The President of the European parliament - the only multinational legislature in the world - should be more than just a technocrat, writes the daily Luxemburger Wort: "As a Solidarnosc activist [Jerzy] Buzek fought for the peaceful defeat of communist totalitarianism and for freedom and human rights. In the past five years working as an MEP he has demonstrated his political instinct and will to compromise. Nonetheless Buzek cannot escape the shadow of [Bronisław] Geremek: too strongly does the late Geremek - a Francophile Jewish Pole who died on 13 July 2008 in a car accident and who survived the horrors of the Second World War and later the red terror of the Stalin era to finally make a successful contribution to the fall of the Iron Curtain - symbolise the best of the European idea. And precisely because of this Buzek, a level-headed pragmatist, is a good choice."  (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Jakub Adamowicz

The left-liberal daily El País writes that the new president of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, faces difficult tasks: "This pilot [Jerzy Buzek] is no Ferrari in politics, but nor is he a Biscúter [a small Spanish car]. Perhaps he's more like a Seat that's getting on in years. He says he wants to rekindle the enthusiasm for all European things among the citizens. A difficult task considering that voter turnout for the Parliament in Strasbourg has dwindled with each new election. He says that we must listen to the Eurosceptics, of whom there are so many among the new members. And listening is always a good thing - provided you don't let yourself get caught up by their ideas." (15/07/2009)

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For the Finnish daily Savon Sanomat the election of Jerzy Buzek to President of the European Parliament is a historic step: "Two decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the freeing of the Eastern European states from their dependence on the Soviet Union, and now a Pole has become one of the leaders of Western Europe. The new EU member states that once formed part of the Eastern Bloc are still clearly trailing behind the West economically. The inner cohesion of the EU has been seriously called into question in recent years. But Tuesday's election has shown that West and East have come together in spirit. … The support of the older member states for the election of Jerzy Buzek is proof that people are not thinking of the past. Even in Germany the election result will hardly be perceived as a loss of authority because it was Germany that always spoke out in favour of the EU's eastwards expansion." (15/07/2009)

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The election of Jerzy Buzek as president of the EU parliament is symbolic, writes the daily Ouest-France. "A Pole heading the Euro-MPs - in the "silly season" the news could well go unnoticed. Yet the broad election of Buzek by the European Parliament actually has major symbolic significance. ... Almost twenty years ago Poland anticipated  the fall of the Berlin Wall by several months and held the first free elections. ... Nobody would have imagined that a Pole would assume one of the three key positions in Europe so quickly. But as of yesterday this is a fact. Jerzy Buzek is the first politician in the ten new EU member states to be entrusted with such a responsibility. He may like to remember that real integration will require more time than EU expansion did. It is as if an invisible Iron Curtain were continuing to divide Europe. Without wanting to exaggerate the importance of his function, we may assume that his election will allow the contribution of the states of Central and Eastern Europe to the European project to become a routine matter." (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Laurent Marchand

The conservative daily Rzeczpospolita takes a critical view of the election of Polish politician Jerzy Buzek to President of the European Parliament: "The election of a Pole to the top post in the European Parliament is supposed to prove that Europe is now more united and that the division between East and West no longer exists. But you only have to look at the form and the symbolism in the … speech Jerzy Buzek delivered in Strasbourg to see that there is no united Europe and that there never will be. The former prime minister of the RP [Republic of Poland] mentioned [former Pope] John Paul II and Simone Veil - president of the European Parliament between 1979 and 1982 - in one breath, praising them as people who had done great service to the old continent: on the one hand the Pope … and on the other a woman whose main goal was the legalisation of abortion in France. Buzek presented his predecessor with a small statue of Saint Barbara and yet at the same time … he cites the French Revolution, which had an ambivalent relationship with religion, to say the least." (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Marek Magierowski

A few days ago the Greek authorities demolished two temporary refugee camps in the port city of Patras. Dozens of refugees were arrested, including many minors. The conservative daily I Kathimerini supports the demolition but criticizes the way the police handled it. "No-one currently knows where all those arrested during the police operations have been crammed together.They are invisible people in the hands of anonymous policemen. The situation is bound to get worse, since the government, showing absolute indifference to the problem, stepped up [the police operations against the refugees] during the night immediately following the European elections . So we can be certain that much will happen to the detriment of the migrants and the international image of our country. ...None of this has anything to do with demolishing the wretched slums in Patras. Therefore we would do better to think about where these people will end up, and not about what they have left behind them." (14/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Paschos Mandravelis

Against the backdrop of Canada's reintroduction of visa requirements for Czech nationals the liberal daily Sme says the government in Ottawa is partially to blame for the high number of Czech Roma who have sought asylum in Canada: "This is a classic example of a country making other countries pay for its own mistakes. And the fact that there is racism and ethnically motivated violence in the Czech Republic doesn't change this. The government in Prague is to a certain degree responsible. But there wouldn't have been a wave of Czech Roma immigrating to Canada if it didn't have such an attractive asylum procedure, with 30 percent [of all applicants] being granted asylum - whereas in Europe it's only 5 percent. … Canada has the right to implement whatever immigration policy it wants to. But it can't wash its hands of the consequences. … Nonetheless, Prague's efforts to convince the EU to take reciprocal steps are overdoing it. European solidarity is not strong enough to compel states to make the lives of their own citizens more complicated." (15/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Migration, » Minorities, » Czech Republic, » Europe, » North America
All available articles from » Peter Schutz

The Austrian parliament recently set up an investigation committee to find out whether Eastern European secret services had influenced Austrian politicians during the Cold War. The left-wing liberal daily Der Standard comments: "The MPs must have been driven by more than an interest in history to want to look into the records of the counter-intelligence agency. For many of the channels of influence that existed in the last century are probably continuing to function today - among other things to the effect that former East Bloc sympathisers are probably today being used by Western secret services. For the secret information gathered by the services has not remained as secret as it should have done." (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Conrad Seidl

At the beginning of July an Egyptian woman was murdered inside a German court in what was apparently a racist attack. This has sparked protests in the Muslim world and put a strain on Germany's relations with many Islamic states. The conservative daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung comments: "Emotions are running high in the Muslim world. According to news agencies there were calls of 'Down with Germany' at the funeral of [Marwa al-] Sherbin in Alexandria, but also at the funeral service held in Dresden. Many Muslims obviously see the crime as religiously motivated; the Iranian government is instrumentalising it and playing up the whole incident. The public broadcaster Irib reported that in his usual dramatic manner the head of state Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had demanded the condemnation of Germany by the UN Security Council. … However given Iran's dependence on high-tech imports from Germany we can be sure that Ahmadinejad will keep the period of deliberately fanning protest short." (14/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Religion, » Minorities, » Germany, » Iran
All available articles from » Ulrich Schmid

The daily Latvijas avīze looks at Russia's relationship with European institutions in the wake of Russia's criticism of a resolution recently passed by the OSCE putting Nazi and Stalinist crimes on a par: "None of the European organisations enjoys Moscow's complete trust. The well-known Russian politician Mikhail Margelov complained some years ago in the Western press that the Council of Europe was being used by 'Latvian nationalists and Czech separatists'. In actual fact the Council has always gone out of its way to accommodate Russia, without expecting Russia to reciprocate. Moscow keeps on threatening to cut Russian payments (around 12 percent of the EU budget) or to resign from the Council of Europe and is delaying the reform of the European Court of Human Rights. And, as Sergei Lavrov once said, [it sees] the OSCE as a means to 'surround Russia'." (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Uldis Šmits

The Lithuanian writer Tomas Venclova explains in the online newspaper Delfi why he thinks Lithuanian society is backward-looking. The background to this is a recent decision by the Lithuanian parliament to prohibit the public portrayal of violence and homosexuality: "I fear the problem that we already had in the Soviet era still exists. People are afraid of public opinion: 'What will Mr X say? Will I lose my reputation? Even if I'm an intellectual, am I really different from the majority of people?' So much on the subject of homosexuals: I'm surprised that none of our thinkers has spoken out against xenophobia. One or two of them may have done, but only with a lot of ifs and buts.That is depressing. For in the West fighting xenophobia is one of the most important issues for intellectuals. It is more important than fighting for one's own people, because the people will find something they wish to defend even without intellectuals. Let us compare it with the issue of the Holocaust. Why do Jews not bring accusations against the younger generation of Germans? Because German intellectuals have taken a very clear stand on the Holocaust. Our intellectuals simply shout. "Don't you dare accuse us of anything!" (15/07/2009)

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Writing in the daily Diário de Notícias Vasco Graça Moura, a social democratic MEP since 1999, describes his disappointment with the EU: "We are utterly impotent from a military point of view. We can't defend our industrial or economic interests against the competition from Asia. Owing to the diverging interests of the member countries we are not truly united. Veiled nationalism and protectionism are rife. … Should it ever come into effect, the Lisbon Treaty will benefit the 'stronger' states and their allies. And it won't resolve the conflicts triggered by the most recent EU enlargement [the accession of Bulgaria and Romania], which only aggravated and multiplied the EU's problems. Moreover the treaty will create a pseudo-federalism that contradicts the ruling of the German constitutional court. To sum up: This is a Europe … that runs the risk of further weakening the EU Commission when the latter should in fact be the motor of EU development." (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Vasco Graça Moura

Several Spanish savings banks are planning to merge. For the business newspaper Cinco Días this is just the beginning of a long series of mergers slated to take place in the next few months: "These examples are no doubt just the first steps in a 'merger dance' that all the banks will be performing or at least rehearsing. The concentration [of banks] we are facing, which need not be limited just to savings banks, will gain momentum in the course of this year and the beginning of 2010 ... Then the directors of the banks, the [Spanish central] Banco de España, the autonomous regions and the government will have to show that they have sufficient strength of character and the necessary cool to take the right decisions. What is at stake is no more and no less than the health of the Spanish financial system." (15/07/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Corporations, » Financial Markets, » Banks, » Spain

In a speech delivered at the first sitting of the newly-elected Bulgarian parliament Sergei Stanishev, the head of state who was voted out of office in the country's recent parliamentary elections, rejected accusations that his government led the country to the verge of economic collapse. The daily Dnevnik comments: "The Unicredit bank group's prognosis that the recession will get worse and that gross domestic product will sink in the next year makes the 'false thesis' about the collapse appear [increasingly] realistic. It can't be that the 'international situation' alone is to blame for the potential collapse [of the economy]. The economic crisis is one side of the story. But the other is the deliberate plundering of the state for the sake of dubious projects. To illustrate this one only needs to point to the 75 million euros that have been approved for the construction of a new government quarter [according to the plans of French architect Dominique Perrault]."  (15/07/2009)

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The Italian Lega Nord party has used the opening of the film producers' pool in Milan - as a rival to the Cinecittà film studios in Rome - as an excuse to criticize films in Roman dialect. The liberal-conservative daily Corriere della Serra writes that federalism, the political goal of the Lega Nord, cannot function in the film world and that nor should it. Dialects add flavour to the soup, it says. "Its criticism reignites the old conflict about an Italy of dialects. But the film duel between Rome and Milan has generated an endless gallery of cult scenes, jokes about the Italian capital and Lombardian stereotypes. ... It would really be a great pity (and a mistake) if in order to facilitate the birth of a film pool in Milan the Lombards of all people were to draw a new linguistic and geographical Gothic line [line of defence along the Apennines during World War II]." (15/07/2009)

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All available articles from » Paolo Mereghetti

The Finnish Ministry of Justice is conducting a study on young people with a migration background whose parents have sent them back to their home countries because they adapted too well to life in Finland. The daily Etelä-Suomen Sanomat comments: "How can they send back their children safely when these immigrants were granted asylum? Shouldn't the fundamentals of asylum policy be re-examined if this is the case? On the other hand it could be that the young immigrants got into major problems. That the adjustment to the new cultural environment took an unexpected direction. That their own customs were completely forgotten. … Which cultural background and which values of which home country should be the focus? Is it wrong when parents want to convey to their children as strong a sense as possible of their own cultural background? If you turn the whole thing around you could ask how bad we would find it if Finnish parents working in Africa sent their children to live with relatives and attend a Finnish school. Hardly anyone would condemn this." (15/07/2009)

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