The Spanish daily highlights the difficulty Zapatero will have governing with the support of Basque and Catalan autonomist parties. "With 169 PSOE deputies elected, compared to the 164 in the previous legislature, he will be able to act with greater freedom. However, after a four-year mandate, this extra room for manoeuvre doesn't seem big enough for the Socialist leader to be able to see any possibility of totally distancing himself from the PP. Zapatero is even more reluctant to strike up agreements with parties such as the CiU [Convergence and Union, right-wing Catalan party] and the PNV [Basque Nationalist Party], that could guarantee the PSOE the necessary votes for passing laws, but who are visibly not prepared to facilitate a reasonable conclusion of the regional autonomy process. This situation could lead the country back into one of the most tense episodes of the last legislature, with the confrontation of socialists and conservatives [over the question of regional autonomy]." (11/03/2008)

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Oswald Iten discusses the role of the conservative opposition in Spain: "The conservative People's Party's tough opposition policy has not paid off politically. You can't convince informed citizens that anything that comes from the government is fundamentally bad, particularly if, when it comes to factual issues, one acted or would act in the same way. The Partido Popular would be well advised to style itself as a modern right wing party that is finally freeing itself from the legacy of the Civil War of 1936 to 1939 by examining the past self-critically and not giving the impression that its social policy is dictated by the Church hierarchy. Those who want voters to give them the mandate to govern must make their mark from the opposition. The opposition party will now have to reflect carefully on whether this is possible with two-time loser Mariano Rajoy, who liked to call the Prime Minister a liar, at its helm." (11/03/2008)

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The daily considers the economic challenges Zapatero is now faced with. "The Government must prepare for the expected economic squalls, driven by the global credit squeeze, the recent sharp rise in unemployment and the abrupt end to the construction boom. The Government is already preparing a public works programme to absorb some of the workforce laid off by the building industry, and is proposing to use the budget surplus, currently running at 2 per cent of gross domestic product, to fund the new programme. In this way, it hopes, the increased spending will keep growth at 3 per cent, down from last year's 3.8 per cent, but still enough to calm fears that Spain's long run of high growth has come to a sudden end. ... For now, the new Government must turn to the immediate issues: rising oil and food prices, the continued inflow of immigrants, improving education and competitiveness and consolidating Spain's entrepreneurial culture." (11/03/2008)

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Edit Inotai sees the election victory of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero as a second chance and looks somewhat enviously at conditions in Spain: "Such continuity requires on the one hand a government that works convincingly (or at least doesn't commit any major blunders), and on the other a society in which the majority doesn't believe it's necessary to change government every four years. ... But Spain's voters also have it easier: not only do they live in one of the world's richest countries, they also have the advantage that their concepts of right and left have not become hopelessly entangled. The right sees the solution of all problems in competition and privatisation, while at the same time cultivating a somewhat nationalist and xenophobic attitude. The left, on the other hand, calls for a welfare state and full employment (!) and fights for an open, liberal Spain where everyone is equal. This makes the choice of who to vote for easier." (11/03/2008)

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Gian Enrico Rusconi, professor of political sciences in Turin, comments on the electoral success of the Spanish socialists who have managed to impose a secular vision on the state. "It is mature democracy that has won, with the serene, firm and dignified defence of the secular state. This is the lesson to be learned from Zapatero's victory. You agree or not with such or such an initiative (a new divorce law, or homosexual marriage), but there is no doubt that the socialist government has developed an efficient strategy, without letting itself be intimidated by the Catholic and ecclesiastic opposition. ... I don't know whether in Italy a hypothetical Veltroni government [centre-left Democratic Party] could propose laws unapproved by the catholic hierarchy. ... Even if he wanted to, Vetroni could never act with Zapatero's assertiveness." (11/03/2008)

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The 1968 movements in Western and Eastern Europe had little in common, Polish journalist Jan Skórzynski writes in an essay: "Unlike in the West, in 1968 the generation gap played a secondary role in Poland. ... During a demonstration at the University of Warsaw the student movement turned into a mass movement. ... The demand for the abolishment of censorship was one of the first political slogans of the unrest in Poland in March 1968. Calls for freedom of assembly and association followed. At this point it's important to note that the protestors were not demanding free elections. In this respect they were realists. What they did demand was a certain degree of control over the authorities in the political as well as the economic sphere. ... After 1968 the students gradually became integrated in the political and intellectual establishment of their respective countries. Polish dissidents met up with each other again either in prison or in exile." (11/03/2008)

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All available articles from » Jan Skórzynski

Web-surfers are giving up their personal data on the Internet more and more easily. The French researcher Michel Arnaud would like to ensure that this data will not be put to criminal ends. 'There are two opposite positions: on the one hand, security pressure is increasing with the state asking, in the name of the anti-terrorist struggle, for personal data all the time; on the other hand, civil society is digging in its heels, set against the restriction of personal freedoms. There is perhaps a middle way that could conciliate these two apparently incompatible positions, ... [by installing] a central database of identities ... [which] would be independent of all political power, preserving identity as private property. ... Perhaps we will be told that this is Big Brother. But in view of the situation, maybe we had better organise the management of identities by controlling their circulation, protecting them from piracy." (11/03/2008)

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All available articles from » Michel Arnaud

The daily comments on the narrow victory of the Nationalist Party (PN) in the elections held last Saturday, March 8th: "It will be a continuation - given that this is the Nationalist Party's third successive term in office since 1998 and the fifth since the momentous change in government of 1987 after 16 years of a Labour Administration - but also a new beginning. It has to be a new beginning if the pledges and bold admissions of failure in some areas made by PN leader Lawrence Gonzi - who should really be given all the credit for the electoral victory claimed by the PN last night - are to come to fruition. ... Now Dr Gonzi has to look ahead and the challenges are many and varied, both as Prime Minister and as party leader. ... Throughout the past years it [the PN] has demonstrated chinks in its armour. More often than not the real problem was not the Nationalist Administration but, rather, the Nationalist Party." (10/03/2008)

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At a meeting in Washington yesterday Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and George Bush discussed plans for the missile defence shield in Poland. Tusk wants more concessions in return for allowing the US to station a base in Poland. Marek Magierowski considers Poland's new critical stance toward the US too hard: "The promises George W. Bush made regarding the modernisation of Poland's armed forces are not very concrete. The negotiations for the Western world's most important defence project have degenerated into undiplomatic wrangling over 100 Patriot defence missiles [which Poland is to receive from the US]. This is a risky game. It endangers our particularly close relations with the US, which have served to bolster Poland's position within the EU." (11/03/2008)

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All available articles from » Marek Magierowski

Austria's social democrats (the SPÖ) have suffered a major defeat in the state parliament elections in Lower Austria. Michael Völker writes that this decreases the likelihood of early elections at a national level because the SPÖ would be bound to lose votes: "And what theme did they want to use to fight their election campaign? That the Gusenbauer [SPÖ] government has failed, even though others are being blamed for this? ... The ÖVP [the conservative Austrian People's Party] likewise lacks a theme with which to fight a campaign. ... Even the media would like to be able to focus on content, but instead it's faced with politicians who are escalating the crisis on a daily basis without knowing what it will lead to, and then propose new elections. This is no media fabrication. The speculation about early elections is being greeted with such enthusiasm because it's difficult to imagine how this coalition can go on." (11/03/2008)

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At the beginning of the year, Croatia unilaterally defined its protected environmental fishing zone in the Adriatic and since then has been locked in a dispute with Slovenia and Italy. The EU expects Croatia, as a membership candidate, to settle the dispute as quickly as possible. Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader has now stressed that the EU takes priority over fishing. Rok Kayzer comments: "This is an important political message from a state that threatened to lapse back into the dangerous, myth-steeped isolationist politics of the 1990s. In future, however, it will have to prove that the EU and the European spirit really do take priority for the Croatian elite. The government should start with internal reforms. This would pave the way, with Zagreb's blessing, for the rapid completion of the already initiated negotiation phase. It also entails compliance with agreements that have already been concluded, such as that with Slovenia pertaining to border traffic and cooperation on fishing." (11/03/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » EU enlargement, » EU Policy, » Europe, » Croatia
All available articles from » Rok Kajzer

Interviewed by Nanda Troost, the Danish caricaturist Kurt Westergaard fails to understand why several Dutch political figures have called for the Dutch populist Geert Wilders to give up broadcasting his anti-Muslim film 'Fitna'. "No Danish politician would do that. They know that freedom of expression shouldn't be oppressed. Wilders should simply go ahead and broadcast his film. ... In Denmark, we criticise everything: the Queen, politicians, religion. Ten years ago I was accused of blasphemy because I had depicted Jesus descending from the cross dressed in an Armani suit. But nobody threatened me. To launch a debate is one of a paper's duties, and thus one of a caricaturist's. Muslims should accept that." (10/03/2008)

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After the first round of municipal elections in France on March 9th, the centrist party MoDem finds itself acting as arbiter in several towns. Its president, François Bayrou, is negotiating alliances with the right as much as with the left, on a case by case basis. The editorialist Paul-Henri du Limbert criticises this strategy which he says renders «even more hazy the outlines of the famous 'third way' so dear to the president of the MoDem party ... . The two-party system, the end of which had been prematurely announced during the presidential campaign [of 2007], has actually reclaimed all its rights. There is the UMP on the one side, the PS on the other, and in the middle François Bayrou and his skinny, disparate troops. ... At this rate, François Bayrou may soon find himself the only spectator of himself. So are the UMP and the PS right to make him an unexpected hero half-way between the two rounds? " (11/03/2008)

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The "Living History Forum" in Stockholm, which is primarily aimed at helping children and young people understand history, is focusing on the crimes of communism following the success of its internationally acclaimed Holocaust project. Although according to surveys most young people now know about the Holocaust, many of them had never heard of the gulags, for example. The newspaper welcomes the initiative and warns: "The main thing is that it doesn't merely provide documentary accounts of these crimes against humanity. The internal connections must be explained. The Holocaust was part of Nazi ideology and its distorted view of the world. In the same way, the crimes of the communist regime against many millions of people are a logical consequence of the ideology on which this regime was based." (11/03/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Education, » Sweden, » Global

In February Finnish mobile telephone supplier Nokia started production in the village of Jucu in Romania. In an interview with Ruxandra Hurezean, Dorel Pojar, the mayor of Jucu, responds to how the village has been portrayed in the German media: "They write that here in Jucu we still ride around with horses and carts and that now that Nokia has arrived we'll finally learn the meaning of civilisation. This is not true. We don't use horses and carts because we don't have cars, but because we feel bound to do so by tradition. I was born on a farm with a horse; a horse ist our heraldic animal. We don't want Nokia telephones on our coat of arms, we want horses. Don't forget, we published a calendar that featured pictures of horses, not of Nokia products. ... So far we haven't gained much from Nokia, whereas Nokia won't have to pay land or property taxes for 30 years. We are losing this tax money which would have flown into the community." (11/03/2008)

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All available articles from » Dorel Pojar, » Ruxandra Hurezean

The Spanish daily responds to the selection on Monday, March 10th, of Rodolfo Chikilicuatre as the country's representative in the 2008 Eurovision song contest. "[His song] ' Baila el Chiki Chiki' is a parody, a humoristic invention conceived to incarnate all that is idiotic about the music wrongly known as 'popular'. ... 'Chik Chiki' [has become] a con of European proportions. But on a musical level, Rodolfo Chikilicuatre's grotesque dance has nothing to envy among the agonizing chants that Spain has chosen over the past 20 years. Does the Eurovision deserve any better than these farcical antics? ... The Eurovision contest is the celebration of bad taste. Since we can't win it with saccharin songs, folklore and deafening voices, we are sending Chikilicuatre. That way everyone will know what we think of the Eurovision and we will be helping to blow-up a deplorable festival." (11/03/2008)

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