As turmoil continues to grip European financial markets at the prospect of a sovereign default by Spain or even Italy, the emergency Euro-summit scheduled for Thursday this week is looming large in importance. This is all the more true in view of the fact that European Council President had tried to get everyone together for a summit last Friday – but no one was interested then, even as market rates on Italian debt skyrocketed.

The key figure at the summit, as always, will be German Chancellor Angela Merkel, fresh and possibly even slightly sun-tanned off an official visit to various African countries. Just as she is preparing for Thursday’s meeting, however, scattered press speculation has arisen to the effect that Helmut Kohl – the German Reunification Chancellor, and probably the mentor who did most to make Merkel what she is today – now cannot hold himself back from criticizing her Eurodebt policy. Die macht mir mein Europa kaputt! is the catchy quote from Kohl – “She’s destroying my Europe!” – and it comes from a fairly reputable source, namely the German news-magazine Der Spiegel. Ed Harrison over at Credit Writedowns identifies this Spiegel article and provides his own translation. (more…)

It’s Friday, 3 April – do you know where your American president is? I’ll give you a clue: today he is generally in the area of the French/German border where it is demarcated by the Rhine: in Germany at Baden-Baden and a village called Kehl, but mainly at French Strasbourg for a combined NATO summit and celebration of that alliance’s 60th anniversary. That organization may even get a new secretary-general as a result of this gathering; current Danish premier Anders Fogh Rasmussen is the favorite to the Dutch Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who has held that position for five years now.

Amid all the honor-guard reviews, meetings, and celebrations one prominent voice calls out forlornly from the sideline, like a jilted past lover of the bridegroom at a wedding. It belongs to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, winner of the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize, and a man highly “involved” (at least in terms of the measures he did not take) in the wave of revolutions in 1989-90 that took Eastern Europe out of the Soviet bloc. Both the Financial Times Deutschland (Gorbachev criticizes NATO expansion; no by-line) and the Czech daily Lidové noviny (NATO decieved the Russians, Gorbachev maintains, article by Petra Procházková) are now carrying reports of recent remarks he made to German media outlets accusing the West of breaking certain promises that were made to his government back at the time of German reunification in 1990. (more…)

(Footnote out of the way first: * As opposed to doin’ the Foggy Mountain Breakdown, by Earl Scruggs – and folks, that link there actually takes you to a webpage showing the guitar fingerings for playing this timeless bluegrass classic!)

Prospects for a “Yes” vote on the proposed EU Constitutional Treaty are under pressure these days not only in France but also here in the Netherlands. Well, at least “Yes” is currently ahead of “No” by only about ten percentage points in the polls, which is taken to be a worrying sign. So cabinet ministers are swinging into action to tout the Constitution, including Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner who, as reported in the newspaper Trouw (registration required) has warned against the danger of war if the Constitution is not adopted.

War? Yes, war: Because without the more authoritative and more effective EU institutions that the Constitution will supposedly bring into being, Europe’s inherent “irritation, suspicion, and distrust” threatens to escalate out of control. Just like happened in the mid-1990s in the Balkans: “Yugoslavia was more integrated than the [European] Union is now, but bad will and the inability to stifle hidden irritations and rivalry led in a short time to war.” (more…)