petrol prices will not return to the level of $15-20, as they were in 2000, when Mr. Putin was elected, and under the level of which Russia is estimated not able to buckle its budget," De Montbrial said.
He further explained that such "swings in thinking" are extremely detrimental, because they can paralyse much-needed investment planning in the energy sector. "The biggest danger before us if we start thinking along the following lines: since we are in a crisis, then we drop investments in the energy sector, or we postpone them for better times. But then we risk to prepare the next phase of petrol price explosion, similar to the one of the seventies, and in addition, we risk abandoning the other major problem of the beginning of the 21st century, namely climate change and CO2 reductions, that is, a concept of investment in a much wider public policy," the head of the French think tank further elaborated.
But Montbrial also warned about risks in China, which had up till now been considered relatively immune from the crisis. Such views are "extremely naïve", he said.
"We have a double risk of a particularly strong crisis in China and India. I am particularly worried for China," he said, explaining that in case of a serious economic slowdown in China, with the country politically fragile, the legitimacy of the Communist party, which up to know has been founded on the economic growth, will be challenged.
"Although some fear an overly powerful China, a overly weak China is a much bigger threat," he said.
Diplomats confirmed that the thoughts expressed by Montbrial reflected the state of mind of the EU executive, and that coordination of macroeconomic policies is seen as fundamental to facing the challenges to come.
Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, who attended the event, completely dismissed the view that the last gas crisis had harmed EU-Russia relations.
"I think we should discuss how to better work against the economic crisis, how to deal with energy relations so that they could be better, more predictable. And I would say: they are not as bad as people think. We are not fighting. Yes, accidents happen. Yes, we could do better. But fundamentally, this is a Russian resource and Russian legislation regulates it. Does it give us access to the resources? Yes, it does. Does it sell to the European market? Yes, it does. Is it used for political purposes in the EU? No," Piebalgs stated.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Eastern Europe
It’s grim out east. Emerging Europe’s unravelling economic situation this week prompted the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to downgrade its 2009 growth forecast for its 30 countries of operation from 2.5 per cent to 0.1 per cent. Five countries, it believes, will experience recessions; Ukraine and Latvia could contract by 5 per cent. Social unrest is surfacing in several capitals.
The risk is that better-off western Europeans abandon their eastern neighbours to their fate. Already Greece has cautioned its banks against transferring funds from a €28bn support package to Balkan subsidiaries because of fears of financial turmoil. Such disengagement would be a historic mistake. Certainly, many east European countries made errors, going on credit binges fuelled by foreign currency borrowing and running up yawning current account deficits. They are suffering now, however, in large part because of their integration with the international economy. Nowhere is integration greater than in financial services: large chunks of east Europe’s banks are owned by foreign groups.
That creates opportunities and risks. In spite of political rhetoric, funds from west European banking bail-outs are generally trickling through to eastern subsidiaries. But further moves such as Greece’s could threaten such flows. Providing support only via western banks’ subsidiaries is also insufficient and could lead to disparities, depending on what proportion of countries’ banking systems are foreign-owned, and whether the owners are, say, French, Italian or Austrian. Eastern Europe’s public authorities need access to more funding for systemic measures.
Several commercial banks operating in the region are calling for European institutions to extend the kind of financial initiatives undertaken in the west into eastern Europe, including countries outside the European Union. The European Commission and EBRD back that call. Unless rapid co-ordinated action follows, however, eastern Europe’s economic achievements of the past decade could be undermined. And that will only exacerbate the challenges faced farther west.
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The risk is that better-off western Europeans abandon their eastern neighbours to their fate. Already Greece has cautioned its banks against transferring funds from a €28bn support package to Balkan subsidiaries because of fears of financial turmoil. Such disengagement would be a historic mistake. Certainly, many east European countries made errors, going on credit binges fuelled by foreign currency borrowing and running up yawning current account deficits. They are suffering now, however, in large part because of their integration with the international economy. Nowhere is integration greater than in financial services: large chunks of east Europe’s banks are owned by foreign groups.
That creates opportunities and risks. In spite of political rhetoric, funds from west European banking bail-outs are generally trickling through to eastern subsidiaries. But further moves such as Greece’s could threaten such flows. Providing support only via western banks’ subsidiaries is also insufficient and could lead to disparities, depending on what proportion of countries’ banking systems are foreign-owned, and whether the owners are, say, French, Italian or Austrian. Eastern Europe’s public authorities need access to more funding for systemic measures.
Several commercial banks operating in the region are calling for European institutions to extend the kind of financial initiatives undertaken in the west into eastern Europe, including countries outside the European Union. The European Commission and EBRD back that call. Unless rapid co-ordinated action follows, however, eastern Europe’s economic achievements of the past decade could be undermined. And that will only exacerbate the challenges faced farther west.
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Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Eastern Europe set for near-zero growth in 2009
By Stefan Wagstyl, east Europe Editor
Published: January 27 2009 17:21 | Last updated: January 27 2009 17:21
The economic clouds hanging over eastern Europe darkened today as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development slashed its forecasts for the region and predicted near-zero growth for 2009.
The region’s 30 states, including the former communist bloc plus Turkey, will see gross domestic product growth of just 0.1 per cent, says the bank, making a dramatic cut in its previous forecast of 2.5 per cent, made just three months ago.
Six countries – Ukraine, Turkey, Hungary and the Baltic states – are plunging into recession, while another five, including Russia, are seeing growth rates slow to 1 per cent or lower.
Erik Berglof, the EBRD’s chief economist, said the sudden deterioration in outlook was caused by the continuing decline in the global economic environment, which was undermining demand for the region’s exports. The last quarter of 2008 had also come out much worse than expected, bringing down the estimated growth figure for the year for the region from 6.3 per cent to 4.8 per cent, with two countries – Hungary and Latvia – already in recession.
“The EBRD region is feeling the full impact of the global slowdown, mainly because of the region’s increased integration within the global economy,” said Mr Berglof.
“The ability of these countries to withstand such a major external shock over the longer term will depend largely on the speed of the recovery of the global economy, the combined efforts of individual governments and international financial institutions, including the EBRD, to safeguard financial systems in the region, and the support of foreign banks to their eastern subsidiaries.”
Mr Berglof noted that the international banks active in the region had so far fully supported their subsidiaries. But he expressed concern that west European governments putting together bank rescue packages for their own countries would discriminate against foreign subsidiaries. “This is a very big worry. We hear countries may be putting restraints on banks’ ability to finance activities abroad,” said Mr Berglof, naming the UK, Greece and Austria as states where such policies were under discussion. “At the moment, this issue is vague. We will have to see how it works out in practice.”
Published: January 27 2009 17:21 | Last updated: January 27 2009 17:21
The economic clouds hanging over eastern Europe darkened today as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development slashed its forecasts for the region and predicted near-zero growth for 2009.
The region’s 30 states, including the former communist bloc plus Turkey, will see gross domestic product growth of just 0.1 per cent, says the bank, making a dramatic cut in its previous forecast of 2.5 per cent, made just three months ago.
Six countries – Ukraine, Turkey, Hungary and the Baltic states – are plunging into recession, while another five, including Russia, are seeing growth rates slow to 1 per cent or lower.
Erik Berglof, the EBRD’s chief economist, said the sudden deterioration in outlook was caused by the continuing decline in the global economic environment, which was undermining demand for the region’s exports. The last quarter of 2008 had also come out much worse than expected, bringing down the estimated growth figure for the year for the region from 6.3 per cent to 4.8 per cent, with two countries – Hungary and Latvia – already in recession.
“The EBRD region is feeling the full impact of the global slowdown, mainly because of the region’s increased integration within the global economy,” said Mr Berglof.
“The ability of these countries to withstand such a major external shock over the longer term will depend largely on the speed of the recovery of the global economy, the combined efforts of individual governments and international financial institutions, including the EBRD, to safeguard financial systems in the region, and the support of foreign banks to their eastern subsidiaries.”
Mr Berglof noted that the international banks active in the region had so far fully supported their subsidiaries. But he expressed concern that west European governments putting together bank rescue packages for their own countries would discriminate against foreign subsidiaries. “This is a very big worry. We hear countries may be putting restraints on banks’ ability to finance activities abroad,” said Mr Berglof, naming the UK, Greece and Austria as states where such policies were under discussion. “At the moment, this issue is vague. We will have to see how it works out in practice.”
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Islam film Dutch MP to be charged
A Dutch court has ordered prosecutors to put a right-wing politician on trial for making anti-Islamic statements.
Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
"In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line," the court in Amsterdam said.
Mr Wilders said the judgement was an "attack on the freedom of expression".
"Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted," he said.
Not only he, but all Dutch citizens opposed to the "Islamisation" of their country would be on trial, Mr Wilders warned.
"Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?" he added.
'Incitement'
The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders's "one-sided generalisations" against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.
"The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of member of parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs," the court said in a statement.
"The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders," it added.
The court's ruling reverses a decision last year by the public prosecutor's office, which said Mr Wilders's comments had been made outside parliament as a contribution to the debate on Islam in Dutch society and that no criminal offence had been committed.
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that they could not appeal against the judgement and would open an investigation immediately.
Gerard Spong, a prominent lawyer who pushed for Mr Wilders's prosecution, welcomed the court's decision.
"This is a happy day for all followers of Islam who do not want to be tossed on the garbage dump of Nazism," he told reporters.
'Fascist book'
In March 2008, Mr Wilders posted a film about the Koran on the internet, prompting angry protests across the Muslim World.
The opening scenes of Fitna - a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife" - show a copy of the holy book followed by footage of the bomb attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004.
Pictures appearing to show Muslim demonstrators holding up placards saying "God bless Hitler" and "Freedom go to hell" also feature.
The film ends with the statement: "Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom."
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said at the time that the film wrongly equated Islam with violence and served "no purpose other than to offend".
A year earlier, Mr Wilders described the Koran as a "fascist book" and called for it to be banned in "the same way we ban Mein Kampf", in a letter published in the De Volkskrant newspaper.
Mr Wilders has had police protection since Dutch director Theo Van Gogh was killed by a radical Islamist in 2004.
Correspondents say his Freedom Party (PVV), which has nine MPs in the lower house of parliament, has built its popularity largely by tapping into the fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants.
Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders made a controversial film last year equating Islam with violence and has likened the Koran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.
"In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to... draw a clear line," the court in Amsterdam said.
Mr Wilders said the judgement was an "attack on the freedom of expression".
"Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted," he said.
Not only he, but all Dutch citizens opposed to the "Islamisation" of their country would be on trial, Mr Wilders warned.
"Who will stand up for our culture if I am silenced?" he added.
'Incitement'
The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders's "one-sided generalisations" against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.
"The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of member of parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs," the court said in a statement.
"The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders," it added.
The court's ruling reverses a decision last year by the public prosecutor's office, which said Mr Wilders's comments had been made outside parliament as a contribution to the debate on Islam in Dutch society and that no criminal offence had been committed.
Prosecutors said on Wednesday that they could not appeal against the judgement and would open an investigation immediately.
Gerard Spong, a prominent lawyer who pushed for Mr Wilders's prosecution, welcomed the court's decision.
"This is a happy day for all followers of Islam who do not want to be tossed on the garbage dump of Nazism," he told reporters.
'Fascist book'
In March 2008, Mr Wilders posted a film about the Koran on the internet, prompting angry protests across the Muslim World.
The opening scenes of Fitna - a Koranic term sometimes translated as "strife" - show a copy of the holy book followed by footage of the bomb attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, London in July 2005 and Madrid in March 2004.
Pictures appearing to show Muslim demonstrators holding up placards saying "God bless Hitler" and "Freedom go to hell" also feature.
The film ends with the statement: "Stop Islamisation. Defend our freedom."
Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said at the time that the film wrongly equated Islam with violence and served "no purpose other than to offend".
A year earlier, Mr Wilders described the Koran as a "fascist book" and called for it to be banned in "the same way we ban Mein Kampf", in a letter published in the De Volkskrant newspaper.
Mr Wilders has had police protection since Dutch director Theo Van Gogh was killed by a radical Islamist in 2004.
Correspondents say his Freedom Party (PVV), which has nine MPs in the lower house of parliament, has built its popularity largely by tapping into the fear and resentment of Muslim immigrants.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
France convicts PKK-linked Kurds
A court in Paris has convicted 11 men linked to the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), for attacks on two cafes and a cultural organisation in France.
The men were sentenced to between three months and five years in prison after being found guilty of "criminal conspiracy for terrorist purposes".
Prosecutors said it was the first time in France people linked to the PKK had been convicted of terrorist offences.
The PKK has fought for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey since 1984.
It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the US.
Turkey has launched a series of cross-border attacks during the past year on PKK members based in northern Iraq, from where it says they have been launching raids on Turkish territory.
The court case in France centred on three petrol-bomb attacks on two Turkish-run cafes and a Turkish cultural association in and around the south-western French city of Bordeaux in 2007.
Prosecutors said most of the convicted men belonged a group called the "Apoist Youth" - believed to be named after the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, whose nickname is "Apo".
Prosecutor Patrick Laberche told the court that in his view, they all had "a thorough knowledge of the ideological ramifications" of their actions and were "aware of acting in line with the aims of the PKK".
The men were sentenced to between three months and five years in prison after being found guilty of "criminal conspiracy for terrorist purposes".
Prosecutors said it was the first time in France people linked to the PKK had been convicted of terrorist offences.
The PKK has fought for an independent Kurdish state within Turkey since 1984.
It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the EU and the US.
Turkey has launched a series of cross-border attacks during the past year on PKK members based in northern Iraq, from where it says they have been launching raids on Turkish territory.
The court case in France centred on three petrol-bomb attacks on two Turkish-run cafes and a Turkish cultural association in and around the south-western French city of Bordeaux in 2007.
Prosecutors said most of the convicted men belonged a group called the "Apoist Youth" - believed to be named after the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, whose nickname is "Apo".
Prosecutor Patrick Laberche told the court that in his view, they all had "a thorough knowledge of the ideological ramifications" of their actions and were "aware of acting in line with the aims of the PKK".
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Anti-Jewish violence in Europe
PARIS: Signs are mounting that the conflict in Gaza is starting to spill over into violence in Europe's towns and cities, with assaults against Jews and arson attacks on Jewish congregations in France, Sweden and Britain.
Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night.
A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," said a police spokesman, Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.
Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including "murderers ... you broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on the Israel Embassy in Stockholm.
In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have wounded two young Israelis last week by opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that the police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.
France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, about 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.
President Nicolas Sarkozy warned in a statement Tuesday that France would not tolerate violence linked to the Gaza crisis.
A day earlier, his interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said she was concerned and met with the heads of the two main Muslim and Jewish groups and police officials to stress the need to "preserve national unity."
Damage to the synagogue in Toulouse was limited to a blackened gate, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi had been giving a course to adults inside, the authorities said. They added that unlighted gasoline bombs had been found in a car nearby and in the synagogue's yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue but fled when the building's alarm went off.
"It could have been very, very serious," Partouche said in a telephone interview. "There were people inside; there could have been deaths."
He said Jewish leaders are asking Toulouse authorities for reinforced security for the city's synagogues.
"We really fear that anti-Semitism will spring up again and that the current conflict will be transposed to our beautiful French republic," he said.
In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza on Dec. 27. The group said it had recorded 20 to 25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.
The London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.
A spokesman for Community Security Trust, Mark Gardner, said that in another incident last week a gang of 15 to 20 youths walked along the main street in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighborhood in north London, shouting "Jew" and "Free Palestine" at passers-by.
"It could get worse," Gardner said. "We tend to see these things happen in waves."
The Belgian government ordered the police in Antwerp and Brussels on Tuesday to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. The police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.
In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees had been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.
"They kept cursing and shouting at us," Ruvio said. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.
Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted "slaughter all the Jews."
"I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else," he said. "If people ask you where you are from, never say you're from Israel."
Assailants rammed a burning car into the gates of a synagogue in Toulouse, in southwest France, on Monday night.
A Jewish congregation in Helsingborg, in southern Sweden, also was attacked Monday night by someone who "broke a window and threw in something that was burning," said a police spokesman, Leif Nilsson. Neighbors alerted rescue services before the fire took hold.
Someone also started a blaze outside the premises last week. And on Sunday slogans including "murderers ... you broke the cease-fire" and "don't subject Palestine to ethnic cleansing" were daubed on the Israel Embassy in Stockholm.
In Denmark, a 27-year-old Dane born in Lebanon of Palestinian parents is alleged to have wounded two young Israelis last week by opening fire with a handgun in a shooting that the police suspect could be linked to the Gaza crisis.
France has Western Europe's largest Jewish and Muslim communities and a history of anti-Semitic violence when tensions in the Middle East are high. In 2002, about 2,300 Jews left France for Israel because they felt unsafe.
President Nicolas Sarkozy warned in a statement Tuesday that France would not tolerate violence linked to the Gaza crisis.
A day earlier, his interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie, said she was concerned and met with the heads of the two main Muslim and Jewish groups and police officials to stress the need to "preserve national unity."
Damage to the synagogue in Toulouse was limited to a blackened gate, and there were no injuries even though a rabbi had been giving a course to adults inside, the authorities said. They added that unlighted gasoline bombs had been found in a car nearby and in the synagogue's yard. A local Jewish leader, Armand Partouche, said he believed the assailants had planned to torch the synagogue but fled when the building's alarm went off.
"It could have been very, very serious," Partouche said in a telephone interview. "There were people inside; there could have been deaths."
He said Jewish leaders are asking Toulouse authorities for reinforced security for the city's synagogues.
"We really fear that anti-Semitism will spring up again and that the current conflict will be transposed to our beautiful French republic," he said.
In Britain, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish defense group, said it had seen a rise in anti-Semitic incidents since the start of Israel's offensive against Gaza on Dec. 27. The group said it had recorded 20 to 25 incidents across the country in the past week that it believed were connected with Gaza, including an arson attempt on a synagogue in north London on Sunday.
The London police are investigating the attack, in which suspects splashed flammable liquid on the door and set it on fire.
A spokesman for Community Security Trust, Mark Gardner, said that in another incident last week a gang of 15 to 20 youths walked along the main street in Golders Green, a largely Jewish neighborhood in north London, shouting "Jew" and "Free Palestine" at passers-by.
"It could get worse," Gardner said. "We tend to see these things happen in waves."
The Belgian government ordered the police in Antwerp and Brussels on Tuesday to be on increased alert after recent pro-Palestinian protests ended in violence and dozens of arrests. The police said burning rags were shoved through the mailbox of a Jewish home in Antwerp last weekend. Damage was limited and no arrests were made.
In the Danish shooting, one Israeli man was shot in the arm and another in the leg as they were selling hair care products in a shopping mall. Eli Ruvio, who owns the company that operated the stands, said his employees had been harassed by Muslim youths since they set up three kiosks in the shopping center in August.
"They kept cursing and shouting at us," Ruvio said. He added that the Muslim youths also threw mud and firecrackers at the employees and spat at them.
Ruvio recalled an episode Dec. 27 when some of the youths shouted "slaughter all the Jews."
"I told my employees not to speak in Hebrew and lie about where they come from, they should say there were from Spain or somewhere else," he said. "If people ask you where you are from, never say you're from Israel."
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Europe is ready to work with Obama
By Thom Shanker and Helene Cooper
Sunday, January 4, 2009
WASHINGTON: After rebuffing the Bush administration on a number of fronts, European governments are signaling that they may be more willing to engage with the incoming Obama administration on a variety of stalled issues, including taking in prisoners from the Guantánamo Bay detention center and strengthening sanctions against Iran.
But it may not be all honeymoon: European diplomats say they will push President-elect Barack Obama to soothe Russian anger over plans to establish missile defense bases in Europe. And American officials say that the Obama administration is certain to press countries to fulfill, or even increase, pledges for personnel and equipment for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, long a point of tension among allies.
"There are expectations across Europe that the United States will be asking more," one senior American official said. "The question is whether decisive amounts will come."
One issue that may be back on the table is resettling detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Though there is still not consensus among European governments, several, led by Germany and Portugal, have said that they will consider taking in detainees if Obama follows through on his promise to close the Guantánamo prison.
Such a move would remove a major stumbling block to closing the camp and would represent a reversal on the part of European allies who have rejected requests by President George W. Bush to resettle detainees.
Thomas Steg, a spokesman for the German government, said that such a deal would hinge on Obama's closing the military prison, and that even then, "if we begin to review such closure plans and take a stance, then it can only be in a European context based on a discussion with all member states."
The French Foreign Ministry has also called for a common European Union policy on how to deal with the Guantánamo prisoners, and some European diplomats have said they will begin working toward such a plan.
Reports about European countries' willingness to consider accepting some detainees from Guantánamo after Obama's inauguration have clearly irked the Bush administration, which has been intensively lobbying them to do so.
"If European countries are willing to take detainees from Guantánamo, that'd be a constructive step," said Dana Perino, the White House press secretary. "We've been asking them to do so for years. We're glad they're finally willing to share in this important responsibility in the global war on terror."
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said he believed that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should get the credit for the European turnaround.
"I can't speak to motivations on the part of Germany or any other country, but I would say that this change in attitude hasn't come about overnight, and really is the result of just an awful lot of hard work by Secretary Rice," McCormack said.
He said that Portugal, in particular, "should be praised for what they have done in sort of blazing a trail for a new European attitude in this regard."
Luís Amado, the foreign minister of Portugal, recently called on European governments to help the United States shut down Guantánamo by taking in detainees from third countries.
European diplomats said privately that their willingness to help Obama on Guantánamo went beyond a honeymoon strategy. Some say that helping to re-establish the camp's prisoners would allow their countries to re-establish credibility with their Muslim populations at home.
America's allies may also be more willing to help out Obama on Iran — providing he makes good on his promise to allow his administration to engage directly with Iranian officials without preconditions, one European diplomat said.
The United States, along with Europe, Russia and China, has been trying to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program through a mixture of economic sanctions and incentives, with no success so far. Bush administration officials have complained that part of the problem has been that Germany, Russia and China in particular have been unwilling to impose punitive sanctions against Iran.
But those countries might be more willing to toughen the sanctions against Iran if Obama "softens the atmosphere," the diplomat said, by talking directly with Iranian officials — a change that European negotiators have long pushed for. "It would be easier to make the case then that we are trying everything," the European diplomat said.
In exchange, America's allies are certain to expect a certain quid pro quo from the Obama administration, in particular on missile defense plans, according to European diplomats.
The Kremlin has responded with outrage to the Bush administration's plans to place two American missile defense bases in Europe, one in Poland and one in the Czech Republic, and senior Russian generals have even threatened military retaliation against NATO members.
Alarmed by the rising tension, European diplomats say they will ask the Obama administration — in particular Hillary Rodham Clinton, nominated to be secretary of state — to take a more conciliatory line toward Moscow.
While Obama has not stated his specific policy plans on missile defense, he has routinely expressed great skepticism over financing the system until its abilities have been proved.
On the war in Afghanistan, however, Obama has been outspoken in pushing for a bigger military effort against the Taliban. A particularly clear signal was sent by his decision to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has called for more emphasis on Afghanistan — and who has made headlines with what some frustrated NATO alliance partners have called his "megaphone diplomacy" of criticizing NATO nations for not doing more.
NATO has not met its pledges for combat troops, nor for the vitally important transport helicopters, military trainers and other support personnel. Gates has insisted that commitments made by NATO allies should be filled by alliance partners — even by those nations who resist direct combat roles.
To meet commanders' requests for more combat troops, the Obama administration is expected to deploy 20,000 to 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, a significant portion within six months.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
WASHINGTON: After rebuffing the Bush administration on a number of fronts, European governments are signaling that they may be more willing to engage with the incoming Obama administration on a variety of stalled issues, including taking in prisoners from the Guantánamo Bay detention center and strengthening sanctions against Iran.
But it may not be all honeymoon: European diplomats say they will push President-elect Barack Obama to soothe Russian anger over plans to establish missile defense bases in Europe. And American officials say that the Obama administration is certain to press countries to fulfill, or even increase, pledges for personnel and equipment for the NATO mission in Afghanistan, long a point of tension among allies.
"There are expectations across Europe that the United States will be asking more," one senior American official said. "The question is whether decisive amounts will come."
One issue that may be back on the table is resettling detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Though there is still not consensus among European governments, several, led by Germany and Portugal, have said that they will consider taking in detainees if Obama follows through on his promise to close the Guantánamo prison.
Such a move would remove a major stumbling block to closing the camp and would represent a reversal on the part of European allies who have rejected requests by President George W. Bush to resettle detainees.
Thomas Steg, a spokesman for the German government, said that such a deal would hinge on Obama's closing the military prison, and that even then, "if we begin to review such closure plans and take a stance, then it can only be in a European context based on a discussion with all member states."
The French Foreign Ministry has also called for a common European Union policy on how to deal with the Guantánamo prisoners, and some European diplomats have said they will begin working toward such a plan.
Reports about European countries' willingness to consider accepting some detainees from Guantánamo after Obama's inauguration have clearly irked the Bush administration, which has been intensively lobbying them to do so.
"If European countries are willing to take detainees from Guantánamo, that'd be a constructive step," said Dana Perino, the White House press secretary. "We've been asking them to do so for years. We're glad they're finally willing to share in this important responsibility in the global war on terror."
Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman, said he believed that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should get the credit for the European turnaround.
"I can't speak to motivations on the part of Germany or any other country, but I would say that this change in attitude hasn't come about overnight, and really is the result of just an awful lot of hard work by Secretary Rice," McCormack said.
He said that Portugal, in particular, "should be praised for what they have done in sort of blazing a trail for a new European attitude in this regard."
Luís Amado, the foreign minister of Portugal, recently called on European governments to help the United States shut down Guantánamo by taking in detainees from third countries.
European diplomats said privately that their willingness to help Obama on Guantánamo went beyond a honeymoon strategy. Some say that helping to re-establish the camp's prisoners would allow their countries to re-establish credibility with their Muslim populations at home.
America's allies may also be more willing to help out Obama on Iran — providing he makes good on his promise to allow his administration to engage directly with Iranian officials without preconditions, one European diplomat said.
The United States, along with Europe, Russia and China, has been trying to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program through a mixture of economic sanctions and incentives, with no success so far. Bush administration officials have complained that part of the problem has been that Germany, Russia and China in particular have been unwilling to impose punitive sanctions against Iran.
But those countries might be more willing to toughen the sanctions against Iran if Obama "softens the atmosphere," the diplomat said, by talking directly with Iranian officials — a change that European negotiators have long pushed for. "It would be easier to make the case then that we are trying everything," the European diplomat said.
In exchange, America's allies are certain to expect a certain quid pro quo from the Obama administration, in particular on missile defense plans, according to European diplomats.
The Kremlin has responded with outrage to the Bush administration's plans to place two American missile defense bases in Europe, one in Poland and one in the Czech Republic, and senior Russian generals have even threatened military retaliation against NATO members.
Alarmed by the rising tension, European diplomats say they will ask the Obama administration — in particular Hillary Rodham Clinton, nominated to be secretary of state — to take a more conciliatory line toward Moscow.
While Obama has not stated his specific policy plans on missile defense, he has routinely expressed great skepticism over financing the system until its abilities have been proved.
On the war in Afghanistan, however, Obama has been outspoken in pushing for a bigger military effort against the Taliban. A particularly clear signal was sent by his decision to keep Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who has called for more emphasis on Afghanistan — and who has made headlines with what some frustrated NATO alliance partners have called his "megaphone diplomacy" of criticizing NATO nations for not doing more.
NATO has not met its pledges for combat troops, nor for the vitally important transport helicopters, military trainers and other support personnel. Gates has insisted that commitments made by NATO allies should be filled by alliance partners — even by those nations who resist direct combat roles.
To meet commanders' requests for more combat troops, the Obama administration is expected to deploy 20,000 to 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan, a significant portion within six months.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
'Germany is Failing as a Leading Power in Europe'
SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH EX-FOREIGN MINISTER JOSCHKA FISCHER
Germany's former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, 60, speaks with SPIEGEL about the global financial crisis, the lack of German leadership in Europe and what Barack Obama is doing right.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Fischer, France and the UK held the last EU summit without the German chancellor, and many European countries are mocking the Germans' hesitant economic policies. Is Germany headed toward isolation?
Fischer: Things have not gotten that bad. But Germany is staring at its own navel, too much so for my taste. I have made quite a few trips these past few weeks -- to Paris, Lisbon and Copenhagen. Everywhere the first question was: Can you explain why the chancellor, in this crisis, where everyone is looking to Berlin, is leaving Europe in the lurch? Why doesn't Germany see tackling the crisis as a joint project? Why does Germany always say no, instead of assuming a leadership role?
SPIEGEL: What reasons do you see for this?
Fischer: I have noticed a disastrous shift in focus in Germany's foreign and European policy. Until now Europe itself has been the key project in German foreign policy -- what was good for Europe was also good for Germany, and vice versa. The country's current leaders, however, increasingly see Europe as a tool to push through Germany's own political agenda. This entails a significant risk for Europe, but also primarily for Germany.
SPIEGEL: What signs do you see of this shift?
Fischer: First and foremost, how the crisis is being addressed. Apparently the German government at first underestimated the gravity of the situation. It failed to recognize how great the risk is that we could slide into a worldwide depression. The fact that the German government did not energetically take action back in November caused a great deal of consternation and confusion in Europe.
SPIEGEL: Can you explain Berlin's hesitation?
Fischer: (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel is still struggling with the political blisters on her hands that she received from the radical reform pledges that she made at the Christian Democratic Union party conference in Leipzig and her support for the war in Iraq. As a result of this experience, she is more reserved and no longer rushes into things. Until now, if opinion polls are anything to judge by, this approach has served her well. She always takes positions that allow her to maintain a majority. However, in this global crisis, that is simply the wrong attitude. What is needed now is strategic, large-scale planning -- in the European spirit.
SPIEGEL: That would be the moment of calling for the self-declared great strategist, Joschka Fischer?
Fischer: This is not about me. But I do see a German government that is groping its way forward. Why aren't we presenting our own German proposals? Germany is failing as a leading power in Europe.
SPIEGEL: Does Germany have to pay more in order to lead Europe? Would an economic stimulus program also be a political investment in Germany's role?
Fischer: We do not have to pay in the sense that we have to pay off a debt. Generally, we expect the strong to do more than the weak, no doubt about it. Of course, we have to take great pains to ensure that budget problems, which other countries have brought upon themselves, are not simply dumped at our doorstep. But that is no reason to throw up our hands and say 'no' whenever our neighbors start talking about a European economic stimulus program. This requires a political approach.
SPIEGEL: But that would mean reassuming our old role as Europe's bankroller.
Fischer: That is precisely the national logic that alienates our neighbors. On top of that, it doesn't make economic sense. We are not the world's leading exporter because of our trade with China, but because we supply so many products to the EU internal market. Hardly any other country depends as much on Europe as Germany, and earns as much from Europe as we do, at all levels. The entire internal market is our market -- no longer just the German part.
SPIEGEL: Germans these days tend to perceive their neighbors as cheeky and greedy.
Fischer: There is a real danger here that the European project will run out of steam, that people will say: Okay, Europe is important, but now we've had enough. The German government promotes this type of thinking with its wait-and-see approach. At least the government now wants to introduce a second stimulus package. But why are they waiting so long?
SPIEGEL: The German chancellor says she's waiting because she first needs to know what US President-elect Barack Obama will do.
Fischer: We have known for a long time what he will do. Ever since the Democratic National Convention in Denver, we have known what is at the core of his intentions. I don't know who the German government sent there. I was there. Since then it has been clear to me. Obama is going to start off with a big bang. The week before last, if the figure was $500 billion -- today it will be over a trillion! The details, how much they will spend on education and how much on infrastructure, won't help us anyway because we, thank God, don't have their infrastructural problems. I suspect that the chancellor would simply like to act simultaneously with that shining light, Obama -- but is this tactical victory worth the price of going through three months of strife with Paris and London?
SPIEGEL: You have a reputation for seeing the gloomier side of things. Could it be that these inner-European problems will all be forgotten in three weeks?
Fischer: That would be nice, but I don't believe it. This brings us back to the issue of Germany's new orientation in Europe. Reaching a consensus within the EU appears to be too arduous for Berlin, in other words: Things are too complicated in Brussels, so let's go it alone.
SPIEGEL: Isn't that understandable? Europe's integration isn't moving forward.
Fischer: Of course it's arduous. But the alternative to a Europe with 27 members cannot be that Germany goes solo. I could very well imagine an avant-garde consisting of a number of countries that lead the way, but France absolutely needs to be one of them, whether we like it or not. Of course other countries have to take part, but working without or against France -- forget it.
SPIEGEL: Nevertheless, the indefatigable, vain Nicolas Sarkozy is undeniably a rather difficult partner.
Fischer: It has always been like that with French presidents. The relationship between Schröder and Chirac was horrendous for many years. The relationship Kohl/Chirac was also anything but good and harmonious. You don't have to love each other, you just have to achieve something together.
SPIEGEL: And if you don't like each other?
Fischer: Personal aggressions have no place in diplomacy. They are far too dangerous. You sometimes meet people who truly get on your nerves, and in extreme cases, if you are dealing with bloody dictatorships, they can even be revolting. In such cases, as the chancellor or foreign minister, you can't find enough soap to wash your hands after a handshake. That comes with the territory. But aggression is out of the question. It doesn't help when you read in German newspapers that the chancellor watches Louis-de-Funès films to understand Sarkozy better. What's the point?
SPIEGEL: Do German politicians have to be subservient to the French in order to lead Europe?
Fischer: Helmut Kohl said: "The German chancellor is best advised to bow twice before the French flag." I don't see it quite like that, but we are well advised to endeavor to understand a country which has become such an important partner. That is often difficult. But we are also certainly not an easy partner for the French. We have a totally different mentality. We tend to have diverging political cultures. This also engenders something positive and constructive, if you embrace it. That is something that Schmidt/Giscard d'Estaing and Kohl/Mitterrand succeeded in doing.
SPIEGEL: Germany is also at loggerheads with the British. The Financial Times compared Merkel's approach to Heinrich Brüning's belt-tightening policies during the economic crisis of the 1930s.
Fischer: We don't have to take every criticism literally. There are definitely exaggerations. But our government is acting like a bull in a china shop. Take for example Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück's tirade against Gordon Brown in Newsweek.
SPIEGEL: He accused him of "crass Keynesianism" and questioned the benefits of lowering their value-added tax.
Fischer: It reminds me of the Daily Telegraph interview, which led to an extremely inglorious affair.
SPIEGEL: In 1908 the newspaper published an interview with Kaiser Wilhelm II, where he read the riot act to the British. This sparked a crisis in German-British relations.
Fischer: Of course Steinbrück is not Wilhelm II. But it is exactly the same kind of brash "now I'm going to tell them what's what" -- a condescending tone.
SPIEGEL: A return to Wilhelmism?
Fischer: Oh no, those days are definitely over. But such interview attacks are bad foreign policy and don't fit with our role.
SPIEGEL: Steinbrück of course loves provocations.
Fischer: The finance minister has apparently not understood that one country is speaking to another here, one government to another. If you offend someone, not as a person, but rather in their political function, it has consequences.
SPIEGEL: Particularly as Steinbrück has made mistakes himself during this crisis.
Fischer: He stood before the German parliament and said: The financial crisis is a purely American problem. His coattails were on fire and he didn't even notice. He has pulled a couple of stunts during this crisis. There is absolutely no reason for him to stick his nose in the air.
SPIEGEL: What was his biggest mistake?
Fischer: Take Germany's bank rescue package -- truly a carefully crafted, top-notch product. In contrast to other countries, we have made the banks' participation voluntary -- and thrown in thumbscrews and hot irons for good measure. The banks of course have recoiled in horror because even on their boards of directors they are not particularly inclined toward masochism. I would have made the law mandatory.
SPIEGEL: Are Steinbrück's actions an indication that the Germans are focusing increasingly on their own national agenda?
Fischer: Yes, but not in the sense of something negative, something nationalistic. More like the French and the British.
SPIEGEL: A new normality?
Fischer: If you will. But there is a big difference. France and the UK are integrated into an extremely old foreign policy tradition. We are not. Take for example the Middle East. When you think of France, clear coordinates immediately spring to mind: Northern Africa, Lebanon and the Mediterranean region. It's a similar story with the British. However, if you want to define Germany's political role in the Middle East, aside from our special relationship with Israel, you are left only with foreign trade policy, or a big question mark.
SPIEGEL: In other words, we are weaker when it comes to foreign policy, so we are best advised to focus on Europe?
Fischer: German foreign policy only becomes stable and reliable if it is defined through the European prism. We had a break in our traditions with National Socialism and the Holocaust. So we cannot build on long historical experience. Things immediately lose clarity when we think that we can again define foreign policy more in line with our national agenda. We simply lack a firm foundation. Only defining Germany's identity within a European context has made it stable.
SPIEGEL: We cannot expect any help from the chancellor. She hasn't given any great speeches during the crisis, and hasn't shown direction. Do you see a lack of leadership here?
Fischer: This would actually be a golden opportunity for Merkel -- like the fall of the Berlin Wall for Helmut Kohl. He was an extremely ungifted speaker. But in a similar crisis he reacted with a 10-point plan for German unity. I have yet to see Merkel produce such a plan.
SPIEGEL: Why is that?
Fischer: Perhaps there is not enough pressure on the government to make every effort. That is my impression. This is an extremely negative aspect of the grand coalition.
SPIEGEL: Because there is no opposition?
Fischer: When Schröder and I were in power, when we went to sleep there was no way to know that we would still have a majority in the morning. It was constantly like that. You need an opposition, you need to feel their hot breath down your back. It makes you work. Merkel and Steinbrück are lacking this drive.
SPIEGEL: Europe is faltering due to a lack of German leadership. What consequences does this have for Europe?
Fischer: America will turn away from the Atlantic and toward the Pacific. China, Japan and South Korea are the main creditors of the US. If we are interested in having lively transatlantic relations, then we have to invest more. This requires a strong Europe which can serve as a partner to the US on the world stage. But if Europe ceases to be an effective power, the Americans will downgrade their relations with us.
SPIEGEL: At the same time, there are so many Germans who hope that Obama can save their world.
Fischer: This crisis will restructure the age of globalization in the 21st century. America will redetermine its role. Obama is bringing America together. America is reinventing itself in its worst crisis and growing together, while Europe is flying apart. Berlin is currently pursuing a course that will only weaken us.
SPIEGEL: What would Merkel have to do to become more European?
Fischer: It is important to coordinate your new stimulus program with the key partners in Europe and truly assume the responsibilities of leadership. This would be a second attempt, in any case. But it will come too late for 2009. That could be disastrous. From a political standpoint, though, I find it absolutely necessary that Germany once again assumes a leadership role.
SPIEGEL: Thank you for this interview, Mr. Fischer.
Germany's former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, 60, speaks with SPIEGEL about the global financial crisis, the lack of German leadership in Europe and what Barack Obama is doing right.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Fischer, France and the UK held the last EU summit without the German chancellor, and many European countries are mocking the Germans' hesitant economic policies. Is Germany headed toward isolation?
Fischer: Things have not gotten that bad. But Germany is staring at its own navel, too much so for my taste. I have made quite a few trips these past few weeks -- to Paris, Lisbon and Copenhagen. Everywhere the first question was: Can you explain why the chancellor, in this crisis, where everyone is looking to Berlin, is leaving Europe in the lurch? Why doesn't Germany see tackling the crisis as a joint project? Why does Germany always say no, instead of assuming a leadership role?
SPIEGEL: What reasons do you see for this?
Fischer: I have noticed a disastrous shift in focus in Germany's foreign and European policy. Until now Europe itself has been the key project in German foreign policy -- what was good for Europe was also good for Germany, and vice versa. The country's current leaders, however, increasingly see Europe as a tool to push through Germany's own political agenda. This entails a significant risk for Europe, but also primarily for Germany.
SPIEGEL: What signs do you see of this shift?
Fischer: First and foremost, how the crisis is being addressed. Apparently the German government at first underestimated the gravity of the situation. It failed to recognize how great the risk is that we could slide into a worldwide depression. The fact that the German government did not energetically take action back in November caused a great deal of consternation and confusion in Europe.
SPIEGEL: Can you explain Berlin's hesitation?
Fischer: (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel is still struggling with the political blisters on her hands that she received from the radical reform pledges that she made at the Christian Democratic Union party conference in Leipzig and her support for the war in Iraq. As a result of this experience, she is more reserved and no longer rushes into things. Until now, if opinion polls are anything to judge by, this approach has served her well. She always takes positions that allow her to maintain a majority. However, in this global crisis, that is simply the wrong attitude. What is needed now is strategic, large-scale planning -- in the European spirit.
SPIEGEL: That would be the moment of calling for the self-declared great strategist, Joschka Fischer?
Fischer: This is not about me. But I do see a German government that is groping its way forward. Why aren't we presenting our own German proposals? Germany is failing as a leading power in Europe.
SPIEGEL: Does Germany have to pay more in order to lead Europe? Would an economic stimulus program also be a political investment in Germany's role?
Fischer: We do not have to pay in the sense that we have to pay off a debt. Generally, we expect the strong to do more than the weak, no doubt about it. Of course, we have to take great pains to ensure that budget problems, which other countries have brought upon themselves, are not simply dumped at our doorstep. But that is no reason to throw up our hands and say 'no' whenever our neighbors start talking about a European economic stimulus program. This requires a political approach.
SPIEGEL: But that would mean reassuming our old role as Europe's bankroller.
Fischer: That is precisely the national logic that alienates our neighbors. On top of that, it doesn't make economic sense. We are not the world's leading exporter because of our trade with China, but because we supply so many products to the EU internal market. Hardly any other country depends as much on Europe as Germany, and earns as much from Europe as we do, at all levels. The entire internal market is our market -- no longer just the German part.
SPIEGEL: Germans these days tend to perceive their neighbors as cheeky and greedy.
Fischer: There is a real danger here that the European project will run out of steam, that people will say: Okay, Europe is important, but now we've had enough. The German government promotes this type of thinking with its wait-and-see approach. At least the government now wants to introduce a second stimulus package. But why are they waiting so long?
SPIEGEL: The German chancellor says she's waiting because she first needs to know what US President-elect Barack Obama will do.
Fischer: We have known for a long time what he will do. Ever since the Democratic National Convention in Denver, we have known what is at the core of his intentions. I don't know who the German government sent there. I was there. Since then it has been clear to me. Obama is going to start off with a big bang. The week before last, if the figure was $500 billion -- today it will be over a trillion! The details, how much they will spend on education and how much on infrastructure, won't help us anyway because we, thank God, don't have their infrastructural problems. I suspect that the chancellor would simply like to act simultaneously with that shining light, Obama -- but is this tactical victory worth the price of going through three months of strife with Paris and London?
SPIEGEL: You have a reputation for seeing the gloomier side of things. Could it be that these inner-European problems will all be forgotten in three weeks?
Fischer: That would be nice, but I don't believe it. This brings us back to the issue of Germany's new orientation in Europe. Reaching a consensus within the EU appears to be too arduous for Berlin, in other words: Things are too complicated in Brussels, so let's go it alone.
SPIEGEL: Isn't that understandable? Europe's integration isn't moving forward.
Fischer: Of course it's arduous. But the alternative to a Europe with 27 members cannot be that Germany goes solo. I could very well imagine an avant-garde consisting of a number of countries that lead the way, but France absolutely needs to be one of them, whether we like it or not. Of course other countries have to take part, but working without or against France -- forget it.
SPIEGEL: Nevertheless, the indefatigable, vain Nicolas Sarkozy is undeniably a rather difficult partner.
Fischer: It has always been like that with French presidents. The relationship between Schröder and Chirac was horrendous for many years. The relationship Kohl/Chirac was also anything but good and harmonious. You don't have to love each other, you just have to achieve something together.
SPIEGEL: And if you don't like each other?
Fischer: Personal aggressions have no place in diplomacy. They are far too dangerous. You sometimes meet people who truly get on your nerves, and in extreme cases, if you are dealing with bloody dictatorships, they can even be revolting. In such cases, as the chancellor or foreign minister, you can't find enough soap to wash your hands after a handshake. That comes with the territory. But aggression is out of the question. It doesn't help when you read in German newspapers that the chancellor watches Louis-de-Funès films to understand Sarkozy better. What's the point?
SPIEGEL: Do German politicians have to be subservient to the French in order to lead Europe?
Fischer: Helmut Kohl said: "The German chancellor is best advised to bow twice before the French flag." I don't see it quite like that, but we are well advised to endeavor to understand a country which has become such an important partner. That is often difficult. But we are also certainly not an easy partner for the French. We have a totally different mentality. We tend to have diverging political cultures. This also engenders something positive and constructive, if you embrace it. That is something that Schmidt/Giscard d'Estaing and Kohl/Mitterrand succeeded in doing.
SPIEGEL: Germany is also at loggerheads with the British. The Financial Times compared Merkel's approach to Heinrich Brüning's belt-tightening policies during the economic crisis of the 1930s.
Fischer: We don't have to take every criticism literally. There are definitely exaggerations. But our government is acting like a bull in a china shop. Take for example Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück's tirade against Gordon Brown in Newsweek.
SPIEGEL: He accused him of "crass Keynesianism" and questioned the benefits of lowering their value-added tax.
Fischer: It reminds me of the Daily Telegraph interview, which led to an extremely inglorious affair.
SPIEGEL: In 1908 the newspaper published an interview with Kaiser Wilhelm II, where he read the riot act to the British. This sparked a crisis in German-British relations.
Fischer: Of course Steinbrück is not Wilhelm II. But it is exactly the same kind of brash "now I'm going to tell them what's what" -- a condescending tone.
SPIEGEL: A return to Wilhelmism?
Fischer: Oh no, those days are definitely over. But such interview attacks are bad foreign policy and don't fit with our role.
SPIEGEL: Steinbrück of course loves provocations.
Fischer: The finance minister has apparently not understood that one country is speaking to another here, one government to another. If you offend someone, not as a person, but rather in their political function, it has consequences.
SPIEGEL: Particularly as Steinbrück has made mistakes himself during this crisis.
Fischer: He stood before the German parliament and said: The financial crisis is a purely American problem. His coattails were on fire and he didn't even notice. He has pulled a couple of stunts during this crisis. There is absolutely no reason for him to stick his nose in the air.
SPIEGEL: What was his biggest mistake?
Fischer: Take Germany's bank rescue package -- truly a carefully crafted, top-notch product. In contrast to other countries, we have made the banks' participation voluntary -- and thrown in thumbscrews and hot irons for good measure. The banks of course have recoiled in horror because even on their boards of directors they are not particularly inclined toward masochism. I would have made the law mandatory.
SPIEGEL: Are Steinbrück's actions an indication that the Germans are focusing increasingly on their own national agenda?
Fischer: Yes, but not in the sense of something negative, something nationalistic. More like the French and the British.
SPIEGEL: A new normality?
Fischer: If you will. But there is a big difference. France and the UK are integrated into an extremely old foreign policy tradition. We are not. Take for example the Middle East. When you think of France, clear coordinates immediately spring to mind: Northern Africa, Lebanon and the Mediterranean region. It's a similar story with the British. However, if you want to define Germany's political role in the Middle East, aside from our special relationship with Israel, you are left only with foreign trade policy, or a big question mark.
SPIEGEL: In other words, we are weaker when it comes to foreign policy, so we are best advised to focus on Europe?
Fischer: German foreign policy only becomes stable and reliable if it is defined through the European prism. We had a break in our traditions with National Socialism and the Holocaust. So we cannot build on long historical experience. Things immediately lose clarity when we think that we can again define foreign policy more in line with our national agenda. We simply lack a firm foundation. Only defining Germany's identity within a European context has made it stable.
SPIEGEL: We cannot expect any help from the chancellor. She hasn't given any great speeches during the crisis, and hasn't shown direction. Do you see a lack of leadership here?
Fischer: This would actually be a golden opportunity for Merkel -- like the fall of the Berlin Wall for Helmut Kohl. He was an extremely ungifted speaker. But in a similar crisis he reacted with a 10-point plan for German unity. I have yet to see Merkel produce such a plan.
SPIEGEL: Why is that?
Fischer: Perhaps there is not enough pressure on the government to make every effort. That is my impression. This is an extremely negative aspect of the grand coalition.
SPIEGEL: Because there is no opposition?
Fischer: When Schröder and I were in power, when we went to sleep there was no way to know that we would still have a majority in the morning. It was constantly like that. You need an opposition, you need to feel their hot breath down your back. It makes you work. Merkel and Steinbrück are lacking this drive.
SPIEGEL: Europe is faltering due to a lack of German leadership. What consequences does this have for Europe?
Fischer: America will turn away from the Atlantic and toward the Pacific. China, Japan and South Korea are the main creditors of the US. If we are interested in having lively transatlantic relations, then we have to invest more. This requires a strong Europe which can serve as a partner to the US on the world stage. But if Europe ceases to be an effective power, the Americans will downgrade their relations with us.
SPIEGEL: At the same time, there are so many Germans who hope that Obama can save their world.
Fischer: This crisis will restructure the age of globalization in the 21st century. America will redetermine its role. Obama is bringing America together. America is reinventing itself in its worst crisis and growing together, while Europe is flying apart. Berlin is currently pursuing a course that will only weaken us.
SPIEGEL: What would Merkel have to do to become more European?
Fischer: It is important to coordinate your new stimulus program with the key partners in Europe and truly assume the responsibilities of leadership. This would be a second attempt, in any case. But it will come too late for 2009. That could be disastrous. From a political standpoint, though, I find it absolutely necessary that Germany once again assumes a leadership role.
SPIEGEL: Thank you for this interview, Mr. Fischer.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
After U.S. Breakthrough, Europe Looks in Mirror
November 12, 2008
By STEVEN ERLANGER
PARIS — In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe’s own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.
It is risky to make racial comparisons between America and Europe, given all the historical and cultural differences. But race had long been one reason that Europeans, harking back to the days when famous American blacks like Josephine Baker and James Baldwin found solace in France, looked down on the United States, even as Europe developed postcolonial racial problems of its own.
“They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.
“But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.
For many immigrants to Europe, Mr. Obama’s victory is “a small revolution” toward better overall treatment of minorities, said Nadia Azieze, 31, an Algerian-born nurse who grew up here. “It will never be the same,” she said, over a meal of rice and lamb in the racially mixed Paris neighborhood of Barbès-Rochechouart.
Her sister, Cherine, 29, is a computer engineer. Mr. Obama “really represents the dream of America — if you work, you can make it,” she said. “It’s a hope for the entire world.”
But the sisters are less optimistic about the realities of France, where minorities have a limited political role, with only one black deputy elected to the National Assembly from mainland France.
Has the Obama election caused any real self-reflection among the majority here? “It’s politically correct to say, ‘O.K., great! He’s black,’ and clap,” Nadia said. “But deep down, there’s no change. People say one thing and believe another.”
In all the jobs she has ever had, she said, “I’ve always been asked to do more, because I’m an immigrant. We always have to prove ourselves.”
Down the street, picking through the cheap clothes on sidewalk stands, Fatou Diedhiou, 34, born in Senegal, said that Mr. Obama’s victory may make the French give blacks “a bit of respect.” But she finds deep racism among the French, who she says “think that all blacks are illiterate and can’t do anything but clean.”
Mr. Obama is an exceptional figure even in the United States, a nation of immigrants with a long and complex history of racial problems going back to the Indian wars and the extensive slave trade, which produced a bloody civil war.
Most European countries were relatively monoethnic until the postcolonial period. Britain, for example, was largely white until the mid-20th century and still does not have a substantial black middle class, while French immigrants are almost all from former French colonies in North Africa, like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, or in black Africa, like Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast.
Measured by political representation of minorities, both the United States and Europe seem lagging, though Mr. Obama’s victory seemed to underscore how much farther behind Europe is.
Mr. Obama is the only black in the current Senate, and unless he is replaced by an African-American, the new Senate will have none. The new House has 39 black representatives, about 9 percent. Blacks make up about 13 percent of the country’s population.
But Rama Yade, the Senegal-born state secretary for human rights, called herself “a painful exception” in the French government, despite President Nicolas Sarkozy’s appointment of three prominent black or Muslim women to his government. As for the political elite’s embrace of Mr. Obama, she said, “The enthusiasm they express toward this far-away American, they don’t have it for the minorities in France.”
It is not only immigrants who are pondering what Mr. Obama’s victory says about Europe. France’s defense minister, Hervé Morin, called the Obama victory “a lesson” for a French democracy late to adopt integration.
“In this election, the Americans not only chose a president, but also their identity,” said Dominique Moïsi, a French political analyst. “And now we have to think, too, about our identity in France — it’s the most challenging election ever. We realize we are late, and America has regained the torch of a moral revolution.”
In Italy, Jean-Léonard Touadi, the only black member of the Italian Parliament, sees the Obama victory similarly. It is “a great and concrete provocation to European society and European politics,” said Mr. Touadi, born in the Congo Republic. Mr. Obama gives hope, he said, that “one day” there can be a similar outcome in Europe.
But not soon. Hossain Moazzem, a Bangladeshi waiter at L’Insalata Ricca restaurant, said he hoped Mr. Obama’s victory would foster “change all over the world.” But Italy, he said, had a “long, long” way to go.
In Britain, too, there was skepticism. Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that the political system held immigrants back. “If Barack Obama had lived here, I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power,” he told The Times of London.
Britain has several minority ministers below cabinet rank, but just 15 nonwhites in the 646-member House of Commons. The parliamentary system makes it harder for a young person or an outsider to emerge.
“In Britain, you can’t make a brilliant speech and get noticed the way Barack Obama did,” Sadiq Khan, a Labor minister, told The Guardian. “You have to rise up through the ranks in Parliament.”
But Ashok Viswanathan, assistant director of Operation Black Vote, which works to engage members of minorities in politics, predicted that Britain could have a party leader from a minority in the next 10 to 15 years, and a minority member as prime minister in 30.
“If someone said two years ago that there would be a black president, most people would have laughed that person out of town,” he said. “The very nature of aspiration is when barriers are broken, whether in flying to the moon or being the first black person around a cabinet table — it’s something that nobody believes will happen.”
Germany is yet a different case, with its largest immigrant population invited from Turkey to work in West German factories in the 1960s and 1970s. Germany now has some 2.9 million inhabitants of Turkish background, 800,000 of them with German citizenship under new laws. But they have little political representation in the unified Germany of 82 million, with just 5 members of the 613-seat Bundestag.
Even Cem Ozdemir, Germany’s best-known ethnic Turkish politician, currently a European legislator, is having trouble getting on the Greens Party list of candidates for the Bundestag — in part because of internal opposition to his ambition to lead the party.
“Germans can’t believe a Turkish politician believes in a politics for Germany,” said Mely Kiyak, 32, a German-born daughter of Turkish parents who wrote a book, “Ten for Germany,” about the problems of ethnic Turkish politicians. “The Germans think, ‘This is our country. Why should we elect a Turk? He might want to Islamicize the country.”‘
The Germans love Mr. Obama, she said, “but we don’t have minorities anywhere, not in media, in politics, in the executive or the judiciary.”
Ferdi Sarikurt, 22, who works in a bakery in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, came to Germany at age 1 and is a citizen. A German Obama is beyond his imagination, he said. “The German government would not allow this to happen because it would think that a person with an immigrant background would favor the foreigners. Maybe this will change when I am 50 years old, if at all.”
But Ms. Kiyak said the Obama victory was causing significant reflection in the immigrant community, if not yet in the country at large. “Minorities see what is possible in another country, and they become jealous,” she said, noting that President Abdullah Gul of Turkey said recently in Der Spiegel that Turkish Germans “should take part in German society and politics and not look back.”
Given that France has such close ties to its former colonies and more Muslims than any other country in Europe, the debate here is more complicated.
On Sunday, numerous politicians signed a manifesto written by Yazid Sabeg, a millionaire child of Algerian immigrants, calling for affirmative-action programs to turn the supposedly colorblind French ideal of equality into reality for alienated immigrants.
“The election of Barack Obama highlights via a cruel contrast the shortcomings of the French Republic and the distance that separates us from a country whose citizens knew how to go beyond the racial question,” the manifesto said. It won support from Mr. Sarkozy’s wife, Carla, who told Le Journal du Dimanche, “our prejudices are insidious” and hoped the “Obama effect” would help to reshape society.
But the French model of citizenship does not allow for official distinctions by race or religion. When a legislative official here was asked for data on the number of black or Muslim legislators, he told a reporter to “look at the pictures on the Senate directory,” to judge by name and skin color.
Joseph Macé-Scaron, writing in the French-language weekly Marianne, said that the discussion of a “French Obama” was a diversion and a screen, substituting a false American model onto France. The problem here, as in other parts of Europe, he said, was less the rejection of nonwhite immigrants than the way political and cultural elites patronized and used them, “only to better block access to the top of the social ladder.”
Praising “the ‘difference’ of nonwhites locked them inside identities of resentment,” he said.
But the conservative Le Figaro blamed French minorities themselves for part of their exclusion. The paper noted that Mr. Obama’s success was based on his upbringing, education and success at integrating into the larger society and articulating its values, including patriotism.
“From this point of view, Obama should be the model to follow for young immigrants who have come to doubt their feeling of belonging to the nation,” the paper said. “Minorities, who have chosen their exile, in contrast to black Americans, still have a lot to prove.”
Reporting was contributed by Rachel Donadio from Rome, Sarah Lyall from London, Victor Homola from Berlin, and Maïa de la Baume and Basil Katz from Paris.
By STEVEN ERLANGER
PARIS — In the general European euphoria over the election of Barack Obama, there is the beginning of self-reflection about Europe’s own troubles with racial integration. Many are asking if there could be a French, British, German or Italian Obama, and everyone knows the answer is no, not anytime soon.
It is risky to make racial comparisons between America and Europe, given all the historical and cultural differences. But race had long been one reason that Europeans, harking back to the days when famous American blacks like Josephine Baker and James Baldwin found solace in France, looked down on the United States, even as Europe developed postcolonial racial problems of its own.
“They always said, ‘You think race relations are bad here in France, check out the U.S.,’ ” said Mohamed Hamidi, former editor of the Bondy Blog, founded after the 2005 riots in the heavily immigrant suburbs of Paris.
“But that argument can no longer stand,” he said.
For many immigrants to Europe, Mr. Obama’s victory is “a small revolution” toward better overall treatment of minorities, said Nadia Azieze, 31, an Algerian-born nurse who grew up here. “It will never be the same,” she said, over a meal of rice and lamb in the racially mixed Paris neighborhood of Barbès-Rochechouart.
Her sister, Cherine, 29, is a computer engineer. Mr. Obama “really represents the dream of America — if you work, you can make it,” she said. “It’s a hope for the entire world.”
But the sisters are less optimistic about the realities of France, where minorities have a limited political role, with only one black deputy elected to the National Assembly from mainland France.
Has the Obama election caused any real self-reflection among the majority here? “It’s politically correct to say, ‘O.K., great! He’s black,’ and clap,” Nadia said. “But deep down, there’s no change. People say one thing and believe another.”
In all the jobs she has ever had, she said, “I’ve always been asked to do more, because I’m an immigrant. We always have to prove ourselves.”
Down the street, picking through the cheap clothes on sidewalk stands, Fatou Diedhiou, 34, born in Senegal, said that Mr. Obama’s victory may make the French give blacks “a bit of respect.” But she finds deep racism among the French, who she says “think that all blacks are illiterate and can’t do anything but clean.”
Mr. Obama is an exceptional figure even in the United States, a nation of immigrants with a long and complex history of racial problems going back to the Indian wars and the extensive slave trade, which produced a bloody civil war.
Most European countries were relatively monoethnic until the postcolonial period. Britain, for example, was largely white until the mid-20th century and still does not have a substantial black middle class, while French immigrants are almost all from former French colonies in North Africa, like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, or in black Africa, like Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast.
Measured by political representation of minorities, both the United States and Europe seem lagging, though Mr. Obama’s victory seemed to underscore how much farther behind Europe is.
Mr. Obama is the only black in the current Senate, and unless he is replaced by an African-American, the new Senate will have none. The new House has 39 black representatives, about 9 percent. Blacks make up about 13 percent of the country’s population.
But Rama Yade, the Senegal-born state secretary for human rights, called herself “a painful exception” in the French government, despite President Nicolas Sarkozy’s appointment of three prominent black or Muslim women to his government. As for the political elite’s embrace of Mr. Obama, she said, “The enthusiasm they express toward this far-away American, they don’t have it for the minorities in France.”
It is not only immigrants who are pondering what Mr. Obama’s victory says about Europe. France’s defense minister, Hervé Morin, called the Obama victory “a lesson” for a French democracy late to adopt integration.
“In this election, the Americans not only chose a president, but also their identity,” said Dominique Moïsi, a French political analyst. “And now we have to think, too, about our identity in France — it’s the most challenging election ever. We realize we are late, and America has regained the torch of a moral revolution.”
In Italy, Jean-Léonard Touadi, the only black member of the Italian Parliament, sees the Obama victory similarly. It is “a great and concrete provocation to European society and European politics,” said Mr. Touadi, born in the Congo Republic. Mr. Obama gives hope, he said, that “one day” there can be a similar outcome in Europe.
But not soon. Hossain Moazzem, a Bangladeshi waiter at L’Insalata Ricca restaurant, said he hoped Mr. Obama’s victory would foster “change all over the world.” But Italy, he said, had a “long, long” way to go.
In Britain, too, there was skepticism. Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the independent Equality and Human Rights Commission, said that the political system held immigrants back. “If Barack Obama had lived here, I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power,” he told The Times of London.
Britain has several minority ministers below cabinet rank, but just 15 nonwhites in the 646-member House of Commons. The parliamentary system makes it harder for a young person or an outsider to emerge.
“In Britain, you can’t make a brilliant speech and get noticed the way Barack Obama did,” Sadiq Khan, a Labor minister, told The Guardian. “You have to rise up through the ranks in Parliament.”
But Ashok Viswanathan, assistant director of Operation Black Vote, which works to engage members of minorities in politics, predicted that Britain could have a party leader from a minority in the next 10 to 15 years, and a minority member as prime minister in 30.
“If someone said two years ago that there would be a black president, most people would have laughed that person out of town,” he said. “The very nature of aspiration is when barriers are broken, whether in flying to the moon or being the first black person around a cabinet table — it’s something that nobody believes will happen.”
Germany is yet a different case, with its largest immigrant population invited from Turkey to work in West German factories in the 1960s and 1970s. Germany now has some 2.9 million inhabitants of Turkish background, 800,000 of them with German citizenship under new laws. But they have little political representation in the unified Germany of 82 million, with just 5 members of the 613-seat Bundestag.
Even Cem Ozdemir, Germany’s best-known ethnic Turkish politician, currently a European legislator, is having trouble getting on the Greens Party list of candidates for the Bundestag — in part because of internal opposition to his ambition to lead the party.
“Germans can’t believe a Turkish politician believes in a politics for Germany,” said Mely Kiyak, 32, a German-born daughter of Turkish parents who wrote a book, “Ten for Germany,” about the problems of ethnic Turkish politicians. “The Germans think, ‘This is our country. Why should we elect a Turk? He might want to Islamicize the country.”‘
The Germans love Mr. Obama, she said, “but we don’t have minorities anywhere, not in media, in politics, in the executive or the judiciary.”
Ferdi Sarikurt, 22, who works in a bakery in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, came to Germany at age 1 and is a citizen. A German Obama is beyond his imagination, he said. “The German government would not allow this to happen because it would think that a person with an immigrant background would favor the foreigners. Maybe this will change when I am 50 years old, if at all.”
But Ms. Kiyak said the Obama victory was causing significant reflection in the immigrant community, if not yet in the country at large. “Minorities see what is possible in another country, and they become jealous,” she said, noting that President Abdullah Gul of Turkey said recently in Der Spiegel that Turkish Germans “should take part in German society and politics and not look back.”
Given that France has such close ties to its former colonies and more Muslims than any other country in Europe, the debate here is more complicated.
On Sunday, numerous politicians signed a manifesto written by Yazid Sabeg, a millionaire child of Algerian immigrants, calling for affirmative-action programs to turn the supposedly colorblind French ideal of equality into reality for alienated immigrants.
“The election of Barack Obama highlights via a cruel contrast the shortcomings of the French Republic and the distance that separates us from a country whose citizens knew how to go beyond the racial question,” the manifesto said. It won support from Mr. Sarkozy’s wife, Carla, who told Le Journal du Dimanche, “our prejudices are insidious” and hoped the “Obama effect” would help to reshape society.
But the French model of citizenship does not allow for official distinctions by race or religion. When a legislative official here was asked for data on the number of black or Muslim legislators, he told a reporter to “look at the pictures on the Senate directory,” to judge by name and skin color.
Joseph Macé-Scaron, writing in the French-language weekly Marianne, said that the discussion of a “French Obama” was a diversion and a screen, substituting a false American model onto France. The problem here, as in other parts of Europe, he said, was less the rejection of nonwhite immigrants than the way political and cultural elites patronized and used them, “only to better block access to the top of the social ladder.”
Praising “the ‘difference’ of nonwhites locked them inside identities of resentment,” he said.
But the conservative Le Figaro blamed French minorities themselves for part of their exclusion. The paper noted that Mr. Obama’s success was based on his upbringing, education and success at integrating into the larger society and articulating its values, including patriotism.
“From this point of view, Obama should be the model to follow for young immigrants who have come to doubt their feeling of belonging to the nation,” the paper said. “Minorities, who have chosen their exile, in contrast to black Americans, still have a lot to prove.”
Reporting was contributed by Rachel Donadio from Rome, Sarah Lyall from London, Victor Homola from Berlin, and Maïa de la Baume and Basil Katz from Paris.
Monday, November 17, 2008
France holds 'Eta military head'
The suspected military chief of the Basque separatist group, Eta, has been arrested in southern France, the French interior minister has announced.
Michele Alliot-Marie said Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, alias "Txeroki", was arrested overnight in the Pyrenees.
She said he was suspected of the murder of two Spanish civil guard officers in the French town of Capbreton in 2007.
Eta is blamed for the deaths of more than 820 people in its 40-year campaign for an independent Basque nation.
The group resumed its campaign of violence in June 2007, following the failure of secret dialogue with the Spanish government. Correspondents say Mr Aspiazu Rubina was a key figure in the decision.
Spain's ruling party hailed the arrest as a "very important" blow to Eta.
"This is magnificent news of great importance because it is the chief of the Eta commandos, the person who was behind attacks, who gave the order to kill and who himself killed, a very blood-thirsty terrorist," the Socialist Party said in a statement.
It follows the detention of Eta's political commander, Javier Lopez Pena, in a joint Spanish-French operation in the French city of Bordeaux in May.
However, the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Madrid says that, in the past, high-profile arrests have always been followed by fresh attacks and Eta is far from defeated.
Police deaths
In a statement, France's interior minister said Mr Aspiazu Rubina, 35, had been arrested overnight in the Hautes-Pyrenees region of south-western France.
The Basque news agency, Vasco Press, said that Mr Aspiazu Rubina, whose nickname means Cherokee, had been detained along with another suspected Eta member in the town of Cauterets.
Ms Alliot-Marie did not provide any other details about the arrest, but said he was "suspected of being the perpetrator" of the murder of two Spanish civil guard officers in Capbreton on 1 December 2007.
"This arrest shows again the resolute commitment of the French police and gendarmerie in the fight against all forms of terrorism and illustrates once again the excellent co-operation between France and Spain in the fight against Basque terrorism," the French statement added.
The two Spanish civil guards were shot during a surveillance operation on suspected Eta members. Their deaths prompted thousands of Spaniards to denounce the separatist group at a march in the capital, Madrid.
French police arrested a man and a woman over the attack several days later - but said at the time they were looking for a third suspect.
Earlier this month, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said two recently arrested suspected Eta members had said Mr Aspiazu Rubina had told them he had participated directly in the shooting.
One of them had said he "heard Txeroki recognise that he was the assassin of the two policemen," he added.
Eta suffered a major blow in May with the arrest of Mr Lopez Pena, alias "Thierry", along with three other suspected members of the group.
Mr Lopez Pena is alleged to have ordered the December 2006 bombing of Madrid's airport, which ended the 14-month-old ceasefire with the government and killed two people.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7732678.stm
Published: 2008/11/17 10:17:39 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
Michele Alliot-Marie said Garikoitz Aspiazu Rubina, alias "Txeroki", was arrested overnight in the Pyrenees.
She said he was suspected of the murder of two Spanish civil guard officers in the French town of Capbreton in 2007.
Eta is blamed for the deaths of more than 820 people in its 40-year campaign for an independent Basque nation.
The group resumed its campaign of violence in June 2007, following the failure of secret dialogue with the Spanish government. Correspondents say Mr Aspiazu Rubina was a key figure in the decision.
Spain's ruling party hailed the arrest as a "very important" blow to Eta.
"This is magnificent news of great importance because it is the chief of the Eta commandos, the person who was behind attacks, who gave the order to kill and who himself killed, a very blood-thirsty terrorist," the Socialist Party said in a statement.
It follows the detention of Eta's political commander, Javier Lopez Pena, in a joint Spanish-French operation in the French city of Bordeaux in May.
However, the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Madrid says that, in the past, high-profile arrests have always been followed by fresh attacks and Eta is far from defeated.
Police deaths
In a statement, France's interior minister said Mr Aspiazu Rubina, 35, had been arrested overnight in the Hautes-Pyrenees region of south-western France.
The Basque news agency, Vasco Press, said that Mr Aspiazu Rubina, whose nickname means Cherokee, had been detained along with another suspected Eta member in the town of Cauterets.
Ms Alliot-Marie did not provide any other details about the arrest, but said he was "suspected of being the perpetrator" of the murder of two Spanish civil guard officers in Capbreton on 1 December 2007.
"This arrest shows again the resolute commitment of the French police and gendarmerie in the fight against all forms of terrorism and illustrates once again the excellent co-operation between France and Spain in the fight against Basque terrorism," the French statement added.
The two Spanish civil guards were shot during a surveillance operation on suspected Eta members. Their deaths prompted thousands of Spaniards to denounce the separatist group at a march in the capital, Madrid.
French police arrested a man and a woman over the attack several days later - but said at the time they were looking for a third suspect.
Earlier this month, Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said two recently arrested suspected Eta members had said Mr Aspiazu Rubina had told them he had participated directly in the shooting.
One of them had said he "heard Txeroki recognise that he was the assassin of the two policemen," he added.
Eta suffered a major blow in May with the arrest of Mr Lopez Pena, alias "Thierry", along with three other suspected members of the group.
Mr Lopez Pena is alleged to have ordered the December 2006 bombing of Madrid's airport, which ended the 14-month-old ceasefire with the government and killed two people.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7732678.stm
Published: 2008/11/17 10:17:39 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
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