FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

"The change of power" is the front-page headline in Aftonbladet, Sweden's biggest-selling daily.

[But] it says the election result "can hardly be interpreted as a 'yes' to a change of system".

"The non-socialist alliance went to the country trying to resemble the Social Democrats in many ways" and "Reinfeldt endorsed the Swedish welfare model and has even defended collective bargaining and the right to employment".

The liberal Stockholm tabloid Expressen is clearly delighted at the election result. [..]

"One explanation for the change of power is called Goeran Persson. Many saw the election as a referendum on him. After 10 years of Persson, the Swedish people are tired of his self-righteous manner and concentration of power", it says.

"It has also been painfully obvious that the old workers' party no longer has any answers when it comes to jobs. the movement has run out of ideas and has therefore dedicated itself to flattering itself," it goes on.

On the centre-right, it says that "the formation of the alliance was one of the keys to victory".

"But the decisive cause of the change of power is Fredrik Reinfeldt, his new Moderates and his role as leader of the alliance."

Dagens Nyheter says [..] "According to the conventional political wisdom a robust economy, good growth figures and good growth in real wages should mean the sitting government winning at a canter. This general political rule of thumb is supported by more than 70 years' political experience in Sweden: only in exceptional times is our country governed by another party than the Social Democrats.

"But the alliance showed both to itself and the voters that there is no natural basis for Social-Democrat domination."

"The successful building of the alliance is a unique political event which hit the Swedish Left in the solar plexus", says Svenska Dagbladet. [..]

We still love the Swedish model

[..]

The model won...

So have Swedish voters indeed rejected their famous model? My answer is no, on two grounds. First, there is the tightness of the vote: the "red-green" side (the Social Democrats and its allies) received 46.2% of the vote against the four-party Alliance for Sweden's 48.1%. The close result will be reflected in the balance of power in the new Riksdag (parliament), where the left bloc will have 171 seats to the right's 178.

Second, there is the changing profile of the opposition itself. In its earlier incarnation, the Moderaterna was seen by many voters as a rightwing party which threatened public welfare. In order to win, the party has had to rebrand itself, embrace the welfare state - the essence of the "model" - and try to look more like the model's principal defenders, the Social Democrats.

In the previous election in 2002, Reinfeldt's predecessor Bo Lundgren had proposed radical tax cuts. The Social Democrats labelled the plan a "system change" and won a comfortable victory. [..]

Reinfeldt and his team learned a painful lesson from a defeat that had brought his party close to the abyss. They unofficially but insistedly added the prefix nya (new) to the party's title at every opportunity; and their explicit debt to Tony Blair's example in Britain extended even to frequent usage of the label "New Labour Party" in parallel with Nya Moderaterna. The echoes continued in Reinfeldt's post-election victory speech, which replicated Blair's own 1997 declaration almost exactly: "We campaigned as the New Moderates, we won as the New Moderates, and together with our alliance partners we will rule Sweden as the New Moderates".

But the rebranding was, to a great degree, also a cloning. "Every promise the Social Democrats make on social welfare, we will agree to and improve", Reinfeldt said in one of his campaign speeches. The Nya Moderaterna also focused on the key centre-left issue of jobs, albeit with a centre-right twist. Reinfeldt's tax-cutting emphasis switched from the rich to the low-waged, and his labour-market policy combined attacks on unemployment-benefit levels with increasing the incentives to work. [..]

The opposition also succeeded in overcoming voters' wariness of a coalition of four distinct parties which in the past had competed against each other. This time Reinfeldt was able to bring them together under the banner of the "Alliance for Sweden", creating an impression of unity not seen on the right for decades. [..]

The government lost...

But a change of government when annual GNP growth is running at more than 4% (and at 5.6% in the second quarter of 2006) requires the incumbent to lose as well as the opposition to win. Göran Persson [..] often seemed irritated, even arrogant.

The problem extended beyond personality to become one of trust, especially over the issue of social exclusion. Many voters came to sense a contrast between the prime minister's depiction of Swedish society and their own experience. "Only 1,500 young people have been unemployed for three months or more", he declared in one televised debate. That might be true in terms of the official statistics, but anyone who visits Sweden's poor urban areas where large numbers of immigrants live can sense that tens of thousands operate outside the labour market.

A state committee recently reported that more than 20,000 young people (in a country of 9 million) are neither in work nor education. Göran Persson made no reference to their plight. The Social Democrats were also unable to escape accusations that they had concealed the true levels of unemployment by omitting the high numbers of people on long-term sick leave from the count. Persson's apparent complacency over jobs and the labour market probably hurt his party's credibility on other issues.

Furthermore, the election result was influenced by the fact that smaller parties made significant gains in the election yet fell below the 4% threshold to enter the Riksdag. Among them were the anti-immigration Sverigedemokraterna and the Feminist Initiative; each drew most of its support from working-class and/or leftwing voters who might otherwise have voted for the red-green bloc. [..]

The new order plans...

Frederik Reinfeldt's post-election honeymoon may not last much longer after the Riksdag votes for the new prime minister on 5 October. There are strong forces inside the alliance seeking more radical change. Its more conservative elements in big cities like Stockholm have their own power-bases and ideological motivations, and will not obey every word from the party chairman. They will, for example, continue with their campaigns to privatise hospitals and cut taxes more drastically.

The Nya Moderaterna's 26.1% of the vote at a national level, compared with 35.2% for the Social Democrats, was more than its three coalition partners combined. Its performance was even stronger in Stockholm, where it won 37.3%, and this will encourage party leaders there to resist the principle of tax compensation to Sweden's poorer regions to ensure equality of social provision. This issue may create tensions among the coalition partners. [..]

Fico's Smer Still Dominant in Slovakia

September 26, 2006

<snipped>

Polling Data

What party would you vote for in the next parliamentary election?

Code:
Sept. 2006 Aug. 2006 Jul. 2006

GOVERNMENT

Party Direction - Third Way (Smer)

39.8% 41.5% 35.6%


Slovak National Party (SNS)

11.9% 11.3% 12.5%


Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS)

11.8% 10.4% 10.5%


OPPOSITION

Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKU)

11.8% 13.0% 15.2%


Party of the Hungarian Coalition (SMK)

10.5% 10.7% 9.4%


Christian Democratic Movement (KDH)

8.3% 7.3% 8.3%


Free Forum (SF)

2.5% 2.4% 3.2%


Slovak Communist Party (KSS)

1.3% 1.2% 2.2%


All European governments now seem to be grappling with the same problem: how far do they go in accommodating Muslims who do not share the same values of free speech? And as a row over the cancellation of a Mozart opera in Berlin this week - for fear of Muslim attacks - demonstrates, the issues raised by the cartoon row have not gone away.

Greek economy up 25% - with a little help from prostitutes

Athens has announced that its economy is 25% bigger than thought thanks, in part, to the round-the-clock duties of the country's prostitutes, who were known as hetairai in ancient times.




Manolis Kontopyrakis, the head of the national statistics service, told Reuters: "The revised GDP will include some money from illegal activities, such as money from cigarette and drinks smuggling, prostitution and money laundering."

That's hilarious. Will we have to pay VAT too if we go to a prostitute now?

Following are key facts about the reform:

WHAT WILL CHANGE UNDER THE REFORM?

* The parties agreed in July to introduce a centralised fund which would pool salary-dependent contributions from workers and employers. The introduction of the fund has been delayed until 2009 from 2008. The next general election is due in 2009.

* Germany's health insurers will receive a fixed sum out of the fund for each policyholder and an additional sum if they insure a high number of the chronically ill and old.

* They may levy extra contributions from policyholders if they run out of cash. The SPD had demanded these be capped at one percent of household income, but conservatives said it had to be more. In the end a compromise was reached where the one percent can be supplemented by modest one-off fees.

* Another compromise was reached on private health insurers. In future they must offer a entry-level premium to those who wish to switch from statutory to private healthcare. Moving between private insurers will also be made easier.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?

* The government aims to introduce a draft bill by mid-October and SPD Health Minister Ulla Schmidt has said that the reform will take effect from April 1, 2007, three months later than the coalition had initially promised.

HOW DOES THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM WORK AT THE MOMENT?

* Germany's system is among the most expensive in the world, costing around 140 billion euros ($178 billion) a year. Only Switzerland and the United States spend more proportionally than Germany on healthcare.

* German workers, with some exceptions, must hold a policy with one of the countries' several hundred health insurance companies. A statutory health insurance premium is paid, partly by employees and partly by their employers, as a percentage of their salary level -- currently around 14 percent. In return the costs of treatment and medicines are covered by their insurer.

* Some higher earners and government employees belong to private health insurance companies whose premiums are not linked to the amount a person earns.

WHY DOES THE SYSTEM NEED TO BE REFORMED?

* The system will have a funding gap of around 7 billion euros this year and experts warn it cannot cope with an ageing population and the rising cost of improving health services.

* Politicians, particularly the conservatives, were also keen to sever the link between health service funding and wages in an attempt to rein in non-wage labour costs to boost hiring.

Latvia's governing coalition has become the first administration to win re-election since it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Final results from the general election give the coalition, led by Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis, just enough seats to form a parliamentary majority.

The three-party governing bloc won 51 of the 100 seats in parliament.

Saturday's election was the first since Latvia joined the European Union and Nato two years ago.

The prime minister's People's Party led the poll with 23 seats, while coalition partners the Union of Greens and Farmers won 18 seats and the First Party won 10 seats.

Liberal opposition party New Era won 18 seats and the recently-formed Harmony Centre party won 17 seats.