The daily Libération writes that US President Barack Obama is taking a very clever approach to his origins: "In Chicago Obama can say he comes from the Midwest. In Accra he can talk as an African. In Cairo he displayed a genuine connection to the Muslim world in which he grew up. Had it been anyone else these multiple identities would have become synonymous with conflict and resentment. But Barack Obama is relaxed about all his different facets. He doesn't reject any of them. He accepts this harmonious and complex mixture. This is probably why young Africans see him as 'one of them'. Obama's popularity on his father's continent is moving and profound. It is also positive. It's no coincidence that Obama chose Ghana as his first destination, wanting to return to his roots. As the first African country to free itself from colonisation Ghana is an African and democratic state."  (11/07/2009)

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All available articles from » François Sergent

President Obama's visit to Ghana prompts the liberal daily La Vanguardia to rethink the West's Africa policy: "The majority of the billions of poor on this planet live in Africa, whose people have the lowest life expectancy in the world. Up to now the approach to dealing with Africa's poverty has been aid, but we need to think about how to target it and spend it more effectively, among other things because there is a fact that calls into question the West's aid model: the emergence of China as an agent in Africa. And one of Obama's top priorities for Africa should be to work together with African countries and promote leaders who can create democratic and responsible governments. Africa, the forgotten continent, continues to be a 'scar on the world's conscience'." (13/07/2009)

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The conservative daily The Times praises Barack Obama's performance in black Africa. "Obama cut across a lot of nonsense in averring that Africans are no more or less capable than anyone else of good, evil, venality, heroism and patient nation-building. Yes, they have a harder struggle than many, because of wars and wrongs. Yes, they have some terrible leaders (but they overthrew apartheid and gave the world Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu). Yes, they are made up of tribes with ancient grudges - but so is Northern Ireland and much of Europe. What Barack Obama, son of a Kenyan father, has done is to change the rhetoric. He rejects both patronising mystery-mongers and fruitless breast-beating colonial guilt. OK, so far it's only words. But it felt like a new start. ... And on a purely selfish British level, after recent events it is good to hear someone who believes that political institutions are the answer, not the problem." (13/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Libby Purves

"For the first time since a white person set foot on this continent, the person himself is the message", writes the left-liberal daily La Repubblica on US President Barack Obama's visit to Ghana. "This message has a real face, which can ... overcome the Africans' understandable scepticism. ... Obama himself is a 'little Africa', a man born in the least opportune conditions North America has to offer, trapped in the ghetto of his skin colour. ... Continually exposed to the temptations of the street and the admonitions of a black society that still frowned upon a black man who 'wanted to behave like a white'. In the end the warrior became king, president of the most powerful country in the world. He can say to anyone, regardless of whether it's an inhabitant of Ghana or an orphan from the south side of Chicago: 'yes you can'. If I can do it, so can you." (12/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Africa, » U.S.
All available articles from » Vittorio Zucconi

There have been several reports that the Czech army plans to decommission its 30 remaining tanks. The left-leaning daily Právo asks whether it makes sense for small European countries like the Czech Republic to maintain a standing army: "Does the Czech Republic need an army at all? Is someone threatening us, or is there reason to believe we will be threatened in the future? … Maintaining an entire army should be left to the big European countries like Germany, France, the UK and Italy whose economies are strong enough to generate the necessary funding. The medium and small states should maintain a complete joint army, composed of special units from individual countries. The seeds of such an idea have already been sown, but much remains to be done before the project starts working as a whole. Nato should talk less and take more practical action. But a higher degree of EU integration is also required because this would without doubt be the seed for a joint European army." (13/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Czech Republic, » Europe
All available articles from » Jiří Hanák

The left-liberal daily Népszabadság writes that after its summit meeting in L'Aquila, the G8 group is in a deep crisis. "You can call the meeting of G8 countries anything you like, but not a G8 summit. Just as the Italian city of L'Aquila where the meeting took place was devastated by an earthquake, so the 30-year-old institution has been battered by the financial and economic crisis. And just as the traces of the earthquake can still be seen in L'Aquila, so huge gaps exist between the G8 states and their partner countries. ... The G8 summit has outlived its purpose, that was already clear before the crisis. If the international institutions created after World War II had been reformed when the shift in the global economic power relations became apparent, the world would have been able to meet today's crisis far more effectively." (13/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Miklós Blahó

The daily Lapin kansa calls on the EU to take national particularities more into account when formulating its food directives. The paper was prompted to action by an EU initiative aimed at changing the hygiene regulations for the production of the Finnish fish pastry speciality kalakukko: "Now that the cucumber has lost its fascination they want to deprive us of kalakukko, the delicacy of the people of the Savo region and all other Finns. The problem is stricter hygiene regulations that make it illegal to sell this traditional Finnish food product more than a day after it is made. … Kalakukko does not become inedible after a day but, if stored properly, can be sold and eaten even a week later. The task of the supreme EU food regulator is not easy. Many products that the Finns wouldn't even put in their mouths are still sold in Europe. Nonetheless, the plans to make kalakukko a one-day delicacy are so absurd that it's not just the kalakukko producers in Savo who are revolting against them." (13/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Public Culture, » Finland

Fourteen years ago around 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serbs at the massacre in Srebrenica. In the daily Delo Branko Soban criticises the West for not doing enough to bring those guilty for the massacre to trial: "Everyone knew where Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić were hiding, but no one went looking for them. Neither Nato, the CIA or the Blue Helmets, nor the Serbian or other secret services. As [former Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia] Carla del Ponte spoke about this with CIA director George Tenet, he rebuffed her ... with the words: '"Look, Madame, I don't give a shit what you think.' ... Clearly all of these people are interested neither in the truth nor that those responsible for the genocide should be punished. Dostoyevsky once wrote that a criminal must have a right to punishment. Only this can free him from the terrible burden that weighs upon him. Europe has in part freed itself from its bloody burden with the Resolution on Srebrenica [passed by the European Parliament in January 2009]. Serbia will only be able to free itself however when Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić are punished for their war crimes." (13/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Branko Soban

In the business daily Les Echos US economist and Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff, from 2001 to 2003 Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund, argues that Europe is more in need of reform than of Keynesian recovery programmes to get out of the financial and economic crisis: "Some commentators have savaged Europe's policymakers for not orchestrating as aggressive a fiscal and monetary policy as their US counterparts have. Why else is Europe suffering a deeper recession than America, they complain, when everyone agrees that the US was the epicenter of the global financial meltdown? But these critics seem to presume that Europe will come out of the crisis in far worse shape than the US, and it is too early to make that judgement. ... The real question is not whether Europe is using sufficiently aggressive Keynesian stimulus, but whether Europe will resume its economic reform efforts as the crisis abates. If Europe continues to make its labour markets more flexible, its financial market regulation more genuinely pan-European, ... growth can pick up again in the wake of the crisis." (13/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Fiscal Policy, » Economic Policy, » Europe, » U.S.
All available articles from » Kenneth Rogoff

The Desertec solar energy project is to be launched today, Monday. It is destined to become the world's largest solar power project and cover one seventh of Europe's demand for electricity. The left-liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung comments: "Yet the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Firstly there's the transport of the electricity, which will have to cross the Mediterranean. But with direct current this is no longer a major problem and the extra costs barely count. Secondly, there are those who fear dependence on states where Islamist terrorism could be a problem. But terrorists would have to strike several plants at the same time to really make an impact on Europe. … Desertec would be a showpiece project for the EU's languishing Mediterranean Union plans. And all this has nothing to do with imperialism - the third objection. Business models can be thought up to ensure that Africans benefit from Desertec too. The biggest obstacle is that solar-thermal power plants are expensive … Politicians must help to make sure that the desert sun operation is a success." (13/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Jeanne Rubner

The liberal daily Jyllands-Posten dampens the euphoria of politicians in the discussion over electrically powered cars, calling for a measured dose of realism: "New technologies have always got people chomping at the bit, and the enthusiasm only grows when the technology promises people a terrific boon. Electrically-powered cars correspond to today's world, because freeing ourselves from fossil fuels and reducing emissions of harmful greenhouse gasses are high on the political agenda. That is noble, and in principle reasonable. ... However battery technology is simply not advanced enough to allow e-cars to supplant petrol-powered cars yet." (13/07/2009)

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The liberal daily Dagens Nyheter calls on the new Swedish EU Council president to do more for the success of the Doha Round on global trade: "The world's tariff barriers should gradually be lowered, as should agricultural subsidies, while trade in services should be simplified. Such is the logic of the Doha process. The negotiations should have been concluded in 2005, but unfortunately they have broken down each time. ... One lesson from the crisis is that all forms of protectionism will only worsen the already ailing economic situation. In its role as EU leader, Sweden now has a unique chance to take the world in a free-trade-friendly direction. It is a chance we must seize." (13/07/2009)

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This year will mark the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Eugène Ionesco, the French-Romanian writer of absurd theatre. The daily Cotidianul comments on the insistance of Ionescu's daughter Marie-France Ionesco that Ionesco is French, but no bit Romanian: "It's true that Eugène Ionesco detested his father, because he was violent and uncouth. Nevertheless his father did all he could to allow his son to finish school and attend a Romanian university so that the young Ionescu could become a French teacher. It seems absurd that his daughter must be reminded that Eugène Ionesco also published in Romanian. And it also seems absurd to have to remind Mrs Ionesco that her father returned to France in 1938 as a Romanian scholarship student, and several years later as a Romanian citizen he served as cultural attaché for the government of Antonesco [Romanian military dictator] in Vichy." (13/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Stage, » France, » Romania
All available articles from » Cristian Teodorescu

The conservative daily Rzeczpospolita criticises its left-liberal rival the Gazeta Wyborcza, which has published opinion polls on several issues: "According to one survey the majority of Poles want the introduction of fixed quotas for women in parliament. This result is not particularly surprising when you compare it with opinion polls on the parliament among Poles. For years the situation has been the same here: people have just as low an opinion of the Sejm [the Polish parliament] as they do of the government, the president and the prime minister. The average Pole takes a dim view of the way it works and doesn't trust it. … Support for the idea of reserving half of the seats in the Sejm for women … is more a sign that people question the suitability of women for public life than that feminist agendas are coming to the fore." (13/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Poland
All available articles from » Rafal A. Ziemkiewicz