The fraught task of forming the Grand Coalition in Germany, with pieces falling off it on the way, is the main focal point of comments in the German press. Writing in Die Welt (2/11), Roger Köppel points out: “ The German political apparatus betrays the signs of a mad house. The grand coalition is losing its own leaders. […] What is worth noting is the degree of personal presumption at the basis of the angry reactions. However, the events are also symptomatic of a country whose political class certainly does not suffer from excessively having its feet firmly on the ground. There is little trust in the people. The party leaders follow the stimuli of their apparatuses more than the duties of forming the government. The almost-chancellor Merkel is currently moving behind the scenes in a negation of leadership. The German electors […] are following with justified fear of the future how one of the most powerful economies in the world is slowly going to pieces because of mistaken recipes“. “ Governing is not enough“, warns Stephan Hebel in the Frankfurter Rundschau, commenting on the situation of the SPD (junior partner in the coalition): “ In the chaos of recent days an objective dilemma is especially reflected in the SPD: as a party in the government coalition it must on the one hand act within the very narrow constraints offered by … the sectors in which Stoiber and Müntefering had reached an agreement. […] On the other, Social Democracy urgently has a need for new certainties about its own political profile as moderate left, alternative to the entire Union and to the parties of the far left and the Greens. This need is imposed by the prospect of preparing a capacity to govern a left-wing majority in the years ahead. It’s a difficult dilemma to handle“. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (3/11) analyses, in turn, the situation of the CSU after Stoiber’s decision not to participate in the government: “ With his unhappy tactic concerning the question whether and on what conditions he could enter a Merkel government, Stoiber has also damaged the prestige of his party and its influence in the Union. And this is something for which the CSU will not even forgive its own President. Stoiber’s career is assuming almost tragic connotations. The man who had almost become chancellor has restored the CSU in Bavaria to a majority of the order of sixty percent. At the height of his career he could have become the first federal president of the CSU. He also reflected for a long time on whether he should accept the offer made to him to fill the post of President of the European Commission. But nothing has harmed him more that his to and fro between Berlin and Munich“. Writing in the Italian daily Avvenire (3/11) Luigi Geninazzi signs an editorial on the political situation in Germany under the title “ Germany, risk of paralysis. Truly dumbfounding“. “ The Grosse Koalition is falling apart even before it has properly got going writes Geninazzi -. It’s war of everyone against everyone, a no-holds-barred contest that is taking place amid frustrated ambitions and puerile spite, a spectacle we would never have dreamt of seeing on the German scene“. “ Sarkozy would like to be invited to Lourdes by the Bishops” is the curious title chosen by La Croix (02/11) to describe the meeting of the French Minister of the Interior with journalists of the religious media, during which he expressed this hope of being able to participate in the next assembly of the French Bishops’ Conference. “ But he added I don’t know if they are ready to take this risk“. What’s at stake are the reform of the law of 1905 (separating Church and State), “ the modalities of relations between the communities and cults, the articulation between religious and cultural associations and the tax regime of the recognized cults“. In his editorial in The Times (1/11), under the title “ The Mullahs want Iran to become a psychiatric hospital“, David Aaronovitch says that “ the problem of Ahmadinejad is that his Iran will fail. What he wants is a nation like a psychiatric hospital in which the patients are kept calm by telling them when they must eat, what they must eat, what they must watch, when it’s time to go to bed, how to have relations with the opposite sex and when to take medicine. It’s incredibly boring and not in the least dynamic“. The columnist’s response to this situation consists “ in offering to Iranian youth every possible opportunity to get to know the outside world: places in our colleges, work permits in our factories, cultural contracts of every kind. We ought to encourage visits to Iran. We ought to become love-bombs to take the Mullahs out of the Stone Age“. “The great European contradiction” is the title of the editorial signed by the sociologist Ignacio Sotelo in the Spanish daily El Paìs del 30/10. He refers to the debate on respect for human rights at the present time, also in relation to the issue of immigration. The situation of extreme poverty of the third world, especially in Africa, that is forcing so many people to emigrate, conflicts, according to Sotelo, with the contradictory attitude of the Europeans: they are “fierce defenders of human rights, including that of the free circulation of persons observes the editorialist but the application of these same rights would mean jeopardizing the prosperity and security of our citizens. No one dares to ask for the use of force to guarantee the inviolability of the frontiers, but very few are willing to permit the arrival of an avalanche of Africans”. One can understand, therefore, argues Sotelo, “why Africans are indignant about the hypocrisy of the Europeans” and “the great contradiction that imbues Christian culture”. “Ever since its Christian origins he concludes the life of Europe has been characterised by the contradiction between the principle of love, which implies the maximum equality between all human beings, and the fact that societies can only function if asymmetrical: a contradiction that survives today in the secularised form of human rights”. ———————————————————————————————————– Sir Europa (English) N.ro assoluto : 1427 N.ro relativo : 76 Data pubblicazione : 04/11/05
