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ECONOMIST Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:18:10 GMT
BY THE standards of past summits, European leaders finished early—shortly before 10pm on January 30th. And by the acrimonious standards of past gatherings, notably last month’s bust-up with Britain, this event was uneventful, even amicable. Agreement was reached on the fiscal compact, the new treaty to toughen budget rules, in record time: less than two months.A final row between France and Poland over who gets to attend which summits was resolved with a complicated compromise. This involves variable configurations of meetings involving 17 countries (the euro zone), 23 (the largely-forgotten Euro-Plus Pact, 25 (the signatories of the fiscal compact), 27 (all EU members states, still in charge of the single market) and 28 (involving soon-to-join Croatia). It shows that, at the very least, European leaders can negotiate rapidly when they have the political will to do so—and when the British and the Czechs decide to step aside. Whether electorates will be quite so quick to shackle........
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ECONOMIST Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:56:58 GMT
A RECENT survey by the French research institute IFOP found that in the eyes of the French, Angela Merkel represents those values that are commonly associated with Germans (serious, disciplined, hard-working, sincere and so on). The study, which was commissioned by the German embassy in Paris, also reported that 62% of respondents thought that France should learn from German economic and social policies—although I am not sure about the framing of that question in French.Ms Merkel herself disagrees with such stereotyping, as she reveals in a forthcoming interview with several European newspapers. However, she seems to agree that the rest of Europe should learn from Germany’s past economic policies. According to a preview of the interview (auf Deutsch) by the German Süddeutsche Zeitung, she argues that fiscal prudence, while a necessary prerequisite for more solidarity, is not enough. Troubled euro-zone countries also need to tackle reforms like improving labour market flexibility, and..
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GUARDIAN Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:29:00 GMT
It's taken 20 years to reach the screen, but this glorious tale of love and war has been worth the wait
A man with a tin helmet and a faraway empty look stands amid the madness, the mud, and the misery of the western front, northern France, 1916. Suddenly the screen brightens, comes alive. There are trees, leaves, water, light, elegantly dressed women and chortling pheasants. We're still in northern France, just a few miles from where we were before, but we've gone back in time, to 1910. The same man is there, no helmet, younger and more focused, less tarnished.
That's how it goes in Birdsong (BBC1, Sunday); we yo-yo backwards and forwards between Claude Monet and Siegfried Sassoon. The war scenes are extraordinary – a meticulous portrayal of life in the trenches. Perhaps you don't get as great a sense of the scale of what's going on as you might have done if Sebastian Faulks's novel had been given the big-screen, multi-million dollar Hollywood treatment. But this adaptation by...
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