The Irish daily notes that agreement at the EU summit was only possible "because of an understanding that the pain would be spread unevenly. The devil is in the detail, and we can be sure that when the Commission brings out its specific country-by-country proposals for burden-sharing, both in relation to overall emission cuts and the renewable energy target, an almighty row will develop. The new EU states argue that their heavy reliance on coal and the fact that they have already cut their emissions by 30 per cent means they should get a pass. And France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and some of the Baltic states want their 'clean' nuclear power to be regarded as in part meeting the requirement. Business groups say the target should not specify the technology, simply a carbon reduction figure, leaving the 'efficiency' of the market to determine the means." (12/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, angielski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Środowisko, » Energia, » Europa

The editorialist Pascal Aubert considers that "the ambition declared is laudable, but the pedagogical problem is blatant - the triple objective of 20% by 2020 was conceived to mark minds - but, once again, the real difficulties were opportunely swept under the rug with a 'we'll see about that later', clearing the way for general self-congratulation. Only, 2020 is the day after tomorrow and 'later' is today. The European commission wants to strike while the iron is hot and take Member States at their word. It should however be prepared for less good will when the time comes for specifying in detail how much each will have to sacrifice in the reduction of pollutants and the installation of renewable energy in a supposedly 'fair and appropriate' approach. Each State - France first of all- already has a good idea of what they understand by this and there are practically as many interpretations as there are stars on the EU flag." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, francuski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Środowisko, » Energia, » Europa
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Pascal Aubert

"It appears that the EU is finally taking the fight against climate change seriously", comments the daily in its editorial. "Without the slightest doubt this is an important agreement for the struggle against the consequences of global warming. It shows how the governments of one of the most industrial zones of the world are preoccupied by the subject and feel much more responsible for the situation we are faced with today. Now this concern needs to be shared by other regions, mainly the United States where the Bush government has tried in every way to distance the subject from the world's agenda and delay adopting necessary measures for as long as possible. It is also urgent for emerging Asian economies to be included in this struggle, especially China." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, hiszpański)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Środowisko, » Energia, » Europa

Xavier Vidal-Folch, co-editor of the daily, feels that the EU would be much better off today if it could lean on a Constitution. "Fifty years after its creation, the European Union appears to be in crisis. It resembles a club incapable of bringing its basic rules up to date. Nonetheless, it has managed to hold on to its powers of seduction. There is still a number of countries jostling to join the EU. And more and more multinational institutions are asking it to intervene in big conflicts and minor litigations. But Europe is like Garcia Marquez's colonel [reference to the book 'No One Writes to the Colonel'] with no one addressing it in writing. Those intellectuals who decisively urged Europe on a few years ago have signed off, notable in France. Now most of the thinking is being monopolised by Anglo-Saxons. (13/03/2007)

» Dalsze informacje (Link zewnętrzny, hiszpański)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Konstytucja UE, » Europa
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Xavier Vidal-Folch

Sociologist Wolfgang Sofsky writes a polemic against the many bans that he says are controlling society- from cigarette bans to computer game bans to bans against parking in city centres: "Once the state takes control of society, citizens lose their freedom. Society is no longer sure of its own power. Increasingly, it wants itself to be monitored. Leniency and tolerance become as impossible as trust in its own ability to regulate itself in the event of conflict. The underlings become so used to the inflation of regulations that they no longer notice it... Bans are meant to reduce fear within society, but they use the fear of punishment to fight the fear of risk. The more bans there are, the more fear they create. And the more fear there is, the more bans are introduced. In this way bans lay the foundation for their own amplification." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, niemiecki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka bezpieczeństwa / Kryzys / Wojna, » Filozofia, » Niemcy
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Wolfgang Sofsky

Romania's MEP elections were to take place on May 13, 2007. Now Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu has postponed them, saying that tensions in domestic politics are superseding EU issues. He did not name a new date. Cristian Pirvulescu takes a critical view of the decision: "Now five elections will follow closely on each other's heals: Romania's 2007 election of its MEPs, the local elections in June 2008, the general elections in November 2008, the election of Romania's MEPs in June 2009 and the presidential elections in December 2009. This will put the parties under more pressure than they have ever been in post-communist times... The institutions are in a state of crisis owing to the lack of authority, the political landscape is in a state of confusion, too many elections will come one after the other. A generation of politicians that has lost all its energy will fall. This is a prerequisite for reconstruction." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, rumuński)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Rumunia
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Cristian Pîrvulescu

"The same old faces will be representing us in Europe," Weselina Gartcheva and Jasen Lyutskanov comment, having seen Bulgaria's list of candidates for the European Parliament. "There are two reasons why the elections of the EMPs in May are important for the country: Firstly, these will be the first of their kind and our vote will decide who represents Bulgaria in Europe. Secondly, this is the first public test of endurance there has been for the Bulgarian parties in a long time. This has caused such a panic among the parties that they're only putting seasoned candidates at the top of their lists. In deference to tradition there are some new faces, too. But also in keeping with tradition, the newcomers are afraid of the more experienced MPs and party functionaries." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, bułgarski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Rozszerzenie UE, » Polityka UE, » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Bułgaria

The most recent round of EU enlargement in January 2007 has restricted the Serbs' living space, writes the daily's Belgrade correspondent Thomas Roser. "Although the EU expanded with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, for Serbia's ten million inhabitants, the world grew even smaller. Within Europe Serbs can now only travel to Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Montenegro without a visa... The number of cross-border commuters to Bulgaria has sunk by a third. Border traffic with Romania has virtually come to a standstill because when Bucharest started to charge the citizens of its neighbouring country for visas in 2004, Belgrade introduced visa requirements for Romanians, too." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, niemiecki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Rozszerzenie UE, » Polityka UE, » Europa Południowo-Wschodnia, » Serbia
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Thomas Roser

"On Sunday evening [March 11th], Jacques Chirac pronounced one of the best speeches of his political career", considers Favilla, a pseudonym concealing several of the paper's journalists. "It differed in tone from all of the electoral campaign. Over these past few weeks, we have seen the candidates in his line of succession take part in television programmes where average citizens, supposed to represent 'real people', evoked their personal problems. In this exercise, whoever shows the most compassion scores the most points. But what one asks of a President of the Republic is not compassion... Jacques Chirac's last speech is a striking demonstration of the distance that separates - and that should separate - compassionate posturing from presidential responsibility." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, francuski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Francja
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Favilla

The existence of the Russian exclave of Kalingrad means that traffic from the EU to the Baltic states uses a narrow strip of borderland between Poland and Lithuania. This road has become too congested for the increasing amount of traffic, but the construction of the Via Baltica is still stalled, Jacekas Komaras complains. He comments ironically on the debate surrounding the construction of the Polish section of the motorway, which will transect a conservation area funded by the EU there. "It's a paradox. Birds, of all things, are causing the delays in the construction. The government in Warsaw is locked in a dispute about a bypass of the city of Augustow, that would pass through a nature reserve. No trees can be cut down over the next few months because the nesting season has just begun. This means that the project will be put on ice at least until September. Only last autumn, the Polish government had promised there would be no changes to the route and it wouldn't let itself by put off by protests." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, litewski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Środowisko, » Infrastruktura / Komunikacja, » Polska, » Litwa
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Jacekas Komaras

Three weeks into a "mega-trial" of 29 suspects linked to the 11 March (11-M) Madrid bombings three years ago, a vast protest related to a different question of terrorism was mounted on Saturday March 10th against the parole handed to a hunger-striking ETA assassin. Ivan Briscoe, journalist and researcher at Fundacion para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Dialogo Exterior (Fride), responds: "Never has the country been so wall-papered with news derived from the legal proceedings of terror cases. ... While the mega-trial has buried speculation about an ETA role in the bombings, it has in no way alleviated the doubts surrounding Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's handling of a Basque peace process that appeared to have withered on the stem after the killing of two people in the Barajas airport bombing of 30 December.Yet, the parole (or rather, 'house arrest') accorded on 1 March to Iñaki de Juana Chaos, involved in the murder of 25 people in terrorist attacks in 1987, has plunged Zapatero into one of his most gruelling periods in office, and probably consigned his PSOE [socialist party] to a plunge in the opinion polls." (12/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, angielski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka bezpieczeństwa / Kryzys / Wojna, » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Hiszpania
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Ivan Briscoe

Finland will hold its parliamentary elections on March 18th. So far, the election campaign has been remarkably unspectacular, the newspaper notes. According to the most recent polls, each of the three major parties - the Centre Party, the Social Democrats and the National Coalition Party - stands to win a more or more or less equal number of votes: "There is no debate about whether Finland should join NATO, there are no protests against the construction of a fifth - and potentially even a sixth - nuclear power plant, and no one cares about whether nuclear waste is stored at Olkiluoto or Lovisa... No one has been able to upset the system of consensus government. When he goes campaigning in rural Finland, Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, who is said to be the sexiest man in Finland, tells people he's just as happy to team up with the Social Democrats as he is with the Coalition Party. We believe him." (12/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, szwedzki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Finlandia

The Russian president Vladimir Putin is paying a visit to Italy this March 13th. The editorialist Franco Venturini considers the mystery surrounding the figure. "Only one thing is more frightening than a stable Russia and that is an unstable Russia. Maybe we need to resort to the old cold war system as a reference to understand the torment that characterises today's relations between the West and Russia and to know how to deal with this Vladimir Putin, who is to be honourably received in Italy and the Vatican. Seven years after his arrival in the Kremlin, the Russian president remains an impenetrable enigma for many. Will Prodi, Napolitano and the Pope this evening be welcoming a nation's saviour, or a former KGB agent who has not given up his old methods ? Is Putin responsible for the democratisation of a country where democracy has never existed or is he at the head of a barely masked dictatorship ?" (13/03/2007)

» Strona www (Link zewnętrzny, Corriere della Sera)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Stosunki międzynarodowe, » Włochy, » Rosja
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Franco Venturini

"Russia is exhibiting its stolen art treasures," comments Katja Tichomirova on the opening of an exhibition of 1,300 works of art by the Merovingians. The collection was taken from a Berlin museum to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. "Everyone wants the public to be given access to all the works of art that were stored in the secret deposits of Soviet museums for sixty years: first the Treasure of Priamos, then the objects from Berlin's Classical art collection, which were long believed lost, and now the golden treasure of the Merovingians - all from the cellars of Ms Antonova [director of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow]. There may be more surprises to come. The search for the golden treasure of Eberswalde goes on. However, cooperation or no cooperation, only the Russian public is likely to benefit from Antonova's generosity because if the Merovingia exhibition were to go on show in Berlin, the German authorities would have to confiscate 700 stolen art treasures." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, niemiecki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Wystawy / Muzea, » Polityka kulturalna, » Niemcy, » Rosja
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Katja Tichomirowa

Analysing France's presidential campaign, Guy Duplat considers that cultural issues are curiously absent in the debate. "The first reason for this deafening silence is that there is no more money to be spread around and that savings have to be made. Baumol's law is rife in the performing arts, showing that there are no possible gains in productivity to be had and that past investments are therefore costing more and more and cannot be rationed. A Beethoven quartet cannot be played with three instruments to save money. ... The second reason is that, under these conditions, culture is not a profitable subject electorally ... . We know that at each whimsical tightening of the belt the cultural world groans and frets as we saw in the management of unemployment benefit for people in show business. We are far from the days of Jack Lang or André Malraux who had a strong, clear view of culture and their role [as Ministers of Culture]." (13/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, francuski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka kulturalna, » Francja
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Guy Duplat

According to recent surveys, an increasing number of Hungarians oppose the immigration of Pirese to their country. Never heard of them? The Pirese were invented by a research institute to compare the attitude of Hungarians towards existent minorities - Roma, Germans, Slovaks, Serbs - with their feelings towards a fictitious group. Gusztav Megyesi comments with sarcasm: "Surprisingly, the Pirese are most hated by the left and the prosperous inhabitants of western Hungary. They hate the Pirese mainly because they've never met one. Personal contact would perhaps help to reduce prejudices... Why hasn't a politician come up with the idea of making his career by saving our country from the Pirese? 'I have had all Pirese deported. I am the Hungarian people's best hope. I want to rule,' he could proclaim. And his political opponents wouldn't be able to produce a single Pirese to refute these claims." (09/03/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, węgierski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Migracja, » Mniejszości, » Węgry