The Spanish academic Sebastian Royo considers that Nicolas Sarkozy's ideas represent a rupture on both a national and a European level. "He has committed himself to burying the European Constitution that was refused by voters [in 2005] and to negotiating a mini-treaty that would then have to be ratified by the French Parliament. His programme and ideology is coherent with other European leaders in favour of economic liberalism (particularly Angela Merkel, José Manuel Barroso and Tony Blair/Gordon Brown). This will allow him to form a strategic relationship and create an axis of reforms and modernisation within the EU concentrating on getting results rather than on pursuing EU accession. However, his Gaullist defence of French interests, along with his criticism of the European Central Bank and his defence of national champions will lead him into conflict with Brussels and other Member States." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, hiszpański)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Francja, » Europa
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Sebastián Royo

Dominique Moïsi, currently teaching at the College of Europe in Natolin near Warsaw, comments: "The election of Sarkozy is no bad thing for Europe. The problems of the European Union won't be solved merely because France has a new president. But Sarkozy's vision of a simplified constitutional contract to replace the one that the French and Dutch rejected in 2005 is more realistic than Royal's call for a new referendum. A few years ago, Sarkozy hinted at the possibility that a Club of Six should take over leadership of Europe. But Poland has cut itself off from from the circle of politically relevant countries, and the leaders of Italy and Spain made no secret of their support for Royal. In Britain, the ardent Euro-sceptic Gordon Brown is about to replace Tony Blair. So the French-German alliance will once again take the lead, even if only by default." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, niemiecki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Stosunki międzynarodowe, » Polityka UE, » Francja
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Dominique Moïsi

"Mr. Sarkozy's talk concerning the European Community along with his talk on outsourcing and against the ECB means that we may rightly fear French isolationism", worries Arnaud Leparmentier, chief editor of the Europe and France section of the daily. "As for the creation of a fortified European stronghold, this is an anachronistic idea in a world where China and India are emerging. ... Europe can move away from a certain internationalist naivety by seeking foremost to defend its legitimate interests. Some paths are worth exploring: the taxation of imports from countries that don't respect Kyoto protocol; the introduction, like in Germany, of a social VAT that imposes a social security contribution on imports; a firmer management of the euro facing the dollar. For this, however, Sarkozy needs to convince his partners that he is not motivated by nationalist interests." (08/05/2007)

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

Mary Dejevsky considers that Sarkozy will not live up to Westminster's hopes that he "would take a more 'British' view of the EU, as a grouping of states in which national sovereignty nonetheless trumps everything. ... He supports a 'mini' version of the constitutional treaty (about which the British, unlike the Germans, are ambivalent) and he opposes membership for Turkey. In fact, beyond climate change and, probably, defence, it is hard to see how Sarkozy's arrival at the Elysée will make Britain look less like the EU's odd man out. ... Sarkozy stressed that he wanted France to be more open to the world. But he coupled this with a promise of more curbs on immigration and an acceptance that French (and European) workers feared unfair competition. If they had misgivings about the EU, he said, it was because they saw it as a 'Trojan horse' for globalisation. This is not at all how the EU, or globalisation, are regarded by the British Government, which castigates the former for its rigidity and hails the latter as the future." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, angielski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Francja, » Europa
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Mary Dejevsky

The Czech Parliament has decided to create an government office to administer the files of the former secret police. It also will investigate the character of the totalitarian regimes under National Socialism and Communism. Jaroslav Spurny and Martin M. Simecka approve: "This institution can remind us of things that we've nearly forgotten: What life was like in a system where one could get two years for writing 'free elections' on the lavatory door; where the refusal to join a 'brigade' meant the end of your career, where you would be expelled from school for going to a 'banned' concert and where you were punished for having long hair and wearing jeans. In the 1990s we hoped to see justice done for these 'banal evils' of communism. But this did not happen. Few protagonists of the regime were convicted... After 1989 it was easy to get the impression that everyone had been something of a resistance fighter, that no one had collaborated with the regime. The archives may well be a merciless mirror to remind us, and especially our children, of the way we were." (07/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, czeski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Historia, » Czechy
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Martin M. Šimečka, » Jaroslav Spurny

Romanian writer Octavian Paler died yesterday in Bucharest at the age of 80. The paper prints his last column, in which he reflects on President Traian Basescu: "The communist dictatorship was not 'entertaining.' There was the same hypocrisy, the same cowardice, there were the same Potemkin villages, and most importantly, the same fear that is the psychological underpinning of every dictatorship. Today's dubious 'democracy' is anything but boring. But something worries me. It's the rhetoric that Traian Basescu serves up nowadays: The way he accuses the entire political class, the way he struts about as if he were the Messiah, his fascistic remarks – it reminds me of the rise of right-wing extremism between the wars, and the same goes for his ludicrous claim that he is different from other politicians, a missionary against corruption, having no part in the 'system of rogues.' I have one thing to say to this: Using populist demagogy in an inflammatory atmosphere is playing with fire." (08/05/2007)

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

Several right-wing politicians in Switzerland recently requested a referendum to ban the building of minarets, which they consider the symbols of the Muslim religion's demand for political power. The University professor Tariq Ramadan, an Islam specialist, recalls the fact that "Islam is now a Swiss religion. It is not by changing laws and demanding that Muslims become invisible that we will win the struggle for democracy, multiculturalism and religious plurality. Muslims should have the right to build mosques and minarets just as they should respect national laws and sensitivity. This does not however mean that we should respect the diktats of a far-right that is bringing back to the forefront of the political arena the nationalist rejection and racist hate that we believed buried with the darkest chapters of European history." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, francuski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Religia, » Integracja, » Światopogląd, » Szwajcaria
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Tariq Ramadan

Given the current Estonian-Russian row over the memorial to Soviet soldiers, Jewgeniy Daynow scrutinizes the relationship between Russia and Bulgaria: "In the last few days, western institutions and media have started talking about the greatest threat to Europe: the Kremlin's clear intention to re-establish its position not only in the former Soviet Republics but also on the 'soft' periphery. Where do we stand? To the Kremlin, we look pretty soft. Moscow is counting on being able to secure its influence over us with relative ease... There is a new monopoly contract with Gasprom, which is involved in the [Bulgarian] atomic power plant; a gas pipeline through southern Bulgaria is in the works; and now there's an exchange of confidential data with the Russian secret service. It's becoming harder to dispel the suspicion that Bulgaria is dancing to the Kremlin's tune. Bulgaria is Russia's future Trojan horse in western society." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, bułgarski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Stosunki międzynarodowe, » Polityka bezpieczeństwa / Kryzys / Wojna, » Rosja, » Europa, » Bułgaria
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Evgeniy Daynov

A Movement for Democracy was founded in Poland last week, under the patronage of former Social Democratic President Aleksander Kwasniewski, who accuses the current conservative-populist government and its president of violating the constitutional democracy. Kwasniewski explains to Eliza Olczyk: "We have a political plan: we do not want to see Poland's democracy miss its chance. What we have in common with... Lech Walesa and others whom we've invited to our conference is respect for the constitutional state, civil society and civil rights... Those in power now don't share these views. Basically, today's Poland is not built on mutual trust, but on mistrust." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, polski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Polska
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Aleksander Kwaśniewski, » Eliza Olczyk

Danish Muslim legislator Naser Khader, who founded the "Democratic Muslims" during the controversy over the caricatures of Mohammad, has left the Social Liberal Party and founded a new party together with two members of the European Parliament: "Ny Alliance." Khader wants the party to represent an alternative to the right-leaning Danish People's Party, on which the current government depends in parliament. The newspaper is critical: "A new party is born, and its raison d'être is the need for a political home for frustrated middle-class voters who are tired of the government's one-sided alliance with the Danish People's Party. Nor do they want to see the Social Democrats back in power. The new party's strength is in these voters. But its weakness is in its leadership - two European parliamentarians and one member of the Danish parliament - however popular Naser Khader might be." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, duński)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Dania

"It's as if the president had pulled the emergency brake," Heribert Prantl comments on the decision by German President Horst Köhler not to pardon former Red Army Fraction terrorist Christian Klar. Prantl criticizes the Christian Social Union party for attempting to influence Köhler's decision. The debate has become increasingly "unobjective, wild, muddled and hysterical," he says: "The discussion surrounding the act of an individual pardoning turned into a debate about the entire criminal collective of the RAF, as if to say that Christian Klar has to remain behind bars on behalf of the RAF, on behalf of all its unsolved crimes, and on behalf of the perpetrators who were never convicted." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, niemiecki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Niemcy
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Heribert Prantl

The journalist Victoria Brittain detects echos of Algeria's history in Turkey's current crisis with the army threatening to intervene against the mildly Islamist government run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party. She warns that "the use of military action to curtail the growth of political Islam has only brought catastrophe. ... Fifteen years ago a struggle for power between new forces of political Islam and a military establishment took place in Algeria, paralleling to an alarming degree what is happening in Turkey. This struggle ended in a military coup that plunged Algeria into a cycle of violence ... How could such a catastrophe have overtaken a country and political leaders whose prestige reached across the third world in the 1960s and 70s ? Algeria is a warning to Turkey that even the towering legacy of Ataturk cannot protect it for ever." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, angielski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Historia, » Turcja
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Victoria Brittain

After having long claimed to be innocent, the Italian racing cyclist Ivan Basso admitted on Monday, May 7th, his implication in 'Puerto', the blood doping scandal that erupted in May 2006. For the editorialist Pascal Bornand, "cycling has been steeped in hypocrisy and lies for too long, damaging its legend, besmirching its image. Too many stifled scandals, dirty doings stashed away, skeletons in closets and masquerades have annihilated the dream that cycling used to carry. ... And now we have a champion ... who says he is ready to speak up, to ease his conscience. He will be the first to break the code of silence. The stranglehold he has been locked in is too strong for him to keep this heavy secret. Did his 'protectors' let him get away or has the milieu finally decided to opt for good conduct ? Ivan Basso is going to speak and the whole platoon is quaking in its boots. Maybe he is the providential, albeit reluctant, repairman here to help put bikes back into gear and prevent chains from jumping off all the time." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, francuski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Sport, » Włochy
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Pascal Bornand

Works by German star painter Daniel Richter are currently on display at Hamburg's Kunsthalle museum. The former punk and squatter tells Belinda Grace Gardner about his current enthusiasm for painting: "Reality is an idea that one can discuss. And painting that prompts thought and debate is much stronger than photography. At the same time, it is the closest thing to the truth, to the extent that it never pretends to represent reality. With a painted image, one always knows that it is a creation … With my painted image, I create a platform to reflect upon and organize the flood of information, but primarily to give shape to my own ideas... The pictures state that most of what we people create is fleeting." (08/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, niemiecki)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Sztuki piękne, » Niemcy
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Daniel Richter, » Belinda Grace Gardner

The journalist Marika Azzopardi informs us that "Heritage Malta is presently hosting the second exhibition by Keith Balzan, who was introduced to the public just last year during his first exhibition Genesis. ... Working mostly in oils and a variety of mixed media, he has captured once again a sensational conglomeration of colour, the vibrancy of which verges on the disturbing. In fact it is visibly a play of moods that revert from dark to enthusiastic to introspective and back. ... Once again, Balzan has laid his soul bare for the keen observer to see. He does not stop at face value but homes in deeper to grasp the very soul of the onlooker. His paintings are staggering emotional passages, some of which seem to be struggling to break through, hemmed in by their constricting frame. The colours are screaming to be let loose and run riot further along the walls. If these paintings could only become larger, one would be assured of a truly immense emotional journey." (07/05/2007)

» Artykuł (Link zewnętrzny, angielski)
Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Wystawy / Muzea, » Malta
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Marika Azzopardi