Delo, Ljubljana – The divorce between the political class and the Slovenian population is expanding at the same rate as the revelations about corruption. Now that the head of government himself has been caught up in the scandals, Slovenian society stands at a crossroads. See more.
Veidas, Vilnius – Hotels, shops and spas are all profiting from wealthy clients but also from the middle classes coming from the other side of the Belarus border. See more.
Joseph Daul, the chairman of the right-of-centre European People’s Party in the European Parliament, has made clear that the party’s candidate for February’s Italian general election is incumbent Prime Minister Mario Monti and not the People of Freedom Party (PDL) President Silvio Berlusconi, who represented the conservatives for almost 20 years. Following Berlusconi’s anti-European turn in the campaign to distance himself from Monti, many of his party’s European partners are mulling the PDL’s expulsion from the EPP.
A sharp slowdown in exports has again forced the Bank of Portugal to review its forecasts for 2013. The GDP is expected to contract by 1.9 per cent while the public deficit may rise by 0.4 per cent to around 4.9 per cent instead of the 4.5 per cent level required by the government and the troika. The Bank of Portugal foresees the loss of 90,000 jobs during 2013. These forecasts come ahead of a Constitutional Court decision on the legality of three elements of the 2013 budget, which were referred to the court by President Aníbal António Cavaco Silva.
The Belgian government has given a green light to the deployment of logistics support for French forces in Mali between now and March 1st. The country is sending 75 men, two C-130 transport aircraft and two helicopter ambulances. The Di Rupo government has emphasised that the presence of Belgian troops in combat zones “has been ruled out”.
The French carmaker has announced that it will not replace retiring workers so as to cut its workforce by 15% between now and 2016. The decision has come just six months after a restructuring plan at PSA Peugeot Citroën which involved the loss of 8,000 jobs, and at a time when sales of new French cars have slumped: falling by 19.4% in 2012, the worst decline since 1997.
In spite of the crisis, the latest figures from the German Federal Office of Statistics indicate that Germany’s federal, state and local governments completed 2012 with a budget surplus. Notwithstanding the €10bn euros of additional spending to combat the euro crisis, Berlin borrowed €22.5bn, which was less than expected. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble will be able to comply with the ‘golden rule’ for balanced budgets, notes the newspaper.
Business leaders are pressuring the government to reject the single European patent, arguing that “solutions provided by the single patent scheme favour highly technologically developed countries”. Meanwhile for Poland, which has just started building a knowledge-based economy, the new single patent will be “very costly” and risky for the applicants. The campaign seems to be effective as “the government has begun hesitating” over whether to sign the single patent agreement.
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German GDP shrank by 0.5 per cent in the 2012 final quarter, the worst fall since the 2009 recession. “Germany is already paying the European crisis bill” says the daily, summarising the feeling in Spain, adding PM Mariano Rajoy’s reaction to the situation in an interview to the Financial Times in which he asks Germany to do more to stimulate growth in Europe.