"What is so wrong with nuclear power?" asks the daily. "To answer succinctly: 'its current economics make it an unattractive option for new, carbon-free generating capacity and there are also important issues of nuclear waste'. That is not from a green pressure group or some malcontent scientist. It is from the government's own energy white paper, published in 2003. The problems have not been solved in the intervening five years. ... New plants, if they ever actually arrive, are a long way off and the decision to build them should not be allowed to obstruct the development of an intelligent, less centralised energy policy of which nuclear can only be a part. A greener framework would rely on three big things: serious efficiency in energy consumption; much heavier investment in renewables; and a move from a command-and-control national grid to microgeneration and community power plants." (11/01/2008)

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Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger finds Germany's phase-out of nuclear power a "quixotic strategy," and praises instead the approach of Gordon Brown: "The British government – and note, it's a left-wing one – has a totally different outlook. Given the goal of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions, the government has now decided to build new atomic power plants. Nuclear power is secure and affordable, has low pollution levels, is dependable, and prevents one-sided dependencies. Clearly, such arguments - and the financial one is the weakest of them – should be heard here as well. But that's not the case. Wind turbines are our answer to the conflicting goals of climate protection and the provision of dependable energy. The British do not believe in such fairy tales." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Environmental Policy, » Energy, » Germany, » United Kingdom
All available articles from » Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger

"In Ireland, Energy Minister Eamon Ryan suggested that we should open a debate on nuclear power so 'all the issues can be brought into the open'", notes the daily. "The unavoidable reality is that we should be doing much more than debating nuclear power. We need to take the hard decision now on whether or not to go down the nuclear road to ensure the security of energy supply in the decades ahead. Doing anything less is a fool's gamble. We simply cannot afford years of prevarication and endless debate. At the moment we are in a period of transition on energy and it would be reckless to believe that we can find new methods to completely replace conventional - including nuclear - generation processes in the time at our disposal. Nobody can be certain what the future holds but we need to plan for the worst-case scenario and if that includes nuclear then so be it. The time for debate has long gone." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Energy, » United Kingdom, » Ireland

After the close election victories of Mikhail Saakashvili in Georgia and Julia Timoshenko in Ukraine, Egidijus Vareikis looks at the success of the "revolutions" in post-Soviet areas. "Optimists point out that through the revolutions, despite obstacles, a transition was made to democracy. Ukraine withstood pressure and manipulation from Russia, and plotted a pro-western course. That is very important, because that changed the geo-political map of Eastern Europe. The Black Sea could one day become a European inland sea, and Russia could be pushed back further from the coast. … Those many-coloured revolutions also have negative sides. But in Ukraine and Georgia, they've managed to find charismatic personalities who transmit – and carry out – new ideas." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Ukraine, » Russia, » Europe, » Georgian Republic
All available articles from » Egidijus Vareikis

Lena Kolarska-Bobiñska, director of Warsaw's Institute of Public Affairs (ISP), notes that in Poland, "The middle-class, bang in the middle of a period of economic growth, have overthrown the populists [by voting for Donald Tusk's Civic Platform in the legislative elections of October 21st]. The waning of populism is directly linked to the fact that fear of the European Union is diminishing. This fear was shared by many citizens of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia after these countries entered the European Union. Today it has gone. In several countries of Central and Eastern Europe, economic growth is indeed very high. ... It is nonetheless not sure that countries in Central and Eastern Europe have been cured of populism once and for all. In Poland this will depend on the results obtained by the governing team ... ." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Poland, » Hungary, » Czech Republic, » Slovakia
All available articles from » Lena Kolarska-Bobiñska

Florian Hassel criticises the OSCE election observers for failing to perceive the manipulation of votes in Georgia. "Cheating takes place not only in the polling stations on election day, but in the campaign and in the counting and processing of votes – true to the word of Josef Stalin, what matters is not who votes for whom, but who counts the votes. Only experienced election observers – ideally, those fluent in the local tongue – can ferret out all these aspects by taking months to observing the campaign, election itself and vote count. ... In Georgia there were 28 long-term observers, but 300 additional observers were flown in at short notice, having no background knowledge, most of them speaking neither Georgian nor Russian. Their knowledge often was limited to unrevealing observations made in the polling stations. In addition, the OSCE delivers its verdict, which has a major public impact, only a day after the election. That is too little time for a concrete and detailed evaluation, and to examine charges of often very sneaky election fraud." (11/01/2008)

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All available articles from » Florian Hassel

The daily notes that "[former UK Prime Minister] Tony Blair's decision to mix business with statecraft by joining JPMorgan Chase [financial services firm] as a part-time adviser while serving as an international envoy to the Middle East marks an unwelcome blurring of the line between public and private roles. ... There is something disturbing about political leaders parlaying their fame into money after retirement. But it is the price we must pay if we want the best and brightest to go into politics rather than becoming bankers in the first place or, in the case of Mr Blair, remaining lawyers.What is less acceptable is doing both things at the same time. Mr Blair will no doubt be scrupulous in not mixing appeals for peace and compromise in meetings with Gulf leaders with appeals for contracts for JPMorgan. But it is impossible completely to separate his identities as an international envoy and international salesman. ... Mr Blair ought to make up his mind ... ." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » United Kingdom, » Middle East

Russian nationalist politician Dmitri Rogosin has been appointed as the country's ambassador to NATO. The newspaper is outraged: "Let's not forget that it was Rogosin who threatened NATO member Estonia with war last April, in order to protect the [Soviet-era] bronze statue. Nowadays he says Russia has to resurrect its role as world power. This does not suggest that the Kremlin wants normal relations with NATO. How will the Estonian envoy look upon a joint NATO conference with Russia? ... Formally, all NATO states are equal, and Estonia must have a say in the alliance." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Estonia, » Russia, » Europe, » Global

Massimo Livi Bacci underlines the distinction between the integration of Romanian immigrants in Italy and that of the Roma people who hail from the same country. "The real problem that Europe is faced with, Italy especially, is which policy to apply to the Roma arriving from the Balkans and Romania in particular. As Europeans, the Roma, benefit from the right to move freely around Europe. Their resistance to integration and to taking root is a thousand years old. The arrival of thousands of nomads, concentrated on the outskirts of big towns, where authorised camps are few and overcrowded, represent a high risk for the social order, the management of which should be left to local authorities. This risk needs to be taken into account as soon as possible, with a European plan for the stabilisation, development and integration of the Roma in Romania." (10/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Integration, » Italy, » Europe
All available articles from » Massimo Livi Bacci

The daily has published an article from the Telos agency in which the political scientist Zaki Laïdi analyses the way the EU imposes new norms. "In a globalised world, the dividing lines between the European market and the global market are necessarily becoming more and more blurred. This is for various reasons, the first of which is the fact that, being at once unified, large and attractive, the European market has to fix rules for those who wish to enter it. Another factor supporting the externalisation of European market rules is the considerable hike in European standards in environment matters and consumer protection. Nonethelss, so long as European norms prove the highest in the world - as is testified by the Reach legislation on chemical products - all economic agents find themselves obliged to rise to European standards in order to have a chance of getting in to the European market." (09/01/2008)

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All available articles from » Zaki Laïdi

The Romanian government has announced a special programme designed to encourage the return of citizens who have emigrated. Some three million Romanians have moved abroad in recent years; in 2007 alone, they have sent about 7 million euros back home. Ionut Popescu observes: "Just as these people did not leave at the government's behest, so will they not be moved to return. The government won't manage to raise the average wage from 800 euros to the 1,000 euros that a Romanian can earn abroad. Only those who were already planning to come back will do so. The rest, whose children are going to school abroad and who are founding Romanian ex-pat communities, won't return, whatever the government does to entice them." (11/01/2008)

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In October 2007, 571 Slovenian journalists signed a petition against censorship and political pressure. At the start of their country's EU-Council presidency, they reiterated their point: In Slovenia journalists are subjected to censorship, harassment and bans on writing. The government now has responded with a study on press freedoms in the country. Darijan Kosir criticizes this study: "Not only because they chose a controversial and simplistic method for a complex analysis, but because it was carried out on a government commission by 'pundits' who are known supporters of the administration. ... The mere fact that the evaluation of journalistic work according to whether a text is positively oriented toward the government, whether it rejects the government or is 'balanced' highly questionable. Is it the role of journalism to approach every problem as a chance to praise or criticize the government? Or may not journalism also spread more sophisticated thinking?" (11/01/2008)

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All available articles from » Darijan Kosir

ON January 10th, cyberspace will be welcoming a new tool, Wikilengua, aimed to help the 400 million Spanish-speakers in the world. "If 2006 was the year of the blog, 2008 is set to become the year of the Wiki, a part of cyberspace governed by the trinity of speed, openness and democracy. This, in other words, is somewhere for each individual to swiftly seek out information, modify it and add to it", writes Winston Manrique. "Wikilengua is a sum of dictionaries and books about the Spanish language. It is not a reference site, but a site intended to orient and advise Internet users. To be found there will not only be words accepted by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), but also all those to be found in familiar language A meeting place, then, for Spanish to be explored in all its forms ... ." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Public Culture, » Online media, » Spain, » Latin Amerika
All available articles from » Winston Manrique

Guillaume Goubert comments on the French president Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to eliminate advertising from French public television. "Television without adverts will be even less free than ever before. Numerous French people already moan about having to pay the licensing fee that pays for 60% of public broadcasting today. If tomorrow the television audience of channels without advertisements were to decrease, the following argument would no doubt resound immediately: 'why should I have to pay for channels that nobody even watches?' If they are to survive in their current configuration, public channels are going to have to invent popular television that is different from that of private channels. This is a quite a challenge in the swiftly changing audiovisual context. Younger generations no longer watch television in the same way as their elders. Navigating through images on their computers, they nibble at programs all over the place." (10/01/2008)

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All available articles from » Guillaume Goubert

Anyone who lives in Vienna and wants to go to the opera will gladly make the trip to the Slovakian National Theatre (SND) in neighbouring Bratislava, especially now that there are no more traffic jams at the border. Visitors from Vienna have one particularly good reason, reports Wilhelm Sinkovicz: "The difference between the musical performance companies in Vienna and Bratislava could hardly be greater. Look at the homepage of the Slovakian National Theatre and you will soon see what draws Austrian music lovers across the border: The productions offered here are noticeably free of any directorial theatre madness. Even if director Zuzana Gilhuss relies on an austere set and powerful lighting effects in the latest staging of Donizetti's 'Lucrezia Borgia,' the performers' costumes and gestures promise nothing unaccustomed, and we may complacently say: it's normal theatre." (11/01/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Stage, » Slovakia, » Austria
All available articles from » Wilhelm Sinkovicz