Main focus of Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Inaugural visit and an acid test

Barack Obama will visit Europe for the first time as president of the United States this week. After attending the G20 meeting in London he plans to visit Strasbourg and Baden-Baden for the Nato summit and is then to meet EU representatives in Prague. The tour will end with a visit to Turkey. This inaugural visit to Europe will be an acid test.

La Vanguardia - Spain

Miquel Roca Junyent warns in the Spanish daily La Vanguardia against pinning all one's hopes on the US president in the battle against the crisis: "It's naïve to believe we can sail out of the crisis on Barack Obama's towrope. And worse still, it would be a grave mistake. Without major global change there will be no solution. But even global change offers no guarantee that everyone will benefit. Each of us must do his own homework, and it's a complicated task. It's a task that is difficult to propose and difficult to accept. The time for major agreements has come, and the protagonists must give them priority over the customs of their parties. Without agreement there can be no solution. We could at most learn to live with the crisis, but not to overcome it." (31/03/2009)

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All available articles from » Miquel Roca Junyent

Les Echos - France

The daily Les Echos comments on US President Barack Obama's visit to Europe: "In Europe no one - or practically no one - doubts that this visit has at least one symbolic goal: to portray a less unilateral America, one more open to the world than under George W. Bush. ... That goal seems all the easier to attain in Europe in that Obama's election is widely interpreted here as demonstrating America's ability to renew and commit itself on the world stage, above all through institutions like the [International Monetary Fund] IMF and Nato which were both founded after the Second World War. Expectations in Europe are so great that some people are comparing Obama's visit to that of President Kennedy to West Berlin in 1963. ... But will Obama declare himself a European, as Kennedy declared himself a citizen of Berlin? Most likely not. Today's battle lines are of an entirely different nature than the Cold War division of the world into two blocs." (31/03/2009)

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All available articles from » Jacques Hubert-Rodier

Dnevnik - Slovenia

The New York correspondent for the daily Dnevnik sees Barack Obama's visit to Europe as the acid test for the new US president and the Old Continent: "The first signals (the long wait of the French and Germans for an invitation to the White House, the inappropriate reception of [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown in Washington) show that Obama attaches less importance to the Old Continent than expected. For its part Europe has shown no willingness to play a more active role in 'Obama's most important war' in Afghanistan now that George W. Bush is no longer sitting in the White House. Moreover, the two sides are completely at odds about rescue measures to deal with the financial crisis. Just a couple of days ago German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in the New York Times that despite friendly relations foreign policy is always the defence of one's own state's interests. It speaks volumes that she said this just before Obama's visit takes place." (31/03/2009)

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All available articles from » Andrej Brstovšek

The Times - United Kingdom

The Times comments on the visit of US President Barack Obama on the occasion of the G20 summit in London: "There are 19 other leaders in the chorus but no doubt about the identity of the leading man. ... Mr Obama's economic inheritance was, to be sure, the worst in modern American history. But he gave every impression, during the campaign, that he would come to the White House with a clear economic plan in place. That turned out not to be the case. ... But, despite all these problems, Mr Obama is still the star of the show this week. He still has the power to speak to domestic audiences all around the world in a way that Mr Bush never managed. Solid achievements from the G20 will be hard to come by. But a resounding plea to avoid protectonism, delivered in the cadences of the best political speaker in a generation, will be worth the trip on its own." (31/03/2009)

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More from the press review on the subject » Fiscal Policy, » Economic Policy, » U.S., » Global

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