FOLLOWING THE EUROPEAN UNION

The compromise "facts" via reuters

In the past few days, there has been a whispering campaign within the centre-right Union Pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) suggesting that M. Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, is out of control and even dangerous.

One minister said privately that, if faced with a second-round run-off next spring between M. Sarkozy and Ségolenè Royal, the Socialist front-runner, he would "vote Royal, without hesitation". Another minister, also speaking privately, said: "Everything should be done to help Sarkozy trip over the carpet, as an act of public safety."

M. Sarkozy, 51, the opinion poll favourite to win the presidency next spring, cancelled all public engagements yesterday. His officials said that he was suffering from a "severe migraine". One of the meetings that he skipped was the weekly breakfast for leaders of the ruling party, hosted by M. de Villepin at the Matignon Palace, the Prime Minister's official residence. The mood at the previous "government breakfast" was so frosty that it broke up after less than 30 minutes.

The sudden flurry of private and public attacks on M. Sarkozy from within his own camp bears all the signs of being co-ordinated and led from the top. President Chirac's loathing of M. Sarkozy, a former protégé, is well known, although relations between the two men seemed to have been patched up in the summer.

I read an article about Sarkozy the other day, with the headline "Has Bush found a new poodle?".

[Swedish] Far-right party celebrating after municipal elections

2006-09-28

Figures just calculated following Sweden's recent elections show that the xenophobic Sweden Democrats enjoyed a massive increase in support. They won 280 seats in around half of the country's 140 municipalities, when they only had 30 places before. They have in fact won about 30 more seats than they have candidates.

Sweden Renews Expulsion of Gay Refugees to Iran

2006-09-29

Sweden has again started expelling Iranian homosexuals seeking asylum here - ending the freeze which went into effect after the public hangings of 2 teen-age gays in Iran over a year ago. Authorities cite reports from the Swedish Embassy in Teheran which claim that homosexuals risk no dangers there - as long as they are discrete.

Lord Ellpus wrote:

I read an article about Sarkozy the other day, with the headline "Has Bush found a new poodle?".

My answer would be: yes!

Sarkozy is an ambitious and most politicians are clever in their way.
He's a champion in doing so.

(Now, he became "ill" when all the talks about him and his position came of heavily - couldn't answer to the media ...)

From Swedish press hails poll result:

Related, with more background:

Quote:

We still love the Swedish model

Sarkozy's colleagues plot his downfall

Fico defends his 'social-democratic' government in Brussels

Friday 8 September 2006
EurActiv

On his first visit to Brussels as head of the controversial new Slovak government, Fico underlined his resolve to find a balance between continuing economic reforms and creating an efficient welfare state. He promised to tackle "ethnic intolerance", as well as "clear continuity" in foreign affairs. But he lambasted the past "eight years of right-wing reforms" as "a disaster": Slovakia "has the highest poverty rate in Europe and very high unemployment".

EU socialists kick out Slovaks in 'historic' move

13.10.2006
EU Observer

The Party of European Socialists (PES) has made a "historical" move to temporarily suspend SMER, the party of Slovak prime minister Robert Fico, from its meetings and decision-making, due to its coalition with extreme nationalists in Slovakia's government. It was signalled that the decision would also apply to any links between other socialist parties and the far-right in the future. Fico angrily argued that his party was "punished" for fighting against foreigner-owned monopolies.

Top novelist acquitted in Turkey

21 September 2006
BBC News

A Turkish court has acquitted novelist Elif Shafak. She had been accused of insulting Turkish national identity over comments made by her characters about the 1915 mass killings of Armenians.

The EU welcomed the ruling, but urged Turkey to scrap a law that makes it a crime to insult "Turkishness".

The nationalist lawyers who brought the case walked out in anger shortly after the trial opened. Riot police had to stop scuffles between nationalists and leftists outside.

Turkish author on trial for insulting Ataturk

06/10/2006
Southeast European Times

A trial started against Ipek Calislar, author of a best-selling biography of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's wife.

She and an editor of Hurriyet, which published excerpts, stand accused of insulting Ataturk because of a passage describing how Ataturk escaped an assassination attempt disguised in a chador. Charges were pressed after a Hurriyet reader wrote to the prosecutor that "To claim that [Ataturk] would have done something like this .. is the greatest insult."

EU Enlargement Commissioner Rehn urged Turkey to change or abolish articles in its penal code that make it a criminal offence to "insult" the republic, parliament or other state institutions.

Nobel Prize for fearless defender of freedom of speech in Turkey

13 October 2006
The Independent

Turkey's leading writer, Orhan Pamuk, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Pamuk has gained a reputation as a leading defender of freedom of speech. This year, he stood in court accused of insulting "Turkishness" by speaking about the suffering of Armenians at the hands of the Turks during WW1.

The head of a group of lawyers that helped bring the charges said he was ashamed: "I don't believe this prize was given for his books [but] because he belittled our national values".

Sweden's conservative make-over edges toward farce as minister stands down

Published: 16 October 2006

Just a month after winning elections, Sweden's new centre-right government was in turmoil as one minister quit over allegations of tax irregularities and a second remained under fire for failing to pay a TV licence.

Sweden's trade minister, Maria Borelius resigned a mere eight days after she was appointed, meaning the coalition led by Frederik Reinfeldt got off to a farcical start. [..]

Ms Borelius admitted to hiring cleaners and nannies in the 1990s without paying employer's taxes on them, compounding her error by saying that it would have been too expensive for her to do so. Tax records showed she and her husband had a combined income several times that of an average Swedish family.

Her resignation followed a move by Mr Reinfeldt to hire a lawyer to investigate separate claims in Swedish newspapers that the trade minister also registered a summer house to a corporation in the Channel Islands to avoid paying property tax.

Ms Borelius has denied any wrongdoing with the exception of not paying taxes for the domestic employees. "All relevant information about myself is available through public records," she said. [..]

Meanwhile the Swedish Culture Minister, Cecilia Stego Chilo, also faces pressure to resign after she admitted not having paid the TV licence fee for 16 years.

The annual fee of 1,500 kronor (£107) is the main source of funding for Sweden's public broadcasters, which Ms Chilo oversees as part of her portfolio.

Ms Chilo, who was catapulted into government after running Timbro, a free-market think-tank, was one of a number of bold appointments made by Mr Reinfeldt. Others included Burundi-born Swede, Nyamko Sabuni, as minister for integration and equality and Carl Bildt, as foreign minister. [..]

Candidate strips naked to show he's got nothing to hide

The Independent
15 October 2006

A young swimming champion has injected some fun into Catalonia's election campaign that starts tomorrow by stripping naked as candidate for a new anti-nationalist party.

[..] In pursuit of Catalan votes on 1 November, [Albert Rivera, 26, a lawyer with no political experience] appears naked on posters for his Citizens of Catalonia party. "We don't care what language you speak, or what clothes you wear. We only care about you," claims the slogan alongside a photo of the candidate, his hands crossed across his genitals.

The propaganda coup, illustrating the virtues of "transparency and simplicity", has hit Catalonia's buttoned-up political scene with all the elan of a streaker invading the Camp Nou stadium. Mr Rivera wants to bridge "a yawning gulf between politicians and ordinary people". His campaign taps into Catalonia's rich vein of performance art and political satire.

But Mr Rivera's message is serious, and constitutes a backlash against the current strident nationalism. "We need a modern Catalonia where nationalism is not the only thing on the agenda. Public money sunk into Catalan-only projects should go on programmes of social equality," he says.

A united SNP has become a proper political party

Sunday October 15, 2006
The Observer

At its last conference before May's Scottish elections, the Scottish National Party (SNP) seems more united than ever before.

Delegates cheered proposals for mini wind turbines on a million houses and paying the debts of students that remain in Scotland, and Alex Salmond's declaration that: 'We shall not engage in illegal conflict and we shall never desert the cause of unilateral nuclear disarmament.'

The West Lothian Question ensures that Scotland is beginning to move beyond the current devolved settlement, and the SNP wants to usher it towards independence. In the polls they are close to Labour. If the other parties want to maintain the union, they need to spring into action.

I am both nervous and happy about the SNP's cheerfulness. It used to be less of a political party and more of a pressure group for independence, like Greenpeace but with us Scots as the whales. Now they are a proper political party.

Migrating workers leave big gap in the East

EurActiv
29 September 2006

[My] summary:

A World Bank report finds that "post-accession labour flows" from eastern and central Europe to the 'old' EU member states had "a significant impact on the sending countries". Signs of labour shortages are already visible in the Baltics and Poland, and the outflow of workers could slow economic growth. The report therefore recommends that the new member states turn east for even cheaper workers, "phasing in a more liberal regime for importing labour" themselves.

Brussels threatens legal action over EU 'asylum shopping' law

EU Observer
10.10.2006

[My] summary:

An EU law setting minimum standards for granting refugee status took effect on Tuesday. Currently, people citing similar histories have vastly different chances of being granted refugee status depending on where they went. Some 84% of refugees from Chechnya are recognised in Austria, this figure drops to 42% for France, and 0% in Slovakia. But only six member states have transposed the law; the European Commission is threatening legal action against the others.

EU prepares for showdown with Putin after civil liberties restricted

The Independent
19 October 2006

Europe is seeking to bury its divisions ahead of a tense meeting with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who yesterday raised the temperature on civil liberties by forcing dozens of NGOs to suspend operations in Russia.

New Russian legislation, which requires any foreign NGO in the country to submit paperwork to a federal agency, has heightened concerns over basic freedoms in the wake of the murder of the campaigning journalist, Anna Politkovskaya.

When the law was implemented yesterday a list published by the Federal Registration Service showed 80 NGOs whose registration had been approved out of up to 500 working in Russia.

The Kremlin says its crackdown will prevent terrorists, money launderers and foreign intelligence services using NGOs as cover but critics fear it will give the government carte blanche to harass critical human rights groups.

The timing of the row could hardly be worse for the EU with Mr Putin attending a dinner tomorrow night at an informal summit in Lahti, Finland.

Energy is top of the agenda but Finland, which holds the EU presidency, yesterday conceded there was no chance of a quick deal with Moscow to open up its energy pipeline network to European firms.

The EU knows that, with 25 member states and a wide range of views, it faces an uphill task in presenting a united front. Yesterday the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso, appealed to EU leaders to speak with "a common voice not a discordant chorus" when they meet Mr Putin.

Moscow is adept at exploiting divisions inside the 25-nation bloc and its position is strengthened by rising energy prices and demand for oil and gas. [..]