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GUARDIAN Fri, 06 Jan 2012 20:00:11 GMT
The former democracy campaigner's politics may have changed but his instinct for self-preservation has remained
The first time most Hungarians heard of Viktor Orbán was in June 1989 when, having just turned 26, he made a tub-thumping speech at the reburial of a former prime minister, ordering Soviet tanks out of Hungary and demanding free and democratic elections. Now 48 and holding the office of prime minister for the second time, his politics may have changed, but he has not lost his talent for dissent, thumbing his nose at the IMF and flirting with a veto at the last euro crisis summit in Brussels.
Those who know Orbán, above, say he is a highly intelligent man with a clear position on everything. "For Viktor Orbán, there is either black or white, night or day. You are either with him or against him," said one EU diplomat. Others report him to be a charming conversationalist who always knows his opponent's weakness. "He has an answer for everything," says one person who met....
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GUARDIAN Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:25:10 GMT
The Budapest protests must be heeded in a region walking a line between budding democracy and revisionist nationalism
On Monday evening friends emailed me photos from the most recent anti-government demonstration in Budapest. It had been a memorable day in more than one way: on this 2nd of January 2012, the new, "unconstitutional" constitution of Hungary – now deprived of its title of "republic" – came into force, having been whisked through parliament at breakneck speed and with breathtaking disregard for the democratic principles on which the member states of the European Union are supposed to be founded.
But it was also the day when the opposition came out in force and unity, bridging political rifts, to protest against a constitution that has been devised by a single political party to cement its control of an entire country and its institutions.
The demonstrators – 50,000, 70,000, possibly as many as 100,000, depending on the source – gathered on Pest's elegant central.....
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ECONOMIST Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:47:31 GMT
GYÖRGY MATOLCSY, Hungary’s economy minister, wanted a war with the International Monetary Fund, and now he has got one.Officials from the fund and the European Union have broken off preliminary talks with the Hungarian government over a financial safety net for the country. Why? Because the parliament, where the ruling Fidesz party has a two-thirds majority, has accelerated plans to change the management of the central bank and to expand membership of the monetary council, which sets interest rates.MPs are also considering a new rule to fix tax and debt policies within the constitution. As a "cardinal law" it would require a two-thirds majority to change, thus limiting future governments' room for manoeuvre.The new legislation could “undermine the independence of the central bank”, said Amadeo Altafaj-Tardio, the EU’s monetary-affairs spokesman. The IMF echoed these sentiments, stating that an independent central bank is “one of the cornerstones of sound economic management”. The......
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GUARDIAN Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:14:05 GMT
The former president of the Czech Republic was the epitome of a dissident because he persisted in his struggle, patiently, non-violently, with dignity and wit
Hands whirring like twin propellers, Václav Havel moved with his characteristic hurried, short-paced walk across the mirrored foyer of the Magic Lantern theatre, the headquarters of the velvet revolution. The slightly stooped, stocky figure, dressed in jeans and sweater, stopped for a moment, began to speak about some "important negotiations"; scarcely three sentences in, he was swept away. He gave an apologetic smile over his shoulder, as if to say "what can a man do?"
Often Havel talked as if he was an ironic critic watching the theatre of life, but there in the Magic Lantern, in 1989, he became the lead actor and director of a play that changed history.
Havel was a defining figure of late 20th-century Europe. He was not just a dissident; he was the epitome of the dissident, as we came to understand that novel term. He...
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ECONOMIST Mon, 21 Nov 2011 02:05:15 GMT
SOMETIMES things become so odd in the Balkans that once ceases to wonder why anymore. In Zubin Potok in northern Kosovo, Serbs have built a big roadblock. It consists of buses and trucks full of gravel and topped with barbed wire, intended to stop KFOR, the NATO-led peacekeeping force, from cutting a road used by Serbs. One bus is decorated with posters of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader now on trial in The Hague for genocide. Serb men on duty are camped on one side of the road warming themselves at a brazier, while German troops are standing guard on top of the barricade built by the Serbs, keeping an eye on them.The Zubin Potok barricade was built on September 18th. It is one of 18 roadblocks now dotting Serbian-controlled northern Kosovo. If you come from the Albanian-controlled south a large mound of gravel now cuts the main bridge in the divided city of Mitrovica for vehicles. However, Mitrovica’s second bridge remains open, and the gravel on the main bridge is.....
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ECONOMIST Fri, 18 Nov 2011 17:08:32 GMT
TRADE spats in the Balkans can be the harbingers of war. In 1906 the Austro-Hungarian Empire decided to ban Serbia’s pork exports. The little remembered episode, called the Pig War, was one of a number of such rows in the years leading up to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the cataclysm that followed. So readers may like to take note of the looming Egg War between Bosnia and the European Union, or more specifically Croatia.When Croatia joins the EU on 1 July 2013 its frontiers with Slovenia and Hungary will become unimportant. But its other borders (with Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia) will then be the EU’s external boundary. Two of these don't matter much: Serbia’s border with Croatia is relatively short and Montenegro’s is tiny, basically one road where Croatia’s tail tapers out. Morever, in both Serbia and Montenegro the system of government is clear. When those countries export dairy products, eggs and meat, (including Serbia's specialty pork), will all have a..
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GUARDIAN Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:15:01 GMT
We talk of remembering the first world war, but we don't recall the lessons it taught us
So, at the going down of the sun, we remember them. But then night falls. The last warrior who fought in 1914-18 is dead. No longer there to wear a poppy, to stand at the Cenotaph on Sunday; no longer able to provide a link to the conflict that we thoughtlessly call the great war, the one that was really the Great Carnage: nearly 900,000 young Britons killed in the trenches, nearly 1.4 million French and over 2 million Germans lying close by, shot, bayoneted, blown to smithereens.
Add in, of course, the Austrians, the Turks, the Romanians, Americans, Australians, Indians and so many, many more. Never forget the inevitable millions of Russians, the Serbs, the Bulgarians, the Italians. The numbers are so huge, so monstrous, that they cannot be clinically calculated. Ten million men and women in uniform slaughtered? Five million or more civilians caught up in the struggle? How do you count the...
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ECONOMIST Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:18:01 GMT
Milic is coming to a screen near you IN THE centre of Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, a gleaming piece of Arabic script adorns the top of a new building. This is the logo of Al Jazeera, the Qatari network that has changed the face of television news since it was founded 15 years ago. Inside the building, carpenters and technicians are putting the finishing touches to the offices. But this is not just another foreign bureau.Al Jazeera’s Balkan service goes live on November 11th. This will be the second foreign-language station the network has opened, after Al Jazeera English in 2006. But what language is it? Journalists will be broadcasting in “their” language, say station bosses. This tongue used to be called Serbo-Croatian; now it goes by a number of names: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian or Montenegrin. (Think New Zealand, Scottish and American versions of English.) The target audience for the channel will be the former Serbo-Croatian speaking regions of the ex-Yugoslavia. But plenty....
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GUARDIAN Sun, 06 Nov 2011 00:07:41 GMT
Men from eastern Europe are the latest victims of gangs who are promising jobs in Britain but delivering a life of virtual slavery
Gedimanas Rekesius was sitting in a park sipping a coffee when he answered the question that made him a modern-day slave. "Are you working?," the middle-aged man asked, as he joined Rekesius on a bench outside the Medical Academy hospital in Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city.
Rekesius's interrogator must have known the answer. It was the middle of the afternoon in chilly late April and Rekesius was missing four fingers from his right hand, the result of an accident while working in a sawmill. No, he was not working. "You go to England, I'll get you a job and accommodation," the man promised.
"I was unemployed at that moment and I thought, 'I will take the risk, maybe everything will be fine'," Rekesius said. Only now, six months after he made the decision to travel via minibus from Lithuania to London, is it clear how naive Rekesius........
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GUARDIAN Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:09:05 GMT
End to EU's visa restrictions for 10m Serbs prompts move but failure to arrest Ratko Mladic remains obstacle to process
Serbia is expected to submit its formal application for EU membership todayin the latest move to shed its pariah status after the conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.
President Boris Tadic will submit the request in Sweden, which holds the 27-member bloc's rotating presidency, joining the queue that includes the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia and Montenegro, as well as Iceland and Turkey.
In an indication of improving ties between Brussels and Belgrade, the EU last week dropped a 20-year-old visa requirement for Serbia, as well as for Montenegro and Macedonia, affecting some 10 million people.
The EU visa requirement remains in place for Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania, but it will be reviewed next year.
Citizens of former Yugoslavia had enjoyed free travel to other European countries in the past, but visa requirements and fees were introduced as the federation disintegrated amid war in 1991. The policy caused much resentment as residents were forced to wait in long queues at EU embassies.
Serbian membership, however, still faces considerable obstacles, not least its glaring failure to arrest Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb General wanted for genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal.
The ratification of the EU's pre-membership stabilisation and association agreement is on hold because the Netherlands wants to see Mladic first extradited to the Hague tribunal. Tadic, the leading reformist figure in Serbia acknowledged the application was only a start.
"It is a completely different matter whether we will get the candidate status before we complete our co-operation with the Hague tribunal," he said yesterday.
Some analysts say it could take as long as 10 years for Serbia to become a member of the EU and that the visa-free travel regime is compensation for the long wait.
Only one former Yugoslav republic – Slovenia which joined in 2004 – is in the EU. Croatia, which became a member of Nato in April, hopes to conclude its EU entry talks in 2010 and join in 2012. Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro have already applied for membership but have yet to start talks.
Serbia
European Union
Ratko Mladic
Mark Tran
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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GUARDIAN Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:06:19 GMT
"Twenty eight years and 91 days!" said the elated east Berliner I met walking up the Friedrichstrasse soon after the wall was breached. On the day the Berlin Wall went up, 13 August 1961, his parents had wanted to go to the cinema in west Berlin, but he, then aged 11, had been too tired. Next morning, they awoke to the sound of tanks. In all his adult life, he had never been to the western half of his own city. He told me how moved he was by an improvised poster that read "only today is the war really over".
Remember, remember, the 9th of November: the night that ended the short 20th century. If I say "the fall of the wall", what image do you see in your mind's eye? An exultant crowd dancing atop a wall covered in colourful graffiti? But those were almost all westerners dancing on the wall, and they'd climbed up from the western side, which was the one covered in graffiti.
This night, in its essence, was not about them. It was about the men and women who for more than 28 years would have been mowed down before they got within graffiti-aerosol distance of the wall from the eastern side. (An East German had been shot dead while trying to escape to the west as late as February 1989. His name was Chris Gueffroy. The frontier guards who killed him got a medal and a reward of 150 East German marks.)
This night was about the East Germans who, by turning out in such numbers at the frontier crossings, transformed what was supposed to be a communist regime's planned, controlled opening of the frontier into a triumph of people-power and a festival of freedom.
So here is the image to remember: An east Berliner appears through the frontier crossing, amid the elated crowd. Pale-faced, wearing some kind of a padded jacket, his breath is visible as a frosty plume against the cold night sky. He has just got through. He has probably never set foot in the west in his life. Incredible. Unglaublich!
He sees the television camera, looks straight at it, and shouts just one word: Freiheit! Then he is gone. In that instant, the word "freedom", so much devalued and abused, recovers all its pristine, primal force.
That is the moment. That is the image. It's the late 20th century version of the prisoners' chorus from Beethoven's Fidelio; of Delacroix's painting of Liberté, her right breast boldly bared, leading the people in the French revolution.
The first frontier crossing to be opened was at Bornholmerstrasse, on a bridge that goes over the S-Bahn, the overground city railway. My friend Werner Krätschell, a pastor of the East German protestant church which did much to shelter the East German opposition, was among the early ones to come across. It was soon after 11pm. The frontier guards put a stamp in his ID card, across his photograph. He checked with them that he could come back.
No, they replied, that stamp means you are emigrating permanently. He had left two young children at home, so he tried to turn round his car, to go back. But just as he was trying to turn round, in the narrow frontier crossing leading on to the bridge, a frontier soldier came running up and shouted to his colleague: "Comrade, a new order! They can come back." So Werner drove on into the west. A few minutes later, about 11.30pm, the guards opened the barriers and just let everyone through.
The other day, Werner rummaged around in his cellar to find his old ID card, and showed me the stamp across the photo: 9.11.O>23 – that is, at or after 2300 hrs. If you had to point to a single place and moment when the Berlin Wall was truly breached, it would be Bornholmerstrasse shortly after 11pm. As Werner turned his steering wheel, world history turned. I will be celebrating with him in Berlin this evening.
Later that night, a young East German scientist called Angela Merkel walked across the same crossing. Now the chancellor of united Germany, she will do the same again this afternoon, accompanied by a group of East German opposition activists, Mikhail Gorbachev, Lech....
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Has the UN learned lessons of Bosnian sex slavery revealed in Rachel Weisz film?
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Romania's "Meatball King" dies, his fame lives on
EU Gets Tougher With Hungary
European Union Gives Hungary an Ultimatum
Official: US bomb suspect met Kosovo radicals
Official: Fla. bomb suspect met radical Islamists in Kosovo
EU Takes Harder Line on Hungary
AP Exclusive: Alleged bomb plotter's kin shocked
Hungary Defends Central Bank Law
Why Hungary's New Constitution Could Be Bad for Europe
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Investors Losing Confidence in Hungary
VIDEO: Hungarian protests over constiution
Hungarians Protest New Constitution En Masse
Nervous Investors Sour on Hungary
Hungary rally over constitution
Thousands protest over new Hungarian constitution
Thousands Protest Over New Hungarian Constitution
Thousands protest against Hungary government
