Category Archives: A Fistful Of Euros

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Dresden.

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The other half of Dresden has voted today. Early reports (based on 60 out of 190 precincts) by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen for ZDF television indicate that voters learnt a lot about the intricacies of the German personalised proportional representation electoral system, by giving the local CDU candidate, Andreas Lämmel, sufficient “first votes” to win a direct mandate but not using their “second vote” to increase the CDU’s share of vote in Saxony to the point where the party would lose a mandate in the state of Northrhine-Westfalia. Instead many seem to have voted for the Liberals – the party apparently received about 17% of the votes.

The current projection would lead to the following Bundestag: CDU/CSU – 226 mandates, SPD – 222, FDP – 61, Linkspartei.PDS – 54, The Greens – 51.

This result would likely weaken Chancellor Schroeder in his struggle to remain Chancellor even in a grand coalition of CDU and SPD. But as nothing fundamental has changed, it is too early to say what will happen after Germany’s national holiday tomorrow. Still, given that Schröder was able to interpret the a-little-better-than-expected result of his party and the much-worse-than-expected result of the CDU and their Chancellor candidate Angela Merkel as some kind of plebiscite in his favor, voters in Dresden have certainly weakened this argument.

And speaking of Eurovision

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Just a quick update on Croatia’s EU candidacy.

Eight countries have signed a letter to British PM Tony Blair supporting Croatia’s membership. The letter was presented to Blair — who currently holds the rotating EU Presidency, and will until January 1 — in the recent confence at Newport, in Wales.

The signing countries were Austria, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
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Lovely Rita?

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Well with all due apologies to the beatles Rita isn’t exactly as lovely as she seemed. Now she’s past her prime the insurance companies amongst others are busily counting the cost.

And on top of the obvious comes news that Rita really is number one: according to the FT she “has caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the US and as far away as the Middle East, initial damage assessments show”.

So just to get things straight: the temporary supply bottleneck just got a little longer (this time my apologies to Ry Cooder) and finding more oil to raise output capacity just got a little harder. I haven’t got an envelope handy, but I don’t think I need to do too many complicated calculations to work out that if this is for real then oil prices can stay higher for longer and global growth will, as a consequence, be just a touch lower.

Meantime Econbrowser James Hamiliton explains why you shouldn’t be counting on getting too much relief from oil shale.

Another Slice of Turkey

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Actually, it’s more like a slab. But from the New York Times. It’s tasty and full of all sorts of facts and anecdotes that are probably very good for you.

The E.U.’s rationale for welcoming Turkey into its councils and its economic sphere used to be a matter of “strategic rent,” compensation for its position at a crossroads of continents and military blocs. Today, says Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Bilgi University, what Europe sees in Turkey is “an example that a modern, secular democratic state and capitalist society is compatible with a Muslim population.” Europe has come to value Turkey not just for where it is but for what it is.

And of course the occasional provocative opinion.

Turkey Under More Scrutiny

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The EU’s tug of war with Turkey over human rights continues. This weekend attention has been focused on an academic conference held at Istanbul Bilgi University to discuss issues arising from and surrounding the massacre of Armenians which took place following the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

The most surprising thing in fact may have been that the conference was held at all. As the Chronicle of Higher Education Reports:
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Switzerland Says Yes

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Swiss voters said yes in a referendum this weekend to extending an agreement with the EU on the free movement of workers to include the EU-10 ‘new accession’ members (and here). Well sort-of. They voted by 56% to 44% to gradually ease restrictions on the working rights of citizens from these countries so that by 2011 (the same year as France and Germany) they will enjoy equality of access with those from other EU countries. (The only EU states to have opened their labour markets to the new members to date are the UK, Sweden and Ireland).
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Another Grand Coaltion: The Sun of Jamaica.

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Over on Crooked Timber, Henry Farrell – I think somewhat accidently, because I get the impression he believes Germans do *NOT* want to change their distorted labour incentive and tax systems – writes about the fundamental reason for the result of last Sunday’s election.
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Lurker day

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We don’t do “memes” here at fistful, but this is too cool an idea to pass up. Today apparently is Lurker day, which means readers who never or rarely make comments tell us who they are, where the’re from and what they like (or don’t like) about fistful, etc.

Chris Clarke’s idea, via CT.

…OK, yesterday, but we do things our own way here in Europe.

Orange, Yes, But Which One?*

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When we last looked in, Viktor Yushchenko had been inaugurated, Viktor Yanukovych had grudgingly conceded, and orange was the color for all would-be world-changers.

Unfortunately, while we weren’t looking, Ukraine’s cabinet was collapsing into in-fighting and neglecting to do the things that people put them in office for. On the positive side, an investigation into the Gongadze affair was making, you’ll pardon the word, headway.
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