Author Archives: Doug Merrill

About Doug Merrill

Freelance journalist based in Tbilisi, following stints in Atlanta, Budapest, Munich, Warsaw and Washington. Worked for a German think tank, discovered it was incompatible with repaying US student loans. Spent two years in financial markets. Bicycled from Vilnius to Tallinn. Climbed highest mountains in two Alpine countries (the easy ones, though). American center-left, with strong yellow dog tendencies. Arrived in the Caucasus two weeks before its latest war.

A Little More about the Elections

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So pretty much all of the incumbent parties got whacked, amidst predicted low turnout. The BBC has nitty gritty from all 25 member states. There isn’t an overview page, so the link goes to Poland, largest of the new members.

The SLD government there fell, by design, the day after Poland was admitted to the EU, and the parliament is still deciding whether to ratify the caretaker government or embark on an extended interregnum and early elections. The upshot is that the former governing party, the SLD (who are also former communists), placed fourth behind two parties I can’t find profiles of and a populist-to-wacko bunch called Self-Defense (Samoobrona, for those of you who like things in the original).*

Anyway, the parties across the continent largely have themselves to blame for the turnout. With a seat in Brussels largely viewed as a sidetrack or a retirement post, the parties don’t put their A team on the MEP election lists. Voters react accordingly.
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Talking About the Relationship

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My old think tank had a discussion about transatlantic issues yesterday, which produced some interesting points:

A member of the German Parliament said that compulsive military service will probably come to an end sooner than outside observers think. A Fistful of Euros, we think it will end pretty soon, and it’s nice to have that view confirmed. (Though not too specifically; he didn’t want to end up in the local paper.)

The American ambassador said that after the ruckus of the last two years, intergovernmental relations are much better than they were. Public dissonance, however, has grown, and that’s a less tractable problem.
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Get Local

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Overseas Republicans claim that their votes were decisive in putting G.W. Bush into the White House. Diana Kerry, one of Senator Kerry’s sisters, drew a lunchtime crowd of more than 100 in Munich today. Not bad for a surrogate during the middle of a work day six months before the election. It’ll be hard to specify the impact of the estimated 5 million Americans who live overseas. But it’s safe to say the Democrats abroad are taking aim at their Republican counterparts’ boast.

I’m told the outcome of this little contest may have an impact in Europe, and elsewhere.

I’ll be darned

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They did it.

Organizers of this summer’s Olympic Games in Athens have breathed a sigh of relief after the main stadium’s roof began its long-awaited slide into position. …

The IOC had given the Greek government until May 20 to slide into place the two huge arches — or abandon the project.

The project, which has already missed one “final deadline” on April 28, was the latest to cause concern as the Greek capital races to finish work on dozens of Olympic venues ahead of the opening ceremony on August 13.

Yes, yes, I know, every Olympics has this sort of moment. It’s just that Athens, which was a bit shaky to begin with, has had more than most and still has heaps to do.

Should be quite a summer.

Cyprus Coda

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After the referendum in Cyprus, I asked a friend of mine who works for the UN Development Program what the local mood was like:

really for the time being it is disappointment…with the amount of misinformation out and the also the tight timelines that were imposed….really hard to know who to blame, but I blame the GC [Greek Cypriot] radio/tv channels most of all…people want to be convinced i feel but they need not be pushed into something….easing of economic restrictions for the northern part would be inevitable i think….they deserve the credit for sure….

More in a couple of years, I suppose. In the meantime, travel to the North should be easier, and a baroque, possibly roccoco, thicket of regulations will spring up about how to treat the citizens of the North, the products of their labor, and every other little thing that the EU looks after.

Guess Who’s Been Here for Dinner?

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More than 7.3 million people living in Germany are citizens of another country. Along with roughly 115,000 other Americans, I’m part of an insignificant minority, outnumbered by Greeks (355,000), Serbs & Montenegrins (570,000), Poles (480,000) and Italians (601,000). All of us, of course, are outnumbered by Turks (1.88 million). Spare a thought, though, for the 10,000 Aussies and Kiwis, of whom there are far fewer than stateless persons or people of uncertain citizenship (70,000).

The numbers are all from a report released yesterday by the Federal Statistical Office and discussed in today’s Frankfurter Allgemeine (p. 9).

All told, people who only hold a foreign citizenship make up 8.9 percent of Germany’s population, a share that has held steady since 1998. Average tenure in the country is 16 years. On average, Slovenes have stayed longest, with 26 years. (The Slovenes up and downstairs from my apartment have got that beat by a good bit.) Spaniards come next at 25, which is only fair given Mallorca, followed by Croats and Austrians (23), Italians and Greeks (22) and Turks (19).

The main reason the share of foreigners has held steady, according to the Statistical Office, is that people who are eligible are taking German citizenship, under a law that went into force in 2000. There are still plenty of problems associated with migration, immigration and integration, but these numbers are basically good signs.

And the next time a conservative German politician says something about the country not being a destination for immigration, please, laugh out loud. It’s the only appropriate response.

About 2600 Each

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The Frankfurter Allgemeine reports today (p. 6) that the international community is willing to give EUR 2 billion in support, if the population of Cyprus will approve a plan for reunification in a referendum next Saturday, April 24. That’s according to represntatives of 34 countries and international financial organizations who met at a donor conference in Brussels this week.

Approval is still an open question, particularly among Greek Cypriots whose representative at the conference — in a move that surely took the donors by surprise — lobbied for more money.

More important, the new Greek prime minister promised continued support for improved Turkish links with the EU. As long as that course is continued, Cyprus recedes as a larger question and becomes a local sideshow. At that stage, Greek Cypriots may well be correct that they have the upper hand, as they will be EU members. Equally, however, the international community is much less likely to be interested in the outcome. That EUR 2600 each, which the Greek Cypriot representative called insufficient, would surely shrink.

Taipei Calling?

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I don’t know about you, but this sort of thing worries me:

The framework that has buttressed peace in the Taiwan Strait for decades is disintegrating. Changes in Taiwan, as well as some of Beijing’s counterproductive behavior, are undermining its foundations. Unless an improved framework is adopted soon, war across the strait will become increasingly probable …

The conundrum is stark. Taiwan sees itself as an “independent, sovereign country.” China, with a national fixation over a century long on achieving territorial unity, has staked the legitimacy of its regime on not allowing Taiwan juridical stature as a sovereign country. …

Each side at this point is pursuing efforts to change facts on the ground in its own favor. China is deploying additional missiles that can strike Taiwan … Taiwan is deepening its effort to instill a distinctive Taiwanese identity, strengthen its bona fides as an independent country and acquire offensive-weapon capabilities.

Especially when it’s written by very serious people.

So I wondered, does Europe have a policy for this eventuality?

I had a look here, here, and at the Commission’s Strategy Paper here. This last, unfortunately, devotes more space to Denmark’s bilateral aid for China (not that there’s anything wrong with Denmark’s bilateral aid, a friend of mine works in that section of their foreign ministry) than it does to Taiwan and what are delicately called cross-straits relations..

So I’m still wondering, does Europe have a policy for this eventuality? Should it? What does either choice say about Europe’s role in the world?

Potentially A Big Deal

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So is nobody in the Italian media actually writing about it?

But for nearly a month, Rome has been silent on what is potentially one of its biggest political stories: Umberto Bossi, the charismatic and outspoken leader of the once separatist Northern League, is gravely ill. Bossi, 62, has been in a medically induced coma since suffering a heart attack on March 11. But after his wife demanded a press blackout, coverage has been limited to brief League declarations that Bossi is expected to be back in fighting form for the European Parliament election campaign this spring.

Medically induced coma? Does not sound like a good way to prepare for an election campaign.

And without Bosssi? Can the Liga Norda stay together as a party? Can Berlusconi hold the coalition together?

Late Last Week

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German President Johannes Rau cancelled the last leg of his nine-day trip to Africa because of credible indications that he would be attacked by terrorists. Given that he was scheduled to stop in Djibouti, where German soldiers are serving in multinational efforts to help maintain order in and around the Horn of Africa, it’s a pretty good bet that there was an Islamic component to the threat.

When Rau landed in Berlin, he looked rested and fit in a tropical-weight suit. He sounded more disappointed than worried that he had had to break off the trip, the 75th of his tenure. Just days before, he had been encouraging African leaders not only to solve their own problems, but not to let a false sense of solidarity lead them to overlook repression. This last led the ambassador from Zimbabwe to walk out in the middle of Rau’s Nairobi speech.

On the tarmac in Berlin, Rau said that the deciding factor was that the threat was not just to him, but to the people around him, and that he had a responsibility not to endanger them for his own sake. From that, I would read that the indications were of an attack against his airplane, maybe like this. German media are also reporting that the local security forces had been infiltrated, meaning any changes in route would have been quickly betrayed.

Looks like a narrow escape, and a reminder that differences over Kyoto, genetically modified crops, copyright, film subsidies, tax flimflammery or any of the dozens of things we fight about within the western world don’t matter a whit to the people who want to bring death and destruction to the peoples of the west, its leaders and its symbols.