It’s Sunday, so let me take break – let me return home from Afghanistan (so-to-say: see yesterday’s entry if you don’t get what I mean) and consider what’s in the Dutch press. Ironically, the Dutch press doesn’t publish on Sunday. While in the US Sunday is the day for the often-massive Sunday newspaper editions (the New York Times tops the scales, probably at several kilograms, but many others are almost as big), and even Germany has its special Sunday papers (e.g. Welt am Sonntag), in Holland there’s still that strong Dutch Reformed Church/Calvinist tradition of no work on Sunday.

So am I pulling your leg? Certainly not! – let’s take a look at the Dutch papers, from yesterday. I promise you there are some interesting articles. (Actually, you’ll probably like best the “Saddam’s Waiter Tells All!” article, that I discuss immediately following. Click off to it now, I don’t mind – just come back here when you’re finished!) When it came to Dutch topics treated in the Dutch press, what particularly struck me this Sunday were reports about the resurgence of that ages-old threat to public order here: that’s right, swearing (i.e. uttering naughty words, in public). (more…)

In my leisurely survey through the (Saturday) Dutch newspapers this Sunday, I came across a couple of interesting articles on Iraq. (more…)

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan . . . yes, you remember that we also fought a war there, in late 2001 against the Taliban, mainly because they were sheltering Osama bin-Laden and his Al-Qaida organization and refused to give him up. To keep order in that war-torn and fragmented country, and to give its central adminstration headed by “Transitional Chairman” Hamid Karzai a chance to get started with rebuilding, since December, 2001, there has been a so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) there, mainly in the capital city Kabul and surroundings. (more…)

Returning to Die Zeit – truly an excellent commentary newspaper, and very generous with what it’s willing to post on-line! – the article in its latest (on-line) issue (Der letzte Gipfel – “The Last Summit”) shows that the future which the EU has feared for so long has now arrived – whether it’s ready for it or not. (more…)

I’m continuing my coverage of the EU draft constitution, which was handed over last Friday by European Convention President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to EU member-states at the Thessaloniki European summit. Now it’s in their hands, to add to and subtract from as they see fit to agree (doing so formally in an Intergovernmental Conference which is due to start in mid-October), in preparation for ratification by all member-states separately in the spring of 2004. Considering now some of the German-speaking parts of Europe, reception of the draft here has been mixed – although, crucially, German Bundeskanzler Gerhard Schröder has endorsed it. (more…)

Non-German speakers, it’s not what you think: faul not as in the English “foul” (so that you might envision “environmentally polluted,” or “cheaters at football,” or even “morally decrepit”), but as in “lazy.” This issue has been raised lately by no less than the Federal German Labor and Economy “super” Minister Wolfgang Clement – “super,” because Clement has been put in charge of what were formerly two separate ministries and granted extra authority within Gerhard Schröder’s cabinet, and extra say over economic policy, in exchange for coming up with something ingenious – anything! please! – to ease the rampant unemployment and general economic stagnation that has afflicted Europe’s economic “powerhouse” for several years now. (more…)

There goes another one of my favorite weblog-entry subjects! The Belgian government is now in the process of modifying its infamous “genocide law” (formally known as “law of universal competence” – the law that used to allow criminal complaints from anyone, from anywhere, against anyone, from anywhere, whom they could charge with crimes against humanity) so that it more-or-less conforms to the sort of legislation most other countries have for the prosecution against those sorts of serious crimes. Crucially, with the changes that are now being added either the accuser or the accused must be of Belgian nationality or must have at least lived in Belgium for three years. (EuroSavant recently had the occasion to discuss this law, and the displeasure it was prompting among American officials, here.) (more…)

With the presentation last Friday to the EU summit in Thessaloniki of the draft EU Constitution, the work of the European Convention headed by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing came to an end. Now the text is in the hands of the national governments of EU member-states, which will formally begin negotiations over changes to that draft at the EU Intergovernmental Conference to begin in the middle of next October. (more…)

Remember that “genocide law” in Belgium (formally known in English as the “law of universal competence,” and which EuroSavant first commented upon a few weeks ago here)? The one that allows anyone, from anywhere, to take to court in Belgium anyone, from anywhere, whom they wish to accuse of committing violations of human rights and/or of the laws of war? It has by no means gone away; indeed, lately Belgian-American tensions have risen to new highs. (more…)

Yes, the draft EU Constitution was presented yesterday by Constitutional Convention President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing to the EU summit in Thessaloniki. It’s an important, interesting, and detailed step – although EuroSavant did cover in the last weekend in May the initial unveiling of that draft Constitution that occurred then. (Starting here with reactions from the EU member which paid the most attention to it – the UK.) In any case, apparently there were some (minor?) changes made to that draft between then and its formal, final presentation to EU leaders this weekend. Plus, it will be interesting to see how countries are lining up for and against that draft Constitution, in the run-up to the EU Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) in which member-states will negotiate changes to this draft on the way to a final version of the Constitution which will then be put up for approval by all EU states (of which there will be 25 by that point). That IGC is supposed to convene next October, and it’s supposed to finish its work by December. (Good luck!)

This certainly merits some investigation, and that will be forthcoming. For this weekend, though, what caught my eye was the continuing Belgian-American tension over the former’s “genocide law” – see tomorrow’s weblog entry.

Going through the Dutch press today, I ran across an article that sheds further light on the workers’ revolt in the DDR (East Germany) in June, 1953 – in the daily Trouw, formerly a religiously-affiliated journal, now simply a respected, mainstream Dutch newspaper. It is entitled Duitsland/De revolutie waarover niemand sprak – “Germany/The Revolution that No One Talked About.” (more…)

Enough – enough already! – of the Czech Republic and its EU accession referendum. They voted “Yes” – “massively,” some would say, at 77,33% – so congratulations to them. Now it’s time to move on, beyond the Czech future to . . . the German past because, after all, it’s the 17th of June. (more…)

Indulge me just a little, as I leave the Czech referendum story with a bit of tidying-up: you know, the results, the reaction. Once again, Mlada Fronta Dnes splashes an over-sized headline on its front page: “ANO EU: 77,33%.” (That’s 77,33% “Yes” on a turn-out of 55,21%, so once again anti-EU spoil-sports can point out that an actual majority of eligible voters did not approve EU accession.) To which the headline adds: “Spidla rejoices; Klaus stays silent.” (more…)

The Czech EU referendum is very, very near. Sure, we know that already, but even if we didn’t, we’d know something was up from today’s front page of the leading Czech daily, Mlada Fronta Dnes. Check it out for yourself (you can download the PDF here): the whole above-the-fold area is dominated by a huge “ANO” – which, it won’t surprise you to learn, means “Yes” in Czech. Directly underneath is the caption “Historical referendum: the accession of the Czech Republic into the EU is to be decided.” For those newspaper-buyers who, nonetheless, are not so much into reading text, up above there’s a whole gallery of famous Europeans. Take your pick (now, who wouldn’t want to join their company?): Günter Grass, Luis Figo (the football player for Real Madrid, but he’s Portuguese), Antonio Banderas, Margarethe II (present occupation: Queen of Denmark), and Ornella Mutti – from Italy; anybody ever heard of her? Wow: Guess who the MFDnes editors chose in the inside article (click on “15 tvárí Unii”) to represent Britain: Rowan Atkinson, a.k.a. Mr. Bean/Johnny English! Below, you can see for youself how serious premier Vladimir Spidla is about accession: he’s shown huffing and puffing (and wearing black business socks with his shorts and sneakers!) and racing EU ambassador Ramiro Cibrian in a “Eurorun.” (more…)

Czech President Václav Klaus doesn’t want to reveal his voting preferences in the Czech EU accession referendum, to start on Friday – although he certainly promises to vote. (Indeed, he’ll be voting soon after polls open on Friday, as will premier Spidla and ex-president Havel and their wives.) Revealing his presidential preference is not his presidential function, he says; his pres. function is “rather to give arguments, to shake up citizens so that they think about these things.”

But you know this already, since you’ve read yesterday’s EuroSavant entry. Still, on Wednesday Klaus granted an in-depth interview to Lidové noviny, his favorite newspaper. (He used to write a regular column for it.) This interview deserves in-depth examination, since it lays out many of the Czech President’s shall-we-say unconventional and even abrasive views on the referendum and on Czech EU membership in general. Maybe we’ll finally get some “asking of the tough questions,” the absence of which I decried in my long entry about the Polish referendum of last weekend!

(Before we go to “More…”: Sick of Poland? Sick of Czech? Sorry about that. Remember, EuroSavant is also versatile enough to do France, Germany, the Benelux, who-knows-what-else. We’ll get back to other parts of Europe soon, but I did want to take a good look at these once-in-a-lifetime accession referenda. Anyway, if you don’t like this weblog’s direction – e-mail me! I might be so taken aback as to actually listen to what you say!) (more…)

The countdown is on for the referendum in the Czech Republic on EU accession, to take place over next Friday and Saturday (13 and 14 June). As most of the other candidate countries have done, Czech authorities are also making use of the tactic of opening the voting centers over two days to encourage as large a turn-out as possible (although referenda in the Czech Republic do not have any legally-mandated level of participation, below which they become invalid). And the Prague authorities enjoy a further advantage: their referendum is towards the end in the series of candidate country referenda (only a couple of the Baltic countries remain), and the script has gone according to plan – all of the other countries voting before have voted “Yes” (if in some cases with distressingly-low levels of voter turn-out), so that puts further pressure on Czech voters not to show themselves to be the odd man out. (more…)

Now the second and final day of Poland’s EU accession referendum is underway. Radio reports indicate that participation through Saturday ran rather short of the 25% one would hope for, at least on an accountant’s straight-line basis, to assure that final participation reaches at least 50% and therefore validity for the whole exercise. But after all, this is not some financial exercise . . . (more…)

Here in Wroclaw, it’s a bright and sunny first day of voting in the Polish EU accession referendum. More guerrilla anti-EU material has popped up, in a last-minute attempt to change people’s minds – this time, it was in the form of posters showing the famous EU twelve-yellow-stars-on-a-dark-blue-field emblem – with a swastika in the middle, and the caption up above “Rozbior Polski” – the partition of Poland. That should strike a chord with historically-oriented Polish voters: in the famous 18th-century partitions of Poland, Poland’s neighboring states (then Prussia, Russia, and the Austrian Empire) agreed among themselves to simply reach out and grab the pieces of Polish territory that they wanted, and Poland was too weak at the time to do anything to defend herself. There were three of these land-grabs, and by the end of the third there was no more Polish land to seize any more, as it all had been taken – and Poland was not to re-emerge as an independent nation for more than a century, namely in 1918 directly after the First World War. (more…)

The referendum on Poland’s accession to the European Union is very close now – it starts tomorrow, Saturday, and carries on through Sunday. As in most of the candidate states which have already held the referendum – particularly in Hungary and Slovakia – and as will most likely be the case in the one remaining significant state to do so after Poland, namely the Czech Republic next weekend, the crucial issue is not so much the referendum’s result, but rather the rate of voter turn-out. (more…)

Greetings from Wroclaw! Which immediately gives rise to the question, in our EuroSavant context, of “What’s going on in the Polish press?” Which immediately gives rise to my answer of . . .

Hold it, hold it! Are we starting to sound like a broken record here? This is precisely how I started out a weblog entry of a few weeks ago, when I was visiting Budapest. (If you’re interested, it’s here.) My point there was that the country that I treat for a particular day’s weblog need not have any direct relation to the country I was physically present in at the time. After all, I live in Amsterdam – and how many times have I treated the Dutch press? There was a run a little while ago when I was treating it rather more often than I would have liked – e.g. when I discussed the light prison sentence given to Pim Fortuyn’s murderer, and suchlike, here – but lately I’ve been behaving much better in that regard.

Of course, Poland’s EU referendum is coming up this weekend, so I’ll definitely be talking about that, both from the viewpoint of the Polish press and from the personnel viewpoint I now have on things from being present in Poland. But just give me a little more time to talk with some folks around here about their feelings toward the EU and the referendum and what’s going on in general. In the meantime: that G8 summit in Evian, just what was it that it accomplished again? . . . (more…)

As of today, EuroSavant is visiting Poland for a few days, specifically Wroclaw (before 1945 known as Breslau) in the southwestern corner of the country. I’ve scoped out the Internet cafés available there in the center of town; infrastructure-wise, I think there will be what it takes for me to continue submitting my posts at the usual frequency. And, as an added bonus, I’ll be able to indulge in a little primary-source blog reporting (as opposed to my usual secondary-source approach – or is it tertiary?), since the Polish EU accession referendum takes place this upcoming weekend, and I’ll still be there. I promise I’ll take careful and copious notes; I’m travelling there with my legal pad, pen (plus a few spares), and my fedora with the “Press” card tucked in the band – but this is Poland, so I’ll have to get a quick translation made there to “Prasa.”

Sorry, today I’m not going to cover the G8 summit on Lake Geneva, at Evian. From the press coverage you indeed get the impression, as Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times (registration required) puts it, of “a messy family reunion,” where the main thing people are interested in is who avoids whom, who smiles at whom, who shakes whose hand and how enthusiastically, etc. This even in the German press, as in Die Welt’s Versöhnlicher Handschlag (“handshake of forgiveness”), or the FT Deutschland’s Bush schenkt Schröder drei Minuten (“Bush grants three minutes to Schröder”). Then, on the other side of the police barricades, you just have whatever credibility the arguments of the “anti-globalists” retain being trashed along with the cars and shop-windows that are the target of that minority of demonstrators who see the occasion as another chance to have some violent fun and quite likely get away with it, since the police can’t bash or arrest them all.

Apparently the summit continues on into today, so the press coverage will likely merit a better look later on. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder didn’t even make it out to the lake until late last night, but he had a good excuse: He was busy at a special congress of his Social Democratic Party (SPD), gaining party approval for an ambitious program of retrenchment of Germany’s welfare state that he calls “Agenda 2010.” That, as even the Guardian points out in today’s leader, is the sort of major development that merits attention. (more…)