Category: Europe

By Ramesh Jaura | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BERLIN (IDN) – Europe is the world’s richest region. Together 28 countries constituting the European Union (EU) are the world’s largest market. EU and its member states provide 56% of about $130 billion global official development assistance. Precisely this obliges Europe not to stay bogged down in ongoing financial and identity crises but accept its international responsibilities wholeheartedly.

This was the upshot of a landmark speech by the European Council President Herman Van Rompuy on November 9, the very day the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, 28 years after it was erected to reinforce post-war division of Germany and Europe. The day was “perhaps the most important tipping point, not just for Germany but in our recent European history,” he said.

By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN) – In the early morning of October 3 a tourist was enjoying the beautiful quiet beach of the Italian Mediterranean Island when three swimmers appeared. Three African young men frantically asked for help. They had left their mothers behind in a ship on sea that was on fire.

By Mirjam van Reisen* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

BRUSSELS (IDN) – The tragic loss of some 300 refugees off Lampedusa on October 3 gives public focus to the harsh and cruel reality facing thousands fleeing insecurity and oppression in the countries of their birth. A boat which traveled from Libya caught fire in close reach of the Italian coast. There were some 500 Eritreans on board, but only 147 were rescued according to media reports.

By Richard Johnson | IDN-InDepth NewsReport

PARIS (IDN) – While commending France for its commitment to aid, its overall development strategy and its engagement at the global level to promote it, including innovative financing, an OECD review has urged the government “not to compromise its ability to help reduce poverty in poor and fragile countries.”

It also calls upon France “to do more to support civil society organisations and gender equality and to build stronger capacity for developing countries to manage their own futures.” The country could also do more to monitor the results of its development efforts, says the Review of the Development Co-operation Policies and Programmes of France, which is available only in French.

By Roberto Savio* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

ROME (IDN | Other News) – Youth At the last summit of European heads of state in Brussels, the main theme was youth unemployment, which has now reached 23% of European youth (although it stands at 41% in Spain). Last year, the International Labour Organization issued a dramatic report on ‘Global Employment Trends for Youth 2012’ in which it spoke of a “lost generation”.

By Jaya Ramachandran | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

PARIS (IDN) – A new poll finds that Europeans are growing dissatisfied with the inequities of the economic system, which are also rooted in the “still rising unemployment” that, as the OECD’s Chief Economist Pier Carlo Padoan avers, present “the most pressing challenge for policy makers” in the euro area.

The euro area consists of 17 members of the 27-nation European Union: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

By Roberto Savio* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

ROME (IDN | Other News) – The European Union has asked its citizens to brace for further economic misery. In a report on European economic prospects released on May 3, the European Commission said that further deterioration is expected to last at least until 2015. But, as every such report says, things will then get better!

By Suzan A. Kane* | IDN-InDepth NewsAnalysis

BRUSSELS (IDN | European Sting) – Thank god it will not be any more the economists to set the course of economic policy in Eurozone but the people and the politicians. Whatever bad things one may think about politicians, there is one thing that nobody can deny; they can hear the people.

In this case the theory of Reinhart – Rogoff proposing austerity and prayers to correct all sins of the western economy and more so of Eurozone’s debts, will cease to set the rules. It will be rather the politicians to decide now to end austerity and start borrowing again to finance growth. Japan opened the way deciding to increase its government debt above the already breath-taking 200% of the GDP.

By Roberto Savio* | IDN-InDepth NewsViewpoint

ROME (IDN | Other News) – For a long time it was a given that while Europe was based on defending a more just society, with social values and solidarity, the United States was based on the glory of individualism and competition, and anything public was considered “socialist”. One of the main accusations of the last electoral campaign in the United States was that Barack Obama had an unspoken design to change the United States into another Europe, beginning with health reform.

Well, it’s time for an update – the defenders of market fundamentalism are now in Europe.

By Roberto Savio*
IDN-InDepthNews and Other News Analysis

There is more to the Cyprus crisis than has been taken note of by the general public, not the least because of the mainstream media’s failure to provide a contextual analysis of the situation in three-fifths of the island of Cyprus, two-fifths of which are a separate political entity that only Turkey recognises. The lack of transparency and anti-people solution to resolve the Cyprus crisis and crises elsewhere in the 27-nation bloc bode ill for the European Union.