Monthly Archives: July 2005

Portugal Given Three Years

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Portugal has been given three years (till the end of 2008) to resolve its excess deficit situation. Portugal, like Italy only with less press attention, is in the midst of a serious economic slowdown. The decision to give Portugal slightly more time may be the result of a number of factors: it may be that they are perceived to be doing more to correct the situation than the Italian government is, the accumulated deficit in Portugal (68% GDP) is much less than the Italian one (106% GDP), and again, being a little less strict with Portugal counters the ‘you only chase small countries’ argument.

“We are proposing giving the Portuguese government three years to correct its deficit,” Amelia Torres, a spokeswoman for EU monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia, told reporters on Wednesday.

As a member of the 12-nation eurozone, Portugal is bound to hold its annual public deficit to under three percent of output under terms of the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact.

The Low-Fertility Trap

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I suppose by-now every right thinking and reasonably well read adult knows what the ‘poverty-trap’ is, even if most of us aren’t too clear about what there is to do about it. Being stuck in one of these traps could be thought to be like being stuck in a (not necessarily very deep) well with a slimy surround wall. The more you struggle to get out, the harder it gets: your strength disippates, and the walls get to be even more slippery. This could also be called a negative feedback loop.

Well now there is the suggestion that something similar may exist in the world of fertility. As Wolfgang Lutz suggests in this power point presentation, the critical level may be 1.5. No society which has fallen below this level has -to date – returned above it. (Many thanks here to commenter CapTvK who sent me the link).
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Two on Turkey

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With Turkish accession one of the most important issues facing the European Union, people interested in the question could do much worse than read these two recent, and reasonably short, books that focus on the country: Crescent and Star, by Stephen Kinzer, and The Turks Today, by Andrew Mango. Both illustrate and explain contemporary Turkey, and both have accession as a theme throughout their books.
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Life Expectancy in East and West Germany

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After so many days of posting topics related one way or another with death, perhaps it is better to get back to life. One good excuse for doing this could be the 25th International Population Conference organised by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population and which opened yesterday in Tours, France.

You can find the full conference agenda here, and there are topics to suit all tastes for those who are interested.

Over the next few days I’ll post on one or two of the workshop topics which catch my eye, and today it’s a paper by German-based researcher Marc Luy, entitled “A new hypothesis for explaining the mortality gap between eastern and western Germany” (Only extended abstract available online at present).
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Chatham House Update

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The New York Times is running a story about a document prepared by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center (the coordinating nerve centre of Britain’s anti-terrorism activity) in June of this year. The document was apparently furbished to the NYT by a ‘foreign security service’ and “was not disputed by four senior British officials who were asked about it”. The majority of the article is about how the document lead the UK government to downgrade the security threat level just before the bombings. It also, however, contains this curious sentance:

“Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.”

ie the UK government’s own anti-terrorism coordinators were saying it.

EU Enthusiasm Study

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According to a new study released today by the commission, the EU’s image amongst its citizens is deteriorating and confidence in EU institutions is decreasing:

The EU’s image is worst amongst British (28%), Finnish (30%) and Austrian (30%) citizens but best amongst the Irish (68%), Italians (63%) and Luxembourgers (58%).

Support for the thorny issue of further enlargement lies at 50% in the EU – a slight decrease since 2004 (53%) – but the figures show a large discrepancy between old and new member states.

Forty-eight percent of EU citizens from old member states support Croatia’s membership of the bloc with the number reaching 72% amongst the new member states.

Croatia is followed by acceding countries Bulgaria (46% support among old member states and 70% amongst the ten new members) and Romania (43%, and 58% respectively).

Turkey has gathered the least support particularly amongst the old member states (32%) and picking up 48% support from new member state citizens.

Garzon Gets His Man

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One day it might be worth writing a post on the life and times of Judge Balthasar Garzon. Today we might just note that he finally has ‘his man’: the US have just agreed to hand-over Lahcen Ikassrien to Spanish authorities. Ikassrien is being held in Guantanamo, but it is important to note that Garzon wants to interview him, not so much about the Madrid bombings, as about the Spanish end of the 11 September operation.