FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

The expat factor

Italian expatriates vote for the first time in a keenly-balanced election where their support could be crucial, writes Barbara McMahon.

Thursday March 23, 2006

Visit almost any country in the world and you will meet expatriate Italians who have made new lives abroad but who remain fiercely proud of their heritage. They may not have been back to the old country for years, and some may barely speak the language, but for them Italy is home and always will be.

For the first time, some 3.5 million Italian citizens living in foreign countries are being allowed to vote for representatives in the forthcoming general election and to have a say over who will lead the country for the next five years. They are already casting their votes by postal ballot, ahead of polling in Italy on April 9-10.

The constitutional reform that allows this massive new foreign vote was introduced following decades of lobbying by Mirko Tremaglia, the minister for Italians in the world. He believed his countrymen and women who had left home, in the most part to escape poverty and the problems of unemployment, had made huge sacrifices in starting new lives abroad.
By preserving their Italian-ness and retaining citizenship, they had a right to have a say in what went on back in Italy, he argued. When the Italian senate passed the law in 2001, Tremaglia called it "the victory of my lifetime" and dedicated the moment to his son Marzio, who had died at a tragically young age the year before.

The logistics of the scheme are mind-boggling. Four vast geographical constituencies, spanning many time zones and dozens of languages, have been created.

The European constituency, which takes in Turkey and all of Russia, has two million registered voters. There are some 900,000 voters in South America. North and Central America accounts for about 400,000 voters and there are just under 200,000 in a constituency comprising Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Candidates are campaigning in these new constituencies for 12 seats in the chamber of deputies and six seats in the senate.

The plan to empower expatriate Italians has turned out to be much more significant than anyone could have predicted.

The general election remains on a knife edge. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government is trailing four percentage points behind challenger Romano Prodi's centre-left coalition, but the gap has remained virtually unchanged for weeks and every vote counts.

Politicians from all parties have been criss-crossing continents and racking up air miles in a last-minute bid to win over foreign-based voters.

Tremaglia, for example, has traveled to Venezuela, Peru and Brazil and told voters at a recent rally in Montevideo in Uruguay: "You have a real chance of changing Italian politics."

Both he and former Milan prosecutor Antonio di Pietro, who now represents the Prodi coalition, have been focusing particular attention on Argentina, where hundreds of thousands of Italians have settled.

"Six senators could make a big difference," acknowledges Eugenio Marino, who is in charge of electoral coordination for Prodi's campaign. "The overseas vote has taken on a certain tension."

Among the candidates is Angela Della Costanza Turner, a 37-year-old architect and daughter-in-law of US media tycoon Ted Turner.

She has aligned herself to Berlusconi's Forza Italia party. "If I manage to set foot in Rome it's with the intent of making all those Italians who talk and talk understand the importance of Italians living abroad," she said.

Gino Bucchino from Toronto is one of the centre-left candidates. "We're linked by our common desire to boot Berlusconi out of office," he said in a recent interview. There are many independents among the 274 candidates.

While Italy's 46.5 million eligible voters are worried about the economy and unemployment, expatriate voters have different issues.

Everyone seems to be concerned with preserving the Italian language and culture. Some want higher pension payments, easier ways to maintain their citizenship and the extension and streamlining of services offered by consulates. Improving the satellite reception of the state broadcaster RAI, a lifeline for Italians abroad, is another priority.

Critics of the scheme say the voting register does not include people who have renounced their Italian citizenship or take into account people who have emigrated but have not been taken off registers at home.

Many overseas voters are unhappy that neither Berlusconi nor Prodi has said directly what they will do for Italians living abroad. There are concerns in Italy that expatriate parliament members, who will be able to vote on all bills, will not be able to understand the issues since they don't actually live in the country.

Tremaglia acknowledges that the whole thing is a bold experiment, and says there will be hiccups. "The important thing is that Italians abroad have a voice and are able to use it," he added.

Italian minister: Netherlands uses 'Nazi practices'

by Aart Heering

23-03-2006


Italian government minister Carlo Giovanardi has caused a diplomatic row between his country and the Netherlands. Mr Giovanardi - minister with responsibility for 'relations with parliament' - compared the Netherlands' euthanasia legislation with Nazi practices.

Despite protests from The Hague, the Italian minister is refusing to withdraw his comments.

Mr Giovanardi made the controversial statement last week in a radio programme produced by Italy's RAI public broadcasting service. When the news reached the Netherlands the following day, Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot summoned the Italian ambassador, while Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende demanded an apology from the Italian minister.

Far from apologising, however, Mr Giovanardi added fuel to the fire by comparing the euthanasia of severely deformed newly-born babies - in accordance with the rules laid down two years ago in the Netherlands in what is known as "Groningen protocol" - with the Nazi practice of 'eugenics' at the time of Germany's Third Reich. In a newspaper interview he accused the Netherlands of renouncing 'two thousand years of Christianity', and having chosen the path of 'eliminating the deaf, blind and elderly.'

'Nazi tulips'
Italy's left-wing opposition began to call for his resignation, but his own party - the Christian Democrat UDC - and ultra-right government party the National Alliance came to his aid. Since then, articles have been appearing in rightwing Italian newspapers in which the Dutch have been attacked as 'hypocrite louts' and 'Nazi tulips'. Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi's brother, warned that a victory by the centre-left in the general election on 9 April could see Italy threatened with a move towards 'infanticide'.

In an interview with Dutch commercial TV station Talpa, broadcast on Tuesday this week, Mr Giovanardi did modify his stance a little, saying that his criticism was not aimed at the entire population of the Netherlands but at some of the country's doctors. However, he minister stuck to his view that the Netherlands is going down a path which evokes horrors from the past.

The fact that another European Christian Democrat - Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende - feels differently appears to make no difference to the Italian minister who, during the TV interview, even admitted that he did not know Mr Balkenende was a political 'colleague'.

Domestic battle
The entire question has now become a bone of contention in Italy's domestic election battle. On Wednesday, an Italian television discussion programme which covered this issue turned into a veritable shouting match between Mr Giovanardi and his main opponent, left-wing radical politician Daniele Capezzone. As a result, Dutch MEP Sophie in 't Veld, who was meant to contribute some factual information about the relevant Dutch legislation, was hardly heard at all in the programme.

For Mr Giovanardi and his party the issue has become a way of raising their profile against that of their omnipresent government ally, Prime Minister Berlusconi, who has now distanced himself from the minister's controversial comments, saying that he can do nothing about them. Indeed, the Italian prime minister is not free to sack government ministers as he sees fit; this requires a vote by parliament, which has now been dissolved in connection with the coming elections. Consequently, Mr Giovanardi will be remaining in his post for the time being.

* translation by RN Internet

* Baby killers?

Trouw responds to recent accusations charges by an Italian cabinet minister that, in The Netherlands, newborn babies, if they are less than perfect, are killed. He claimed that of every 1000 babies born in Holland, 600 die in this way.

Trouw reminds us of the facts. A few years ago, a group of paediatricians and public prosecutors agreed a Protocol on how to act when a newborn baby, often premature, suffers unbearably and won't benefit from any treatment. In cases like these, doctors and the parents can decide to withhold treatment after which the baby will die, sometimes after a few hours.

But there are also cases when withholding treatment is not enough. A more active approach is then needed to end the baby's suffering. Even if the parents beg for this to happen, doctors can't do so because that would constitute murder.

And that is where the Protocol comes in. It stipulates that it must first be established that a baby is suffering unbearably and won't benefit from any further treatment. This diagnosis must then be confirmed by several paediatricians. If, after that, both parents agree, a doctor may then actively end the child's life without being prosecuted.

Trouw says that precise figures are not known, but it is estimated that the lives of between 20 and 100 babies are actively ended each year.

The new Europe: respectable populism, clockwork liberalism

Ivan Krastev
openDemocracy.net
21 - 3 - 2006

An emotionally-appealing populist politics is bringing angry, raw, egalitarian nationalists to the centre of Europe's political arena. Why are pro-European liberals not more anxious? Ivan Krastev offers an intriguing set of answers.

Populism is on the rise all over Europe. Populist parties of left and right are winning more votes than ever. A populist Zeitgeist helped fuel the "no" votes in France (29 May) and the Netherlands (1 June) that killed the European constitution in 2005. Moreover, a populist agenda is prevailing at the centre of many countries' national politics, and establishment parties are trying their best to recapture the outright populists' themes and messages.

If the trend is Europe-wide, the capital of the new populism is central Europe. The populist party Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Law & Justice) won the October 2005 parliamentary elections in Poland; a populist party is expected to win in Slovakia in June; and populists are on the rise in Bulgaria. A populist style is ascendant in most of the other post-communist countries.

[..]

The mystery is why liberals are not really worried, scared or even outraged about the prospect of populists winning power. They are a bit ashamed, quite uncomfortable, somewhat nervous - but not really worried. Liberals' sanguine attitude towards populism is very similar to their attitude towards prostitution - it is low and dishonest, it is inevitable and it could also be a lot of fun. Have liberals simply lost their ability to be outraged, or is there another explanation for their complacency?

In examining the problem more closely, five possible explanations for liberals' silence in the face of the populist wave come to mind.

[..]

These five possible explanation for liberals' silence about the rise of populism can each draw on compelling evidence. But they tend to leave out of account a feature of populist politics that deserves more attention, and which may provide the elements of a sixth explanation: the fact that populists are winning elections as anti-corruption movements.

What is striking here is that anti-corruption rhetoric once belonged to the liberals, shaped by them to appeal to the "gut feelings" of voters [..]. Once, liberals seeking to identify the blame for and solutions to post-communist social crisis lighted upon the anti-corruption narrative as a simple, popular story. Liberal-minded foundations supported it by spending large sums of money on anti-corruption programmes, reinforcing the idea that this was the liberals' "smart weapon". Instead, anti-corruption politics has become the liberals' Frankenstein.

Berlusconi 'on verge of a breakdown' in clash of the tycoons

Barbara McMahon in Rome
Tuesday March 21, 2006
The Guardian

Two of Italy's richest men were at loggerheads yesterday after the chief executive of a multimillion-pound shoe empire claimed the country's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"Mr Berlusconi is a tired man. His family should take him home and take care of him," said Diego Della Valle, the head of Tod's shoes.

His comments follow an outburst by Mr Berlusconi at a meeting of the country's business leaders in Vicenza at the weekend, in which he claimed entrepreneurs who supported the left had "skeletons in their cupboard" and had something to hide. The brunt of the prime minister's tirade was directed at Mr Della Valle, an old adversary, who was seated near the front of the hall. He shouted back that Mr Berlusconi should be ashamed of himself, and at one point both men were jabbing their fingers at each other.

Mr Della Valle made his comments afterwards on a TV sports channel, following a football match involving Fiorentina, the team that he owns. He said Mr Berlusconi's "nasty" behaviour at the meeting of Confindustria, the equivalent of Britain's CBI, was a sign that the prime minister was panicking because he faced defeat in the polls on April 9-10. [..]

Last week, Mr Berlusconi failed to shine in a live televised debate with his opponent, the former president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, who heads the centre-left challenge. [..]

Irked by claims of a lacklustre performance, Mr Berlusconi opted to attack. At first he called off his appearance at Confindustria, citing back problems, and then he surprised everyone by turning up.

He began by trying to flatter his audience, but then let rip, accusing various Italian newspapers of supporting the left and inventing the country's economic crisis, claiming businessmen were running scared of leftist magistrates and refusing requests to adhere to the rules of the assembly's question-and-answer session. "It was an anti-democratic, illiberal appearance, and, if I might add, it was highly offensive," said Andrea Pininfarina, deputy chairman of Confindustria. [..]

EU may abandon Strasbourg parliament

By Stephen Castle, in Brussels
Published: 27 March 2006

The end to the European Parliament's costly "travelling circus" could be in sight with new moves to tempt Paris into giving up Strasbourg as one of the assembly's two seats.

After more than two decades of campaigning against their itinerant lifestyle, MEPs believe they have hit on a plan which will axe Strasbourg without offending Gallic pride.

Diplomats say the scheme - under which France would be offered a new technology institute and possibly other concessions - is the only conceivable way of ending the current rigmarole, which involves MEPs making the trek to Strasbourg for one week in every four at the cost of around €200m (£140m) a month to the European taxpayer.

Moreover, core funding for science, technology and research could be found from the savings of axing the monthly Brussels-Strasbourg commute. That would help Europe establish a rival to the America's Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Under the plan, Strasbourg would become the site of a new European Institute of Technology (EIT), helping boost the role of the city as an international centre of technology and learning. In addition, Strasbourg could be home to a new European Research Council or, alternatively, the venue for summits of EU heads of government. In return, the European Parliament would spend all its time in its Brussels building.

The EIT plan is said to have the support of Nicolas Sarkozy, a likely contender in the French presidential elections next year. That could be crucial since France has a veto over any plan to move the site of the Parliament under a deal agreed by John Major and other EU heads of government in 1992.
Since then, France has dug in against all attempts to shift Strasbourg, seeing it as a question of national prestige. Gallic sensitivity over its role in the EU was on display last week when the French president, Jacques Chirac, stormed out of a summit session when a fellow Frenchman spoke in English.

But Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German MEP who chairs a group aiming to bring the institute to Strasbourg, told EUPolitix website: "We have never previously offered Strasbourg or the French government something tangible to replace the European parliament. Now we have something to offer."

Mr Chatzimarkakis said that Mr Sarkozy is not going to say anything about the idea before the French presidential election, adding: "But I'm pretty sure Sarkozy supports this idea." All 19 Labour MEPs have publicly supported the EIT idea, as has the Campaign for Parliamentary Reform, which draws support from parliamentarians of all political hues.

Chris Heaton-Harris, a Conservative MEP and member of the reform group, argued: "This would be a win-win situation for Strasbourg. If the politicians there took a step back they would see that this could create jobs in an area which has high unemployment."

Sat 8 Apr 2006

Europe says protectionism no reply to globalisation

By Boris Groendahl and Marcin Grajewski

VIENNA (Reuters) - Europe must resist protectionism and find other ways of meeting the challenges of globalisation, finance chiefs from several European Union countries said on Saturday.

The comments came at talks in Vienna where EU ministers were due to meet their counterparts from 13 Asian countries including China, whose emergence as a cheap and powerful trading competitor is rocking industrialised nations.

British finance minister Gordon Brown said protectionism and the failure to liberalise markets for supplies of things such as gas and electricity was costing Europe billions of euros and should be shunned.

"It's surely not the way," said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chaired some of the talks during a three-day gathering in Vienna.

"Europe's response to globalisation can never be protectionism," Swedish Finance Minister Par Nuder said.

Debate about protectionism in Europe has resurfaced because of government hostility to takeover bids for some key companies and concern over the French government's decision to pursue what it calls a policy of "economic patriotism".

European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, also at the talks, said some governments were not practising what they preached.

"It's obvious that many member states have a protectionist reflex," McCreevy, whose job is to try to ensure a properly functioning market for goods and services at EU level, told Austrian daily WirtschaftsBlatt.

Controversy over protectionism and hindrance to trade goes well beyond Europe, however, with U.S. and European governments increasingly concerned about a flood of cut-price imports from China since the end of a decade-old quota system last year.

And U.S. politicians are increasingly raising national security concerns in a Congress election year as a reason for holding up foreign takeovers -- in two recent cases by companies from Dubai.

"If we saw more protectionism in the U.S. in an election year, that would be harmful to the whole world economy," said Sweden's Nuder.

ADAPTING TO CHINA

European ministers, due to be joined by the Asians later in the day, were also pushing for China and Asia more generally to let their currency exchange rates appreciate to levels that would make competition in export markets fairer.

The Vienna talks began with the 12 euro zone countries on Friday and then expanded to all 25 European Union ministers and central bankers, ahead of sessions on Saturday and Sunday with counterparts from Asia.

Global growth is expected to remain healthy at more than 4 percent this year, with China growing three or more times as fast as Europe, the United States and most of the long-industrialised nations.

Adapting is proving particularly hard in some of Europe's big economies such as France, where Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has sparked strikes and demonstrations by proposing a new labour law to make hiring and firing easier.

Big business ramped up the pressure on governments to do more liberalising and less interfering.

The European business federation, UNICE, accused governments on Friday of dragging their heels and failing to adapt to cheap competition from around the world.

Austrian Finance Minister Karl-Heinz Grasser, hosting the proceedings, said politicians and business needed to do more to convince citizens that they had more to gain than lose from increasingly global competition.

Unemployment is running at close to 19 million in the euro zone, for a jobless rate of 8.2 percent on average that masks even higher rates in countries such as Germany and France.

Chief executives from three big European firms -- Germany's Volkswagen, Switzerland's Nestle and Spain's Telefonica -- were invited to Vienna to talk to ministers on Saturday about what Grasser described as "corporate responsibility".

VW CEO Bernd Pischetsrieder says Europe's biggest carmaker has no alternative but to consider axing up to 20,000 jobs in order to boost profits in the next three years.

(c) Reuters 2006.

BY ALAN JONES

M.E.N. Monday, April 10, 2006
ONE in five couples are choosing not to have children because of financial pressures, a new report claims.

As a result, the average number of children per household in Britain has fallen from 2.4 - a figure often quoted in TV sitcoms and media articles - to 1.3, said the survey.

The survey of 2,500 adults showed that some couples were not willing to compromise their lifestyle, or were put off by the cost of raising children. 1st adults are choosing to remain childless sends a strong message about modern life and the pressures it brings - particularly financially.
"There are a lot of factors contributing to this, including consumer debt, pension shortfalls and rising house prices.

"All of this has led many people to decide to continue to enjoy the lifestyle they have, instead of adding more pressure with the cost of bringing up a child."

She added: "What we find to be particularly unfortunate though, is the large number of people who wish to have a family but are now being forced to delay doing so for purely monetary reasons."

The head of Germany's Social Democrats, equal partners in the country's ruling left-right coalition, today resigned from his post for health reasons.

Matthias Platzeck, 52, had been seen as a rising star on the left and was likely to challenge Chancellor Angela Merkel in the next general election, scheduled for 2009.

Platzeck, who took office just five months ago, had treatment in hospital recently for sudden hearing loss that was believed to be stress-related.

Speaking to reporters, he described his choice as "the most difficult of my life until now".

He will be replaced at the head of the party by Kurt Beck, who was recently re-elected, with an historic absolute majority, as leader of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Platzeck, who comes from the former East Germany like Merkel, took over the party leadership last November from Franz Muentefering, who had become vice-chancellor in the new government.

The just published exit poll from Italy:

Letter From Berlin

Germany Sheds "Sick Man" Image to France and Italy

By David Crossland

Political turbulence in France and Italy is highlighting how slowly Europe is undertaking reforms seen as essential to cope with globalization. Germany, long regarded as chronically unable to modernize its economy, is starting to look dynamic by comparison.




How times have changed. Just a few months ago, Germany was still regarded as the "sick man" of Europe, incapable of modernizing its once-proud economy. Many of its five million unemployed seemed doomed to a life on the dole and its graying population faced a gradual decline in prosperity caused by a hemorrhage of jobs to cheaper competitors in Eastern Europe and Asia.

Not any more. Things might not be exactly rosy in Germany, but some of the country's neighbors now seem in far worse shape. The French government's failure to implement its youth jobs law and the emergence of what looks set to be a fragile, Socialist-led government in Italy is making Germany look positively dynamic by comparison.

As students and trade unions staged parades across France on Tuesday to celebrate their victory, commentators said the center-right government's withdrawal of the hated First Job Contract in response to weeks of strikes and mass demonstrations had killed off any prospect of reform until after the presidential election in 2007.

"There probably will be only tentative reforms in France now, if any at all, until the 2007 election," said Stefan Bielmeier, senior European economist at Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. "And whatever government emerges in Italy, it looks as if it will lack the broad mandate needed to implement necessary changes. Germany is definitely ahead of them at least with part of the reforms."

In Italy, after a night of confusion over who had won in the closest election in modern Italian history, Romano Prodi claimed victoryover Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and pledged to form a "strong" government, Italy's 61st since World War Two.

But his wafer-thin margin -- 25,000 votes out of some 38 million cast -- raised the prospect of political deadlock that would prevent him from cutting the budget deficit and revamping the country's bloated welfare system. "The threat of a stalemate, the worst possible scenario, has emerged and clouds the future with uncertainty," bank UniCredit Banca Mobiliare said in a note to investors as share prices fell on the Milan Stock Exchange.

Different political cultures

Economists say Italy, France and Germany face the same problem -- a vicious circle of high unemployment and high labor costs needed to finance the welfare system, and heavily regulated labour markets. But their efforts to deal with the problem has exposed big differences in political culture.

Germany began tackling reforms three years ago under then-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, whose "Agenda 2010" made it easier for small firms to fire workers, cut jobless benefit and imposed penalties on unemployed people who refused work. While the reforms still left Germany's unemployed better off than those in most other European countries apart from wealthy Scandinavia, they amounted to the most radical revamp of Germany's welfare state since World War Two.

The measures were highly unpopular, but the people protested in a very orderly and, well, German, fashion. Punctually on every Monday evening during the summer of 2004, months before the most hard-hitting measures were to be implemented, tens of thousands would gather in cities, mostly in eastern Germany where unemployment is highest.

They chanted "We Are The People" and blew whistles, and would march through town to squares where union leaders and left-wing politicians riled against the reforms. Then they would roll up their banners and go home quietly. No violence. No general strike. No one seemed to consider staging a protest on a Tuesday, or a Wednesday maybe.

To a tough-skinned politician like Schröder, it must have seemed like being savaged by a flock of dead sheep. The reforms, which had already received the blessing of the main opposition conservatives in lengthy parliamentary negotiations, were implemented.

Dead German sheep vs rioting French students

Not so in France, where street protests, often violent, are part of the political process. Some 3,400 people were arrested during nationwide protests against the First Job Contract, with which President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin wanted to combat youth unemployment by making it easier for employers to hire and fire workers aged 26 or under.

Participation in nationwide demonstrations twice exceeded a million people during a period where the situation intensified after trade unions began organizing a series of national strikes. Cowed, the government in Paris has now proposed new labor market measures to replace the disputed youth jobs law. They include giving financial incentives to employers to hire young people under 26.

The climbdown has dented Villepin's chances of running for the presidency in 2007. In Germany, Schröder's reforms ultimately ended his political career after a series of regional election defeats forced him to call an early general election for last September, which he lost to conservative challenger Angela Merkel.

But Merkel campaigned on even tougher changes, and has begun to discuss reform of the health care system in her right-left coalition with Schröder's Social Democrats. While unemployment hasn't started coming down yet, business and consumer confidence is improving, boosted by the prospect of the World Cup in June.

"I wouldn't go as far as to say Germany is the reform engine of Europe, but it is making slow progress," said Deutsche Bank's Bielmeier, adding that Germany's dependence on exports, and its proximity to cheaper labor in neighboring Eastern European countries had put Germany under greater pressure to modernize.

What the hell is going on with Berlusconi... by what I've heard he controls nearly all the media in Italy!