The Financial Times Deutschland believes that politicians are defined by how they handle crises. The former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has demonstrated unexpected competence, the paper writes: "The British Prime Minister was hitherto considered gloomy, undecided and hopelessly unsuited to his job. Now he is being celebrated as a saviour, and his crisis management has become a model for other states. ... Before the crisis struck financial markets broadside, Brown was widely regarded as a tragicomic figure - a man who wanted to be prime minister at all costs but who was desperately inept at the job. But Brown's rescue plan has met with approval and been adopted not only in the UK but across the globe. ... Crises define politicians. Suddenly Brown is acting with calm, resolute control." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka gospodarcza, » Rynki finansowe, » Wielka Brytania, » Europa

The left-liberal newspaper The Guardian comments on the new popularity of Gordon Brown in the financial crisis, but remains sceptical of his long-term chances: "Mr Brown should be extremely wary of presuming too much too soon about the public mood. Recent national opinion polls may have seen the best Labour figures for some months, but that is not saying much. Labour remains well adrift of the Conservatives - 10 points behind in the latest poll - and well short of its own share of the vote in 2005, while the weekend YouGov survey showed that large majorities are highly critical of Mr Brown's management of the economy. He has certainly won plaudits from insiders for his handling of the financial crisis. ... When an election comes, the fact that Mr Brown may have saved the financial institutions could count for less than the powerful charge - which the opposition parties were already making yesterday - that he is the man who allowed the banks to steer on to the rocks in the first place." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka finansowa, » Wielka Brytania

The Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter celebrates Gordon Brown as the hero of the financial crisis. Taking the Swedish crisis plan for bank financing as his model, Brown has shown a knack for analytical thinking and an ability to act, the paper writes, commenting that a lesson can be learned from the crisis on the political organisation of the EU. "Coincidentally France, with its competent style and well-proven political leadership, now holds the EU Council Presidency. If the Treaty of Lisbon were in force we would always have such a Council President. Because he would be elected for just this job, and hold office for at least two and a half years. And Gordon Brown has shown that even someone only mildly interested in Europe can be a contender for the post." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Konstytucja UE, » Rynki finansowe, » Wielka Brytania, » Europa

Concurrently with Sunday's parliamentary elections, Lithuanians were able to cast their ballots in a referendum on the controversial nuclear power plant Ignalina. However the necessary level of participation was not achieved. The news portal Balsas criticises the small voter turnout: "It is not a good sign that the majority of voters did not make use of the opportunity to demonstrate their will. But the main responsibility lies with the Lithuanian politicians who initiated this referendum in an awkward gesture of helplessness. They all know that the Ignalina nuclear power plant must be closed down at the end of 2009, because that was a requirement for Lithuania's joining the EU. The referendum would have provided the opportunity to ask what ideas politicians have for energy supplies to the country, and why no energy bridges have yet been built." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Energia, » Litwa
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Saulius Spurga

The British government is planning a new communication law that would create a "super database" storing information on emails, telephone data and Internet traffic. The Independent is not convinced: "We might also ask why we need this new legislation, which is justified as a necessary counter-terrorism measure, when the present system seems to be working perfectly well. Police officers can already request information on suspects' phone calls and emails from network providers. And they generally get it. Why does the Government need to store all this information itself? The suspicion has to be that the answer is so that the police, or the intelligence services, can go on 'fishing expeditions', looking for suspicious patterns in our communications records. ... The bitter irony is that we have seen from history that when a state collects vast amounts of information on its citizens, it can actually make it harder for officials to keep an eye on the real threats to its survival. This, of course, is no consolation for the general public. Ineffectively authoritarian regimes are no less dangerous. ... But perhaps the most fundamental objection to this bill is more basic still. Like the fast-expanding DNA database, like the national ID card scheme, it threatens to treat us as a nation of suspects, rather than citizens. It must be resisted by all those who value our liberties." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka bezpieczeństwa / Kryzys / Wojna, » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Wielka Brytania

In Austria the SPÖ (social democrats) and the ÖVP (conservatives) have started a round of coalition talks two weeks after the parliamentary elections. The Slovenian daily Delo calls on Austria to remain pro-European. "But that could turn out to be no easy task in the coalition talks between the SPÖ and the ÖVP because the new SPÖ boss Werner Faymann has called for referendums to be held on all future EU treaties. ... All the economic statistics show how much the country has gained from the EU's eastwards expansion. ... But pure logic alone won't be enough to make it clear to the Eurosceptics that although the EU is no sacred cow that is above all criticism, it is nonetheless the only guarantee that Europe does not relapse into a state of perpetual reciprocal requitals, as the extreme nationalists would like to see happen." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Światopogląd, » Austria
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Barbara Kramzar

Dutch Minister of the Interior Ter Horst wants to amend the law governing the funding of political parties. In future MPs are to collect their money through direct channels rather than through the parties. The Dutch daily Trouw argues that the parties "still form the basis [of the] parliamentary system and play a decisive role in enlisting and selecting candidates. Unfortunately, in the process of doing so they sometimes foster a political culture that requires independent MPs acting on their own account to bow to the interests of the party or coalition. ... The proposal to cut party subsidies by 10 percent in 2011 must also be examined in this context. If the money is after all for individual persons, the parties need less. But here, too, the Minister has misjudged standard practice. The parties ... would be doing themselves and democracy a great service by vehemently protesting against these cuts." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Holandia

In an article for the French daily Le Monde journalist Daniel Vernet paints a picture of how the global financial crisis could change the balance of power among states. "It is by no means too early to speculate on the geopolitical consequences of the crisis. ... It will radically change the ideological, economic and political balance of power. It will undoubtedly lead to the US losing some of its power to Asia; a process which began long ago. ... In an international system dominated by a certain balance of power, the fall of one power can benefit others. But this is no longer the case today. The mutual dependencies in a globalised system mean that losses and gains are equally distributed among those within the system. The comeback of the State that has announced itself in this crisis could have two contrasting results [for Europe]: either the Europeans withdraw into the false security of nationalism and protectionism or - what would be more desirable - they organise the role of state power at a European level." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Stosunki międzynarodowe, » Polityka finansowa, » Cały świat
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Daniel Vernet

Writing in the daily newspaper Evenimentul Zilei, Andrei Postelnicu examines the hidden dangers of the process of coming to terms with the past in Romania. "Without further ado the parliament has whitewashed [former Romanian dictator] Nicolae Ceauşescu, claiming he had no foreign bank accounts. Ex-president Ion Iliescu is also to be spared the inconvenience of criminal prosecution for an abominable moral genocide: the [organised] violent march of the miners in Bucharest in 1990. Both gestures are very much in keeping with an old and extremely destructive trend the repercussions of which we will feel for decades to come. One can see how seriously these two semi-acquittals are to be taken by examining other gestures society has had to put up with in the past two decades - such as the Church's decision to ignore the fact that many priests collaborated with Securitate [the secret service of Communist Romania] or the trivialisation of the moral component in the process of restitution of property confiscated under communism. Taken together they [the acquittals] reflect Romania's propensity to sweep unpleasant chapters of the past under the carpet - facts we don't feel comfortable with and which, if we could, we would simply obliterate from our history. ... Our repeated failure to make sense of our own past only deepens our collective emotional paralysis. ... Society as a whole must bear the burden of anger and disappointment - an obstacle on the path to honesty in Romania's dialogue with itself."     (15/10/2008)

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

The Spanish daily El País writes that the new rescue plan for US banks is a replica of the British plan: "Little by little US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has altered his own rescue plan to make it a replica of the British plan for saving banks. The basic idea of that plan is [the government taking] a stake in the affected banks when the latter want it to. ... The most important criterium for rescue plans for banks is swift results. Delays lead to losses for banks and problems with company financing. Some politicians and economists are of the opinion that too much time had already passed before the plan was adopted and that we will pay for this delay with lower growth and higher unemployment figures." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka finansowa, » Rynki finansowe, » Wielka Brytania, » USA

With an eye to the financial crisis, Le Figaro newspaper writes that we must not draw premature conclusions about the financial system. "Within a few days so much folly has been said about the crisis that you have to ask whether it is not the new opiate of the intellectuals. ... Here we hear it is the end of capitalism. There we discover that globalism has run amok. ... Not only will capitalism not disappear, I am happy to say it will remain the dominant world economic system. And it will emerge from the crisis stronger than it was before - having shed several exaggerated practices which the market ultimately corrected. ... What we are also not seeing is the triumphant return of the state. In this crisis state action has discredited itself to an almost unprecedented extent, whether in the shady business of guaranteeing bank deposits, the bank rescue or the minimalistic acts of the central banks. None of that worked." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Stosunki międzynarodowe, » Polityka finansowa, » Cały świat
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Caroline de Malet

Robert Saviano, author of the mafia bestseller "Gomorra" on which a film of the same name that has been nominated for an Oscar is based, has received death threats from the Casalesi mafia clan he denounced in his book. The 28-year-old author feels imprisoned in his own work and wants to leave Italy. La Repubblica newspaper issues a warning appeal: "To whom does the life of Saviano belong? Only to he who stands to lose it? Saviano's fate is increasingly becoming an issue for Italian democracy. His life, his defenceless life in which words are the only weapon, has entered a grey zone in which the traditional distinction between war and peace has been abolished, in which the mafia can declare war on the state and in which for too long the state was unable to control the violence and restore civil rights. If Saviano loses, the loss will be irretrievable for us all." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Film, » Literatura, » Włochy

The leftist newspaper Právo criticises Czech President Václav Klaus for refusing to fly the EU flag at Prague Castle despite the fact that the Czech Republic will hold the EU Council Presidency in 2009. "No one who knows Klaus, either in the Czech Republic or in the EU, will be surprised by his attitude. Everyone knows he has a mind of his own. He keeps on fighting against everything he dislikes, this time against a flag that is not a symbol of the nation state." Klaus has justified his behaviour by arguing that the Czech Republic is also a member of Nato and the UN, but it doesn't fly their flags atop the castle. However this argument falls flat, the newspaper writes: "Klaus has never had conflicts either with Nato or with the UN. But he has waged, is waging and forever will be waging war on the EU. ... Certainly, the Czech Republic is a member of the EU, as decided by a majority of Czechs in a referendum. That is the difference with our membership in the UN or Nato, which was not the subject of referendums. ... 'A man's home is his castle' is a pretty saying. But Prague Castle is not Klaus' home." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Polityka UE, » Polityka wewnętrzna, » Czechy
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Alexandr Mitrofanov

The doping scandals in competitive sport place a question mark over the role-model character of athletes, the daily newspaper Die Presse writes: "The reports of doping destroy their heroic image. ... However the violation of rules, the risk of damaging one's health or bringing about the end of one's own career can also become new values. ... But amidst the mantra-like repetition of demands not to criminalise sport and the desire to keep it beyond the parameters of penal law at any cost, people forget that it will indeed be necessary for the authorities to step in if the wirepullers are to be caught. The national anti-doping agency won't be able to single-handedly bring about the enactment of the law. Nor will a single police officer conducting the entire investigation for the public prosecutor's office be enough." (15/10/2008)

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Więcej z przeglądu prasy na temat » Sport, » Austria
Wszystkie dostępne teksty » Michael Köttritsch