Group items tagged

The European Union’s crisis of leadership during the economic downturn was thrown into sharp relief on Wednesday, as the current president of the 27-nation bloc labeled President Obama’s emergency stimulus package “a way to hell” that will “undermine the stability of the global financial market.”

What made the situation even more trying for those who hope that the European Union might find a common voice in this crisis was that Mr. Topolanek’s own governing coalition collapsed on Tuesday. The Czech opposition party, which favors bigger increases in domestic spending during the slump, won a no-confidence vote on his leadership.

Despite widespread fears that European nations could prolong the current recession unless they act in concert with one another and the United States, the slump has highlighted differences over deficit spending, interest rates and possible bailouts for new union members in the East. There are few signs that the alliance is developing the political leadership to match its economic weight.Britain, like the United States, has undertaken an aggressive fiscal stimulus and slashed interest rates. But Germany and France have opposed calls for further large stimulus packages and even greater deficit spending, while the European Central Bank has kept interest rates higher than they are in the United States and Britain. Germany and even some Central European countries opposed calls by Hungary for the creation of a single rescue fund for heavily indebted countries in Eastern Europe.

The Dutch anti-immigrant maverick, Geert Wilders, scored his biggest victory yesterday, seizing 15% and second place in European elections for the Netherlands, according to exit polls last night.

The bleached blond populist, barred from Britain and facing prosecution at home for hate speech, led his Freedom party to win four of the Netherlands' 25 seats in the European parliament at the first attempt, pushing the Labour party of the coalition government's finance minister, Wouter Bos, into third place.

Wilders wants the European parliament abolished, Bulgaria and Romania kicked out of the EU, the mass deportation of immigrants from the Netherlands, and a minimum say for Brussels over Dutch policy. The virulence of his anti-Islam and anti-immigrant activities saw him barred from entering Britain earlier this year, while the Dutch authorities are prosecuting him for inciting hatred.

Despite denials from Brussels, EU taxpayers are to foot the bill for hefty and legally controversial pension supplements for many members of the European parliament. Their pension fund has run up a loss of €120 million ($156 million) as a result of risky share investments, according to an internal memo of the secretary-general of the European Parliament.

The memo adds that, beginning in 2010, the retirement fund "will no longer have enough liquidity to meet its payment obligations.

This week, the parliament is scheduled to quietly agree upon a solution for how to safeguard the pension entitlements of around 1,000 active or retired parliamentarians.

The morning after the night before, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen was either defiant or in denial. The veteran Danish centre-leftist and former prime minister heads the PES, or Party of European Socialists, that groups all the mainstream social democratic movements of the EU."To those who announce a profound crisis in European socialism", he declared yesterday, "I say no."

"Our voters stayed away. They simply didn't see the relevance of these elections. They did not see the political choices at European level ... we had a European alternative, but it was not visible enough."

"This is a meltdown for the centre-left," said Professor Simon Hix of the London School of Economics, who has been running an EU-wide poll-tracking project for the election. Hugo Brady of the Centre for European Reform said: "There is a structural crisis for the centre-left, whether they are unpopular incumbents or in opposition. They have been routed."

Europe's mainstream centre-left parties suffered humiliation last night when four days of voting in the EU's biggest-ever election concluded with disastrous results for social democrats.

In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the centre right won the elections, with stunning defeats for the left in certain cases.

In the EU's biggest country, Germany, returning 99 of the parliament's 736 seats, the Social Democrats (SPD), the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel's grand coalition, sunk to an all-time low, with 21% of the vote.

When the European Union and Russia held their most recent summit meeting in May, the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, stunned European diplomats when he passed out copies of his book denouncing the fight against global warming — a central policy of the 27-nation bloc he was supposed to lead.

He declined to display its gold-starred flag in his office during his nation’s presidential term.

In November, Mr. Klaus set the stage for the Czech presidency when he visited Ireland’s leading activist against the Lisbon Treaty. He praised him as a “dissident” akin to Czechoslovak rebels like Vaclav Havel who had languished in prison during the communist era.

The Czech government lost a parliamentary vote of no confidence on Tuesday, suffering an embarrassing defeat midway through its presidency of the European Union and casting doubt on the country’s ability to shepherd the world’s biggest trading bloc during a time of economic crisis.

the Czech government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek seemed to be collapsing more as a result of political infighting.

Mr. Topolanek said Tuesday that he would resign after the motion passed, 101 to 96, in the 200-seat lower house.

The Turks, who always used to complain to their Western allies about their rough neighborhood, apparently no longer have any enemies in the east. Turkey's old rival Russia has since become its most important energy and trading partner. Syria and Iraq, two countries with which Ankara has in the past been on the brink of war, are now friends of Turkey, and relations are even improving with Armenia. The Arabs, who never truly took to the successors of the Ottomans, now look with admiration to what they call the "Turkish model," a dynamic, open country that has a better handle on its problems than they do.

When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan assumed office in 2003, he planned to lead Turkey into the European Union. But Europe was unmoved by this vision, and it has also lost much of its appeal within Turkey. According to Germany's Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a think tank linked to the center-left Social Democratic Party, as the Europeans have become weary of expansion, Turkey has lost interest in joining the EU. Indeed, what Erdogan meant when he spoke of Turkey's "alternative" to becoming an EU member is becoming increasingly clear.

Critics and supporters alike describe this new course as "neo-Ottomanism." Ankara remains formally committed to its European ambitions. However, frustrated by the open rejection with which it has long been met in Paris, Vienna and Berlin, and which it has been facing once again during the EU election campaign, Turkey is focusing increasingly on its role as a peacekeeping power in a region it either ruled or dominated for centuries.

Europe is run by a sort of permanent Congress of Vienna.

The heads of state and government want to appoint the president swiftly, before the Parliament acquires more power. On the other hand, they want to appoint the other commissioners in accordance with the new version of the Lisbon Treaty, under which each country will continue to have its own commissioner. Under the old version of the treaty, some countries would have had to do without a commissioner. The governments are currently playing fast and loose with the rules, so to speak.

SPIEGEL: The European Parliament doesn't seem to be all that powerful. What does it lack? Schulz: Essentially, a proper government that answers to the Parliament. The separation of powers we are familiar with from the nation state doesn't exist yet. If we had a European head of government who had to assemble a parliamentary majority, there would now be two candidates running for the office. I admit that if that were the case, it would be easier to motivate citizens to vote.

After a successful summit, Merkel, Sarkozy, (British Prime Minister Gordon) Brown or (Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero say to the journalists from their respective countries: "I scored a victory here." But when things go wrong, they say: "Brussels is so bureaucratic and sluggish." In the EU, success is nationalized and failure is Europeanized.

SPIEGEL: Why is it so difficult to get citizens enthusiastic about the EU? Schulz: Much of it has to do with a democratic deficit. People, myself included, often find the Commission incredibly irritating. I think some of the administrative decisions that are made in Brussels are unspeakable. This executive branch is not sufficiently monitored by the parliament. The resulting displeasure has led to a general grumbling about Europe.

When it comes to economic and currency policy, the EU acts virtually like a country, and it is very successful in doing so. The domestic market creates Europe-wide freedoms for companies, but the social rights of employees are neglected. The equal footing of capital and labor, as we know it in nation states, doesn't exist at the European level. That's why the central theme of my campaign is that we must impose a social framework on a Europe that is an economic and currency union.

The powerful Guardian Council touched off scattered protests in Tehran Monday night when it formally certified the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second four-year term, saying there was no validity to charges of voting fraud.

As the certification was announced, security and militia forces flooded the streets, and protesters who were already out marching down Tehran’s central avenue, Vali Asr, broke into furious chants. The marchers were quickly dispersed, but other Iranians, urged by opposition Web sites, went to their rooftops to yell “God is great!” in a show of defiance.

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Guardian Council’s secretary, sent a letter to the interior minister saying the panel had approved the election after a partial recount, according to state television. “The Guardian Council, by reviewing the issues in many meetings and not considering the complaints and protest as valid, verifies the 10th presidential election,”

Turkish Cypriot hardliners swept to victory in parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus on Sunday (19 April). The result could hamper reunification talks with Greek Cypriots, which are essential for Turkey's EU membership ambitions.

With 100% of the ballot counted, it emerged that the right-wing National Unity Party (UBP) had clinched 44.06% of the vote, provisionally giving it an outright majority in the 50-seat parliament.

It was a stinging defeat for the ruling Republican Turkish Party (CTP), a key ally of Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat. 

Mirek Topolanek, from the far east of the Czech Republic, likes to say that he's a "guy with balls" -- and he acts accordingly. He once shouted "I'll kill you" at a journalist and he's raised his middle finger at political opponents. He has referred to the EU's Lisbon Treaty as "a pile of crap."

But since becoming prime minister two years ago, the tough guy seemed to have gotten himself under control. He deftly hammered out a coalition and steered his Civic Democratic Party (ODS) -- middle class and traditionally critical of the EU -- on a Brussels-friendly course. And since January, Topolanek has even proved to be a passable statesman as his country holds the European Union's rotating presidency.

Then last week, he relapsed. Topolanek declared in front of the European Parliament that United States President Barack Obama's multi-billion-dollar stimulus package was "a road to hell" -- and this just as Prague is set to host Obama at the US-EU summit later this week.

Today, opinion polls put support for Self-Defense at just three percent in the upcoming European parliamentary elections.

Five years on from the EU's big eastward expansion, there's not a single new member state where fierce critics of Brussels can expect good results in the EU election. In fact, they will be lucky to win enough votes to cross the five percent threshold needed to get seats in the EU parliament in Strasbourg.

In addition to Lepper, Poland's League of Polish Families has also slipped under the five percent mark in opinion polls.

Barroso has long coveted a new mandate after his current term expires at the end of October, but he said he would only take on the job if EU member nations and the bloc's parliament endorsed his programme for Europe's future.     "This acceptance pre-supposes that the European Council (representing the member states) and European parliament embrace the ambitious programme that I will propose for Europe for the next five years," he said.

Speaking before the European Parliament on Wednesday, Mirek Topolanek described the stimulus measures and financial bailouts passed by US President Barack Obama as the "way to hell." He warned that the massive costs of the stimulus plans and financial bailouts would "undermine the stability of the global financial market" and that Obama was merely repeating the errors of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The comments also threatened to unravel the tenuous unity reached by EU member states for a joint response to the economic crisis. Last week, EU leaders reached a carefully constructed political truce designed to bury their differences and agree on a common policy ahead of the London meeting. At last Friday's summit, they pledged an additional €75 billion to finance loans by the International Monetary Fund and to double a credit line for struggling economies of Eastern European member states.

Topolanek may have felt unburdened by diplomatic niceties after his government lost a no-confidence vote in the Czech parliament on Tuesday. The Czech prime minister submitted his resignation the same day, but will continue on as a caretaker of the EU's rotating presidency through June.

France's foreign minister held talks Friday with a Hezbollah legislator in the latest European outreach to the Iranian-backed militant group. The European Union and Britain have also sought to engage Lebanon's Hezbollah in recent months to encourage the group to abandon violence and play a constructive political role in the deeply divided country. The United States, however, shuns the group, which it considers a terrorist organization.

Kouchner defended his meeting with Hezbollah, which fought the 2006 Second Lebanon War with Israel and is armed and trained by Iran. "Hezbollah is part of the parties that participated in the recent parliamentary elections. It is natural to meet with its representatives," Kouchner told reporters.

Last month, the European Union's foreign affairs chief, Javier Solana, held talks in Beirut with another Hezbollah legislator in the first meeting between a senior EU diplomat and an official of the militant group.

In a blunt and belligerent speech on his first day as Israel’s new foreign minister, the hawkish nationalist Avigdor Lieberman declared Wednesday that “those who wish for peace should prepare for war” and that Israel was not obligated by understandings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached at an American-sponsored peace conference in late 2007.

“Those who think that through concessions they will gain respect and peace are wrong,” Mr. Lieberman said during a transfer ceremony at the Foreign Ministry. “It is the other way around; it will lead to more wars.”

The aim of the Annapolis process, as it became known, was to agree on the framework for a Palestinian state alongside Israel by the end of 2008, a goal that was not achieved. Mr. Lieberman said that the Israeli government “never ratified Annapolis, nor did Parliament,” and that it therefore “has no validity.”

A senior EU official has for the first time held talks with a politician from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met Hezbollah official Hussein Hajj Hassan at the Lebanese parliament building in Beirut.

Hezbollah is regarded by the United States as a terrorist group. The EU has previously rejected public contacts with Hezbollah, which also controls Lebanon's most powerful military force. But Mr Solana said: "Hezbollah is part of political life in Lebanon and is represented in the Lebanese parliament."

Britain said earlier this year it favoured re-establishing links with Hezbollah's political wing.

Turkish Cypriot hardliners swept to victory in parliamentary elections in northern Cyprus on Sunday in a result that could hamper peace talks with Greek Cypriots essential to Turkey's EU membership ambitions.

With 100 percent of the vote in, the right wing National Unity Party (UBP) clinched 44.06 percent of the vote, giving it by provisional accounts an outright majority in the 50 seat parliament. It was a stinging defeat for the ruling Republican Turkish Party (CTP), a key ally of Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat.

The CTP, which bore the brunt of public discontent over a faltering economy and continued international isolation of the breakaway territory, took 29.25 percent of the vote.