euro|topics - Mara Gergolet

01/12/2008

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Gergolet, Mara

3 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.

Corriere della Sera - Italy | 08/08/2008

German Social Democrats divided

The German Social Democratic Party (SPD), part of the ruling coalition with the conservative CDU, is deeply divided: the chairman of the party in the state of Hesse, Andrea Ypsilanti, hopes to become premier with the support of the controversial Die Linke (The Left) party. As a result Wolfgang Clement, a former economics minister and deputy chairman of the SPD, has advised against voting for his own party in the state elections, a move for which he is now threatened with expulsion. Even if the attempt to expel him from his party fails, writes the Corriere della Sera, "it will be far more difficult to overcome the breach that this surreal procedure has sparked. The party is divided. On the one hand is the old guard from the days under Gerhard Schröder, who support Clement and the party's 2010 reform agenda. On the other is the impatient new radical wing. What is at stake is the leadership of the party and the ultimate verdict on the Schröder era. ... Andrea Ypsilanti has broken a taboo. She established contacts with Die Linke against the wishes of her party, and hopes with their support to oust the conservatives and become state premier. That would indeed be an earthquake for German politics and for the SPD."

Corriere della Sera - Italy | 08/07/2008

Government crisis in Austria

Austria's governing coalition between the conservative ÖVP and the social democratic SPÖ has collapsed just a year and a half after it was formed. According to daily Corriere della Sera, the right-wing populists stand to gain from the situation: "The government crisis was triggered when Alfred Gusenbauer, leader of the Social Democrats, corrected the pro-European course of his party and threatened to hold a referendum on any changes to the Treaty of Lisbon and on Turkish EU membership in an interview with the Kronenzeitung newspaper, a platform for EU-phobia. ... The ÖVP responded promptly by dissolving the coalition. The suspicion voiced by ÖVP leader Wilhelm Molterer that the Chancellor is trying to capitalise on Euroscepticism to counter his own unpopularity is not entirely unjustified. The fierce reaction of the ÖVP towards the anti-EU stance has also sparked a revolt against the Chancellor within his own party. ... The true winner of the situation is the party founded and then abandoned by Jörg Haider, the [right-wing populist] FPÖ, which is at 20 percent and gains terrain and clout whenever there is a crisis."

Corriere della Sera - Italy | 21/01/2008

Presidential elections in Serbia

"After all these years, we are still at square one: how to get rid of the legacy left by [Slobodan] Milosevic?", comments the political analyst Bratislav Grubacic in an interview conducted by Mara Gergolet. "We have inherited so many disastrous things - corruption, an economical debacle, international isolation - that no government has managed a real transition. ... They [the radicals] are anti-establishment, Eurosceptic extremists. This is a phenomenon of dissent common in numerous eastern European countries. ... All this is the result of the war in the Balkans. It has not always been easy to understand who won and who lost. Take the case of Kosovo: nobody explained to the Serbs that hey had lost this war."

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