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Pedro Gonçalves

Crisis for Europe as trust hits record low | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...trust-eu-falls-record-low

EU Europe Eurosceptics

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 26 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • "The damage is so deep that it does not matter whether you come from a creditor, debtor country, euro would-be member or the UK: everybody is worse off," said José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the ECFR's Madrid office. "Citizens now think that their national democracy is being subverted by the way the euro crisis is conducted."
  • The most dramatic fall in faith in the EU has occurred in Spain, where the banking and housing market collapse, eurozone bailout and runaway unemployment have combined to produce 72% "tending not to trust" the EU, with only 20% "tending to trust".
  • In Spain, trust in the EU fell from 65% to 20% over the five-year period while mistrust soared to 72% from 23%.
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  • The data compares trust and mistrust in the EU at the end of last year with levels in 2007, before the financial crisis, to reveal a precipitate fall in support for the EU of the kind that is common in Britain but is much more rarely seen on the continent.
  • Five years ago, 56% of Germans "tended to trust" the EU, whereas 59% now "tend to mistrust". In France, mistrust has risen from 41% to 56%. In Italy, where public confidence in Europe has traditionally been higher than in the national political class, mistrust of the EU has almost doubled from 28% to 53%.Even in Poland, which enthusiastically joined the EU less than a decade ago and is the single biggest beneficiary from the transfers of tens of billions of euros from Brussels, support has plummeted from 68% to 48%, although it remains the sole country surveyed where more people trust than mistrust the union.In Britain, where Eurobarometer regularly finds majority Euroscepticism, the mistrust grew from 49% to 69%, the highest level with the exception of the extraordinary turnaround in Spain.
  • "Overall levels of political trust and satisfaction with democracy [declined] across much of Europe, but this varied markedly between countries. It was significant in Britain, Belgium, Denmark and Finland, particularly notable in France, Ireland, Slovenia and Spain, and reached truly alarming proportions in the case of Greece," it said.
  • Aart de Geus, head of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a German thinktank, also warned that the drive to surrender more key national powers to Brussels would backfire. "Public support for the EU has been falling since 2007. So it is risky to go for federalism as it can cause a backlash and unleash greater populism."
Pedro Gonçalves

Russia to get stronger nuclear navy, Putin says | Reuters - 0 views

uk.reuters.com/...tin-navy-idUKBRE86T1D020120730

Russia Military Arctic Nuclear Weapons

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 30 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • In a reference to Russia's ambitions in the Arctic, where Moscow plans to expand its claims, Putin said the navy would protect Moscow's interests in the icy North."Obviously, the navy is an instrument to protect national economic interests, including in such regions as Arctic where some of the world's richest biological resources, mineral resources are concentrated," he said.
  • Moscow has planned to submit a claim this year to redraw the map of the Arctic and give itself a bigger swath of the territory, which could hold huge deposits of oil, gas and mineral wealth.Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada and Denmark are at odds over how to divide up the Arctic seabed, thought to hold 90 billion barrels of oil and 30 percent of the world's untapped gas resources, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Pedro Gonçalves

Misery for social democrats as voters take a turn to the right | Politics | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...eu-elections-social-democrats

EU European Parliament Germany France Poland Netherlands Hungary Hans-Gert Pottering

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
  • 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.
  • With the social democrats licking their wounds and the centre-right scoring ­victories whether in power or in opposition, the other signal trend of the ballot was the breakthroughs achieved by extreme right-wing nationalists and xenophobes.
  • 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.
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  • Less than four months before Germany's general election, last night's outcome augured well for Merkel's hopes of ditching her grand coalition in favour of a centre-right alliance with the small Free Democrats, who made the biggest gains, from six to more than 10%.
  • Next door in Austria, the chancellor and leader of the Social Democrats, Werner Faymann, led his party to its worst ever election result, just over 23%.In both countries, the Christian democrats won comfortably, but Merkel's Christian Democrats and her Bavarian CSU allies were six points down, on 38%.
  • France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, claimed triumph with 28% for his UMP party to the Socialists 17%, the first time a sitting French president has won a European election since the vote began 30 years ago.
  • In Italy, the centre-right government of Silvio Berlusconi also did well, despite his marital breakdown and scandals over parties at his Sardinian villa, while in Spain the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero also lost the election to conservatives.
  • 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.
  • Following on from the triumph of Geert Wilders, the anti-Islam campaigner, who came second with 17% in the Netherlands on Thursday, the hard-right and neo­fascists chalked up further victories .
  • The anti-Gypsy extremists in Hungary, Jobbik, took three of the country's 22 seats; in Austria two far-right parties mustered 18%, and extreme Slovak nationalists gained their first seat in the European parliament.
  • Anti-Brussels candidates and Eurosceptics also won more seats in Denmark, Finland, Austria, and the Czech Republic.
  • With the jobless numbers soaring amid the worst economic crisis in the lifetimes of European voters, the centre left is clearly failing to benefit politically in circumstances that might be expected to boost its support.
  • Estimates of the new balance of power in the 736-seat assembly suggest that the centre right will have around 270 seats to the socialists' 160, a much wider margin than predicted.
  • Hans-Gert Pöttering, the outgoing president, or speaker, of the European parliament, stressed that Europeans "want" the parliament, but conceded that that desire would not be reflected in the turnout.
  • The damning popular verdict on that assertion, however, was the lowest turnout in 30 years. It was estimated at around 43%, compared with 45% last time, and 62% in Europe's first election in 1979.
Pedro Gonçalves

BBC NEWS | Europe | EU summit faces difficult issues - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8106300.stm

EU Lisbon Treaty

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 18 Jun 09 - Cached
  • The guarantees are expected to take the form of a legally binding political decision by the European Council - the EU prime ministers and presidents. They will cover what Dublin identified as key areas of concern for Irish voters - military neutrality, sovereignty over taxes and opposition to abortion. The guarantees - essentially assurances to voters - are to be made specific to the Republic of Ireland and robust enough to resist any legal challenge in the EU. Above all, the leaders want to close any legal loophole that could be used to reopen the Lisbon Treaty negotiations. The number of EU commissioners is to be kept at 27, again to accommodate Ireland, though the original plan was to have 18 as from 2014.
  • The leaders' decision is expected to be modelled on the legally binding agreement made with Denmark after its voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. It would not require approval by other EU institutions.
Argos Media

Agreement Reached on Rasmussen: Obama Saves NATO Governments from Summit Shame - SPIEGE... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,617478,00.html

NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen Turkey Germany

shared by Argos Media on 06 Apr 09 - Cached
  • By Friday evening, when Turkey repeated its threat to veto any decision to appoint Rasmussen as the next secretary general, it became clear that a NATO summit being held to celebrate its 60th anniversary threatened to end in fiasco.
  • But Turkey had been the only country that objected to Rasmussen's selection to head the trans-Atlantic military alliance. Detractors of the Dane, led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, felt Rasmussen was unsuitable for the post because he had been unyielding in the dispute over the Muhammad caricatures and preferred to defend the right to free speech rather than apologize.
  • The remaining 27 NATO members, especially Germany, France and the United States, all offered their clear backing for Rasmussen, but the summit remained a suspenseful one. The reason being that one of the many peculiar rules of the alliance is that the secretary general must be unanimously elected, meaning that Turkey actually did have the power to reject the choice.
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  • According to diplomatic sources, the decisive impulse came from the US. Obama spoke with Gül and telephoned with Erdogan -- and was able to assuage their concerns. Erdogan said that Obama offered him certain unnamed guarantees -- allegedly they had to do with the Denmark-based Kurdish broadcaster Roj TV as well as with top NATO posts for Turkey.
  • Once the drama had come to an end, Rasmussen immediately sought to ease the tension, saying he would do "his utmost" for the partnership with Turkey. Relations with the Muslim world, he said, were decisive, and he even promised a review of the television station Roj TV -- a pledge apparently made at the request of Erdogan. Previously, Rasmussen had been unwilling to stop broadcasts in his country of the satellite TV channel.
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