“The euro overtakes the dollar, growth below 3%”. That’s the front-page headline of Le Monde (17/7), which thus hails the euro’s “overtaking” of the American currency, against a general background of the “collapse” of stock exchanges throughout the world. Inside the paper, the front-page story is analyzed at length: “The weakening of the dollar vis-à-vis the major currencies as a whole, enabled the euro on 15 July to return to the level of parity with the dollar”, comment Eric Leser and Adrien de Tricornot, who explain that the American economy “is threatened by ‘banalization’ (…). The driving forces of the 1990s. the investments and the new technologies, have been replaced by domestic consumption, by the real estate sector, by public aid in the sectors in difficulty such as steel and agriculture and by State expenditures (…). Since the economy no longer entices foreign capital, these foreign deficits will become insupportable”. “‘One-stage victory for the euro”, is the front page headline carried by La Croix of 16/7. The French daily stresses: “For the first time in two years, the euro yesterday reached parity with the dollar. The European currency thus demonstrates that it enjoys the confidence of the monetary markets, but its appreciation adds to the cost of exports for the twelve countries that have adopted it”. “The parity achieved yesterday observes Sebastien Maillard puts an end to several days of neck-and-neck competition with the dollar. It’s also a proud comeback for the European currency that, deprived of its sudden appreciation at the end of June, had especially won a reputation as an undervalued currency”. The French Catholic daily, on the same day, welcomed the just-announced appointment of Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi as the new archbishop of Milan: “Cardinal Tettamanzi writes Yves Pitette occupies a central position in the Italian Church”, especially thanks “to his public pronouncements that reveal a man who is always close to people and their problems and, as he himself wrote in the letter to sent to the Milanese following the announcement of his appointment, attentive to the dignity of man, ‘of each and every man, beginning with the least, the poor, the sick, the suffering and the despairing, those discriminated against and those whose sacred rights are being violated'”. The recent international conference on HIV/AIDS in Barcelona is one of the main issues treated by the German press. Writing in the Frankfurter Rundschau of 13/7, Michael Emmrich comments: “ Aids is not under control because the powerful of this earth have permitted it. But if political action does not finally begin to change the world, it will be left to Aids to do so“. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) of 13/7 comments on the new law on immigration: according to the author of the article, the intentions of government and opposition “ coincide in various respects“. Nonetheless, “ what is really wanted may be inferred from the provisions for the law’s implementation“, and “ controversy is already raging on the question of integration, on the significance of which everyone had been roughly in agreement“. The Süddeutsche Zeitung of 16/7 publishes an article by Heidrun Graupner on the latest scandal surrounding animal feeds containing hormones: “ At the end of the food chain is the human being, a consumer without a lobby.[…] So long as we have to swallow the residues of birth control pills or antibiotics in the meat and sausage we eat, no one can speak of the protection of the consumer“. The Spiegel no. 29 of 15/7 publishes among other things a report by Annett Conrad, Markus Dettmer, Ulrich Deupmann and Michael Sauga on the economic crisis in the former DDR. “ No chancellor of no party can significantly diminish the record unemployment in East Germany in the near future. Neither the politicians nor the experts know what to do. The one recipe is: to invest, wait and hope for at least another twenty years“. These are “ unpopular” remarks, admits the article, “ but the politicians know the truth. And that’s why, instead of making convinced proclamations, they ought to appeal to people to resist“.
