The Financial Times argues that foreign investors are a necessity in Germany, and that as a result the restrictive foreign trade act could have disastrous consequences: "Fallout from the credit crunch has raised hopes for mergers in the fragmented banking sector, while low market valuations are inviting takeover bids in other sectors. But German solutions are sought, not a break-up of Deutschland AG. ... Public and co-operative banks control nearly two-thirds of the retail banking market, but their small scale means that profitability is low. With banks not up for sale, consolidation is all but impossible. ... The German government, while not alone in its fears of foreign investors, is not doing its economy a favour by shutting them out." (22/08/2008)

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Le Monde newspaper analyses the increase of protectionist regulation in Germany: "The rise of protectionism is being borne out in Germany, to the great dismay of the economic milieu. ... Initially it was concern about the growing power of [foreign] state-owned investment funds that prompted Berlin to tighten its legislation. The government wanted to restrain the ambitions of state investors with enormous foreign exchange reserves at their disposal, in particular Russian and Chinese investors, who are suspected of trying to use their stakes to exert political influence or gain control of technical know-how. ... The tone of the major corporations has now changed. A year ago neither Deutsche Bank nor the energy companies Eon and RWE concealed their worry about the appetite of state-owned investment funds. Back then employers supported to a certain extent the protectionist reflex of Germany's policymakers. ... But this harmony is now a thing of the past. The economic milieu is attacking the new regulations and pillorying them as an obstacle to the free movement of capital." (21/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Corporations, » Economic Policy, » Germany
All available articles from » Marie Verges

Michael Hüther, director of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, writes in Handelsblatt newspaper that the new foreign trade act is a "regulatory policy disaster. ... Responsible policy must recognise the potential for danger. With its blurred legal terminology, the new ammendment to the foreign trade act could just as well facilitate deliberate abuse as generally broad interpretation. Inner security and public order are trite concepts which anyone will agree to. They are wide open to interpretation, and can be used to arbitrarily make any sector or company the focus of public concern. They are fear-induced concepts which put authority into the hands of politicians. This is the especially alarming thing about this amendment, quite apart from the many arguments against giving the state the right to intervene on capital investments by foreign investors." (22/08/2008)

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All available articles from » Michael Hüther

According to the Danish daily Information, the crisis in the Caucasus has shown the need for the EU to play a more active role in Asia, but without holding out the prospect of EU and NATO membership as an enticement. "The Georgia conflict has clearly shown that there is a lot of tension in Central Asia and that the position of the Western countries is extremely weak there. Asia is in the process of becoming the powerhouse of the future, and not only economically. It is here that the solutions for terrorism and for the energy and climate issues must be found. We do not need another conflict we cannot win; we need intensive cooperation with Russia and other actors in the region. The EU countries must reach a fundamental decision about the borders of the EU, even if this reignites the awkward debate about Turkey's membership. Rather than taking on new members the EU should work out a concept for an 'EU light' of which the countries of the East, Turkey and the north African states could be members." (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » EU Policy, » Asia, » Europe
All available articles from » Hugo Gården

The European Union has decided to provide an additional 40 million euros in aid to the Palestinian Territories. This has to stop, writes the political news magazine Elsevier: "A strange decision: Brussels already transfers around 500 million euros annually - although for years this has not led to a single advance in the Palestinian question. Many billions have disappeared into the quagmire of Palestinian corruption, uncertainty and violence. To this day the Palestinians have not been able to transform their ambitions for a functioning national state into reality. It may be that Israel intentionally blocks economic development here and there, but that does not explain why the Gaza Strip is such a chaos for example, while under Israeli control it flourished. The blame lies with the Palestinians themselves. ... The Palestinian Territories are a bottomless pit. How much more of the European taxpayers' money must be tossed into it?" (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » EU Policy, » Europe, » Middle East
All available articles from » Oene van der Wal

After returning from his holidays British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced that he wants to tackle the problems of the British and win the next general elections. According to foreign correspondent Brane Kastelic writing in the daily Dnevnik, the much criticised prime minister has little chance of success. "While people wait for Brown to make an appearance in Beijing ... a major debate has broken out about why precisely those athletes that attended private schools ... are winning so many medals. ... This lends strength to the accusations of the Conservatives that during its eleven years in government the Labour Party has accentuated social differences and is responsible for growing poverty and the poor situation of pensioners. The leader of the Conservative Party, [David] Cameron, depicts himself as the politician who will abolish these injustices. Has the world gone mad? Once it was the British Conservatives who were seen as the evil party of the privileged. Now they are declaring a kind of social revolution. Brown's optimism will soon evaporate." (22/08/2008)

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All available articles from » Brane Kastelic

In view of the EU's lack of a common foreign policy the liberal weekly Magyar Narancs fears that the EU member states will each go their own way regarding their Russia policy. "If things continue like this the Georgian conflict will accentuate the lack of consensus within the EU. ... The US has expressed its disapproval of Russia's conduct in Georgia in unmistakable terms, if not quite as vehemently as Poland did. The old EU member states - the strong boys of the EU - have been more cautious in this respect. Although Sarkozy's EU peace plan seems appropriate as a first reaction, in the end the 'old' members of the EU could easily decide it makes more sense to make their own arrangements with Russia on an individual basis. This would once again be at the expense of the Eastern European latecomers to the EU." (22/08/2008)

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The daily ABC reflects on the Europeans' yearning for peace in a world that has always been in a permanent state of war: "If [the ancient Greek general and historian] Thucydides lifted his head now he would perhaps be unable to comprehend the European Union, in which pacifism has suppressed violence, but he knew precisely how to interpret the rest of the world. The conflicts have not been resolved, and to acknowledge this it is not even necessary to point to what is happening in Georgia and the instinctive reflexes of Russia, which continues to consider itself a great power. We Western Europeans insist on believing in the end of war. In 1909 it was the Labour politician Norman Angell ... who predicted that because of the economic dependencies on the old continent there was no possibility whatsoever of a war between its major powers. ... The futurologist H.G. Wells ... said that the First World War would be the last of the great wars. ... In 1989 the American Francis Fukuyama ... announced the end of all wars following the triumph of liberalism. ... Peace is an invention; war a social phenomenon. You don't have to take a trip to Tiflis to realise this. The 21st century is simply yet another bloodstained century." (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » History, » Weltanschauung, » Europe, » Global
All available articles from » Rafael Bardají

According to a study by The Berlin Institute for Population and Development, the states of Northern Europe are well prepared for the challenges posed by population transformation and demographic change. However the same is not true of the countries of Southern Europe, the study concludes. In 2050, an invisible border will divide Europe into winners and losers of demographic change. With the study in mind, the Frankfurter Rundschau argues for liberal immigration policy: "Europe is shrinking. Liguria is aging. Eastern Germany is becoming deserted. So much for the negative side of the report. Neverthelesss the study's sombre diagnosis can also be read positively, as a recommendation for therapy: the cure for demographic change is more movement. On the ground this has been the reality for a long time now. Silent migration flows criss-cross Europe. Certainly, the great migration to and within Europe will not solve the demographic problem. But it shows that the winners of the population change must be attractive to immigrants, and able to turn the many faces of migration into their own trademark." (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Migration, » Demographics, » Europe
All available articles from » Vera Gaserow

After an airplane crash in Madrid which claimed 153 lives, excessive personnel cuts at Spanair have been cited as the reason for the technical malfunction. However the business newspaper Cinco Días warns against rash and possibly false accusations: "The precarious economic and manpower situation at the airline has aroused suspicion. More than one thousand employees are supposedly threatened with dismissal. Just a few hours before the accident the pilots' union Sepla warned that the company was forcing employees to work longer than authorised. However Jordi Mauri, the chairman of the workers' council, rebuffed this accusation yesterday. ... Without clear evidence, the professionality of the airline's personnel may under no circumstances be called into question." (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Infrastructure / Travel and Transport, » Corporations, » Tourism, » Spain

As of next Monday the Polish postal service will lose its monopoly on the delivery of letters. In the liberal left-wing daily Gazeta Wyborcza Journalist Piotr Miączyński passes judgement on the state-owned company. "The postal service is going its own unique way about preparing for the challenges of competition. First it applied for several hundred millions in funding from the state budget. Then it plans to double prices for its services next year. ... The postal service is a huge paradox. It has over 100,000 employees, not much less than the Polish army. But despite this there are giant queues at the counters in post offices and over-employment has made the service one of the most expensive in Europe. ... It is impossible to sack inefficient and superfluous workers because changes are blocked by over 40 trade unions. I wonder whether we customers have any need of a postal service like this? Because it is clear why the employees need the postal service. To pay them their salaries. After all, unlike the letters the salaries always arrive on time." (22/08/2008)

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All available articles from » Piotr Miączyński

La Repubblica comments on the changes which are shaking up the international art market and causing US collectors and gallerists to fall behind. The developments are also being felt by European art, the paper writes: "To understand the concern felt by Americans over the weak dollar and the new rich from Russia, China and Saudi-Arabia, one need only take a stroll through the Rockefeller Center, a deeply symbolic building and home to Christie's auction house. .. The auction market is flourishing, however no longer in New York but in Dubai and Hong Kong. The buyers are the same ones buying up British football clubs, Manhattan skyscrapers and villas on the Italian Costa Smeralda. ... The king is Russian magnate Roman Abramovich. ... [And yet] the revolution in the art market which is so worrying America can also be an opportunity for European art." (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Fine Arts, » Trade, » Russia, » Asia, » Europe, » U.S.
All available articles from » Mario Calabresi

Following the most recent scandal over two former secret service agents who were invited to take part in the summer school organised by the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR) in Berlin, the culture magazine Observatorul Cultural calls for a shift in thinking: "Much fuss has been made about the official condemnation of communism. ... There has been a lot of talk but little has been done. The waters remain murky. ... The scandal over the appointment of Sorin Antohi und Andrei Corbea-Hoişie to give speeches at the ICR's summer school in Berlin offers further proof of the Romanians' difficulties in dealing with their more recent past. ... Was the ICR unable to find representatives who would not provoke a wave of shocked protest among Romanian-German writers living abroad? If so, we have a problem: there are no more morally and professionally irreproachable intellectuals left in Romania. And if this is the case we really need to seriously think about the reconstruction of the elites which were destroyed by communist re-education." (22/08/2008)

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More from the press review on the subject » Cultural Policy, » History, » Romania
All available articles from » Doina Ioanid

China is the absolute front runner in the Olympic medal table. In the daily NRC Handelsblad writer Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer doubts that this is an accurate reflection of the new global balance of power: "In the past few years China's official policy has been focused on winning more medals than the US in Beijing 2008. And it may well accomplish this because the Americans have fallen too far behind. ... In the past few days I have seen several analyses which draw the inevitable conclusion that the global balance of power has definitively shifted towards Asia. ... But all these analyses fail to take into account that all the European countries are competing as individual nations. I counted them up and by my reckoning the European Union has won a dizzying total of approximately 200 medals, which is more or less the same as China, the US and Russia put together. Now that is a true show of power." (22/08/2008)

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All available articles from » Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer