Business Week published this while I was bicycling across Switzerland. But it’s not like anything reported in the article has changed in three or four weeks.
Bucharest rivals Bangalore for availability of exceptionally gifted programmers at rock-bottom prices
Is Romania really ready for the EU? asks Cristian Lupsa in the New Republic.
Terrific appreciation of Dmitri Shostakovich in the weekend FT (not this last weekend, of course, I’m a little behind on my reading) on the centenary of his birth:
The Fifth Symphony was a compromise that didn’t compromise. It was a squared circle. It was genius with a welcome mat. It made the Soviet state pigs feel they could wipe their trotters at the entrance and hand you their hats. Yet it was still a work of genius. Today the symphony is just as interpretable as a cry of grief and wrath over Soviet Russia as an endorsement of Stalin.
You carried on, avoiding the gulags, smuggling impertinences into your music (the Sixth Symphony) and writing string quartets as private therapy. Meanwhile friends and fellow artists were being dragged to Siberia, shoved in the Ljubjanka, or otherwise stiffed or silenced. You dreaded the knock on the door.
Read the proverbial whole thing.
The Belgian court of Justice has ordered Google News to remove all feeds of Belgian newspapers and journalists. This news was broken by Chilling Effects:
…to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French – and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from all their sites (Google News and “cache” Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000.- € per day of delay;
The original court order, in French and dating from September 5th, can be found here (pdf). Google News seems to be charged with violating laws concerning copyright (publishing of headlines and first paragraphs) and databases (publishing cached articles after they have been retired by editors). If I understand the Belgian and Dutch press correctly, the court order concerns only publications in French and German as Dutch-language publishers have already had their headlines removed from Google News. It is possible that publishers will use this court order to negotiate, in which case Google News could eventually be forced to share its advertising revenues with the respective publishers.
Romano Prodi, writing in Le Monde, claims that the European Union is inherently a left-of-center project. It’s an interesting claim–certainly one that Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl would probably dispute. But certainly the European institutions have changed since either of those Chancellors’ days, and a contemporary view might lend more strength to Prodi’s views and explain the relative prevalence of anti-EU sentiment on the right side of the political spectrum.
I’m of course relying on the summary from the estimable folks at Eurotopics, but it’s an interesting thought.
Just a bit of background info to accompany Doug’s post on AFOE:
“Everybody in Hungary knows that real income will decrease in the next two years … and very significant social groups will feel their interests hurt. If this simple rejection is transformed and mixed with national radicalism and social populism, then this is a dangerous thing,” Gyurcsany (Ferenc Gyurcsany, Hungary’s Prime Minister) said.
He has said that Hungary aims to meet eurozone criteria on the public deficit, national debt and inflation by 2009 and adopt the common currency by 2013.Last week, Hungary submitted to the European Commission a revised plan to prepare for adoption of the euro. Under the plan, the public deficit would be slashed from 10.1 percent of gross domestic product GDP) this year, the highest in the EU, to 3.2 percent in 2009. Although it is an ambitious programme, some analysts have called on the government to cut spending further in social areas such as pensions, in order to tidy up the country’s shaky finances, a recipe Gyurcsany has so far rejected.
The so-called euro convergence programme, not deemed aggressive enough for some, has also sparked protests in Hungary and led to a huge drop in the government’s popularity. The reforms include ending free public university education and overhauling the state-run healthcare system that is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, by introducing co-payments for visits to the doctor and to the hospital, among other things. The aim of the plan is to put a greater financial burden on citizens and curtail the welfare state, which is becoming increasingly hard to finance in a society that, like much of Europe, is growing older.”
This information also has some relevance to the debate which is raging on this thread about reform.
Well I have just noticed a new new Eurozone blog: Daniela Schwarzer and Sebastian Dullien who have been blogging at Eurozone Watch Blog for a few months now. Daniela has a post today about Mr Euro, Jean-Claude Juncker. But see this George Parker piece in the FT:
Jean-Claude Trichet, European Central Bank president, on Friday delivered a stiff warning to eurozone finance ministers to back off in an escalating dispute over the bank’s independence.
Mr Trichet pointed out that it was his signature on euro banknotes and that it was unlawful under the EU treaty for finance ministers to give instructions or try to influence the bank.
His comments came at a strained news conference in Helsinki with Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg prime minister, who was on Friday given a second two-year term as political head of the eurozone.
Mr Juncker said he had only agreed to carry on chairing the eurogroup – the political arm of the single currency – after finance ministers supported his plan to have an “intensified dialogue” with the ECB.
As I say in a comment on Daniela’s post. This is about the only topic I am currently in agreement with Trichet on: I simply don’t see what he and Trichet have to talk about.
Meantime over on Afoe Mark Thoma had a very interesting guest post last week on whether the eurozone will be affected by any possible downturn in the US, and this post has been picked up by both New Economist and Claus Vistesen at Alpha Sources.
SueAndNotU, a Washington DC blogger who’s been in Georgia for the last year, has more on possible escalations in and around Abkhazia.
A fascinating spectacle is unfolding in the wild, uncontrollable west of the country where parliamentarians and well-coiffed ministers are squaring off with warriors and wise men from another time. It’s as perfect an illustration as you could ask for of the whole untamed spirit of this place in the modern world; at times wearing modernity like an ill-fitting suit.
More here.
Turkey on Monday appointed a general who is expected to adopt a tougher line toward EU negotiations to replace the head the country’s powerful military, who was widely considered a moderate. The change in leadership, which was widely anticipated, comes as Turkey is insisting that Washington do more to crack down on Turkish Kurdish rebels operating out of bases in northern Iraq…
Buyukanit raised eyebrows this year by praising a soldier subsequently jailed for a bombing believed to be aimed at stirring up unrest in the mainly Kurdish southeast. The bombing triggered riots in the region and a parliamentary inquiry.
Analysts say Buyukanit’s no-nonsense views have been shaped by the time he spent in the southeast during the 1990s, heyday of the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which is now seen as weakened but far from defeated.
“Buyukanit is more pro-American, more security-minded than Ozkok. He is not against the Europeanization of Turkey but he is more influenced by nationalist tendencies,” said Hussein Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University.
“He will be much tougher in the fight against the PKK.”