How the world sees Greece
NEW YORK, March 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Strategic Analysis of Fleet Vehicle Leasing Market in Greece: Fleet and Leasing Business is Expected to Grow in the Mid-term, Driven by High Demand for Corporate Cars and Car RentalsThis research provides a detailed ...
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… only a limited budget. “The Greek state needs money, more support … (£540 million) in aid for Greece and other countries struggling with … the refugee camp in Idomeni, Greece The words “Open the Borders … refugees are arriving on the Greek islands, so that’s 14 …
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At a single border point, the Idomeni crossing between Greece and Macedonia, between 12,000 and 15,000 stranded people are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, he said. Some 170 people were allowed to pass overnight and additional small groups were ...
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Children hang laundry on a fence as other queue for food in the makeshift migrant camp at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the Greek village of Idomeni, yesterday. The EU has proposed €700mn in emergency aid for Greece and other states as it began to ...
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As the number of refugees in a packed refugee camp in the village of Idomeni, Greece grows every day, living conditions there test the residents' ...
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GREEK banks are reporting earnings this week, and on Wednesday HSBC HSBC 2.34 % gave the sector a boost with a round of “buy” ratings.
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THESSALONIKI: Crowd trouble forced Wednesday's Greek Cup semi-final first leg between PAOK and holders Olympiakos to be suspended. With Olympiakos 2-1 ahead in the 89th minute, referee Andreas Pappas stopped the contest at Toumba Stadium when PAOK fans ...
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Newswise — Since it was first imported in the 1980’s on a large scale, Greek yogurt has quickly grown to a very popular healthy snack in the United States. Many consumers have wondered what Greek yogurt is all about and if it’s really much healthier ...
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According to a health survey conducted by the Hellenic Statistical Authority, the number of smokers in Greece has decreased greatly. The Institute of Public Health attributes the results to the fact that “prevention is one of the most important factors ...
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The Spanish elections in December provided proof, if anyone needed it, that the fight over the economic and social future of Europe is far from over. For the first time in three decades, each of two major parties that had ruled Spain since its incomplete transition to democracy was unable to form a governing coalition. The incumbent right-wing Popular Party (PP)--with roots in Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship--remained the largest party in the parliament but saw its representation shrink by a third. The center-left Socialist Workers Party (PSOE), which had lost its majority to the PP in 2011 due to its support for austerity, fared even worse. Their defecting voters went mostly to Podemos, a new left party, less than two years old, which grew out of the mass protests against austerity. Podemos surprised pollsters and most of the media by winning 20.7 percent of the vote, just 1.3 points behind the PSOE. The PP won 28.7 percent, and a new party called Ciudadanos (Citizens), which some have called "the Podemos of the right," got 13.9 percent. The political upheaval that broke up the two-party system in Spain is part of an ongoing process that has toppled more than 20 European governments since the world recession of 2009. GDP for the 19 countries of the eurozone is estimated to have grown by 1.5 percent in 2015; some may have thought that such feeble economic recovery and the capitulation of the Greek government to European demands last July marked the beginning of a solution to Europe's economic malaise. This would still leave a host of other problems, both real and exaggerated: the migration crisis, terrorism, the UK's proposed referendum on EU membership. But, the economic problem is at the core of most of the others, and it can make them considerably more difficult to resolve. The influx of even a million immigrants into a European population of more than 503 million would not be as politically volatile if the region were not also facing long-term mass unemployment and economic insecurity. The economic problem faces two major obstacles to its resolution: first, the loss of national economic sovereignty and democracy, which would allow, and in some cases force, governments to change course in the face of long-term economic failure, and second, the false narratives through which the European economy is generally presented to the public, and thereby widely misunderstood. _This op-ed was originally published by Boston Review. Read the rest here. Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and the president of Just Foreign Policy. He is also the author of the new book "Failed: What the 'Experts' Got Wrong About the Global Economy" (2015, Oxford University Press)._ -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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The success of Greece’s economic reform program is in jeopardy due to the delays in its first review, for which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is mainly responsible, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos said on Wednesday, during a hearing in the ...
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Greece is preparing to help as many as 150,000 stranded migrants as international pressure on Balkan countries led to Macedonia briefly opening its border for just a few hundred refugees. "In my opinion, we have to consider the border closed," Greek ...
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Olympiakos players run to avoid a flare during a Greek Cup semifinal match between PAOK and champion … View gallery Riot police detain a fan during a Greek Cup semifinal match between PAOK and champion Olympiakos at … View gallery Riot police detain a ...
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A muddy, makeshift camp for refugees on the border of Greece and Macedonia is likely to explode in size in the next few weeks as tens of thousands of desperate migrants try to make their way to western Europe, humanitarian groups told The Telegraph.
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The European Union announced plans Wednesday for 700 million euros ($760 million) in emergency aid to Greece as the economically struggling country copes with an influx of migrants stranded in hopes of gaining entry into Europe. The EU's Christos ...
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The European Union has announced unprecedented plans to provide Greece and other member states with 700 million euros ($1 billion) in emergency humanitarian aid to cope with the migrant crisis. EU announces $1 billion migrant aid plan Greece expected to ...
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ATHENS (Reuters) - Three Syrian children holding balloons follow Constantina Tsouklidou who is handing out toys and food to refugees sheltering by the hundreds in a ferry passenger terminal at the Greek port of Piraeus. "I don't have an income but I have a child," she said before handing out another balloon, while her sister distributed milk. Tsouklidou, 50, is one of thousands of Greeks volunteering their time to assist refugees and migrants stranded in Greece. She is also one of the legions of Greece's unemployed. Greece, whose economy was struggling even before Europe's migrant crisis and which has received more than 240 billion euros since its first international bailout in 2010, is in its eighth year of recession. More than a million people are unemployed, according to statistics agency ELSTAT, which put the latest jobless rate at 24.6 percent. "Half of the Greek population has to a smaller or bigger extent assisted refugees. We are not like central Europe," Tsouklidou told Reuters, referring to border closures through the Balkans. At least 25,000 people were stranded in Greece on Tuesday, their journey to wealthier central and northern European nations blocked by the failure of European nations to agree a common policy to deal with one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades. Austria and countries along the Balkans migration route have imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross. Many of the migrants hope to reach Germany. Macedonian police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of migrants who stormed the border from Greece on Monday. "I am worried about what will happen if people keep coming in and the borders remain closed," said Kyriakos Sarantidis, 65, who donates time cooking for refugees from a minivan parked at Pireaus port. Greece's migration minister said on Sunday the number of migrants trapped in Greece could reach up to 70,000 in coming weeks if the borders remain sealed, as refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and North Africa continue to arrive in Greece, mainly on small boats from Turkey. At Victoria Square, a downtrodden area of central Athens where many homeless refugees have converged, Greeks turned up in droves with bags of food, fruit and medicine after seeing images on television of families sleeping in the open, on cardboard boxes, on chilly winter nights. Eleftheria Baltatzi, a 73-year-old pensioner, was one of the many people who saw images of sick children on television and turned up at the square with medicine and food. "I made toasted cheese sandwiches," she said. "We also have people who are hungry and need help, but these people have a bigger need." (Editing by Janet Lawrence) -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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One account has been written, in this case by George Steiner who wrote a book in 1981 called "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H," in which Jewish Nazi hunters find Adolf Hitler (A.H.) alive in the Amazon jungle thirty years after the end of World War two. The fact that Adolf Eichmann a senior Nazi officer did get away from Berlin has been proven since he was extradited from Argentina to Israel where he was hanged in 1962. The fact that some senior Nazis were able to escape from Berlin is proven by the history of Adolf Eichmann who was clearly able to escape and travel to South America. This would have involved a German transport aircraft to travel from Spain to South America. The popular accounts in Britain involve Paraguay as a destination for ex-Nazis. This is the basis behind George Steiner's novel "The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.". Steven Spielberg has also contributed to this quasi fantasy world. Spielberg has effectively used the "pen is mightier than the sword" adage in his films starring Harrison Ford as "Indiana Jones" where he pursued the Nazi government between 1931 and 1938. They were trying to seize the "Ark of the Covenant" which Hitler believed would make his army invincible. This is a more humorous side of Spielberg's work where Harrison Ford (a Jewish Actor) and his partners explored the world of Hitler's attempts to seize the Ark of the Covenant. Steven Spielberg (also Jewish) was essentially humorously putting across the Nazi government attempts to rewrite history. Spielberg then moved on to another notable work: "Schindlers list" - an epic film of over three hours in duration. This was his finest work from a Jewish perspective. The film about Schindlers list was possibly his most epic work. There is a myth about Nazis escaping to South America, although they had every reason to try and escape only one managed to do so for sure and he was caught and executed by the Israeli government. Escaping from Nazi Germany to South America was extremely difficult to do. The Luftwaffe air force had very few transport aircraft in 1945 - those that were there - the Ju-52 Junker planes could have been used in the parachute invasion of Crete to the south of Greece in Operation Mercury in 1941. It is a fantasy of the British public that the Nazis went to South America because it was very difficult to do. There may have been some aircraft still available using old Ju-52 Junkers which could be used. In the case of Adolf Eichmann they clearly were. A number of people that were in the British armed forces during the Second World War could have read stories printed by the middle brow press such as the Daily Express and the Daily Mail featuring stories regarding escaped Nazis. There is a myth that Martin Bormann also escaped to South America. These people had a strong motive to escape; their country had been over run by the allied forces and the Soviet Union. Bormann didn't escape - he probably committed suicide in Berlin although the body was not verified until 1972. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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The head of the European Stability Mechanism said on Wednesday he expected a deal on Greece's next installment of aid and urged Europe to help ...
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A European Parliament conference on minority rights in Greece turned nasty on Wednesday when MEPs from the extreme-right Golden Dawn party, backed up by shaven-headed heavies, took exception to the debate. The conference was slated to discuss the situation in Thrace, a province in northern Greece that is home to many ethnic Turks, when Lampros Fountoulis MEP shouted: “There is no Turkish minority. Go to the problems of your country, not my country.” “I am here to protect Greece.” According to a conference attendee, Fountoulis was accompanied by Eleftherios Synadinos, another Golden Dawn MEP, and heavies wearing European Parliament badges. The MEPs later distributed a letter complaining about the meeting, which they described as “despicable” and “ignorant of history.” * [Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo at the European Parliament] Also On Politico POLISH PM TO MEPS: ‘NOTHING BAD IS HAPPENING’ Maïa de La Baume * [U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi visits the Moria Refugee Camp on the island of Lesbos, Greece] Also On Politico UN REFUGEE CHIEF: DON’T TURN GREECE INTO A CAMP Giulia Paravicini Csaba Sógor, a Romanian center-right MEP representing the country’s Hungarian minority, stood up to the Greeks while other attendees sat with heads bowed. “You have to respect the rules of this Parliament. Go out now if you cannot be decent and civilized,” he shouted. The event was organized by Sógot and sponsored by the center-right European People’s Party, the Federation of Western Thrace Turks in Europe and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization. Josep Terricabras, a left-wing MEP who was present, called on European Parliament President Martin Schulz to “take measures to avoid intolerable fascist behavior of MEPs and assistants of Golden Dawn.”
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As well as the weaker global economy, Britain's referendum on its membership of the European Union, which will take place on June 23, is likely to add to uncertainty for firms and households, economists have said. The currency markets reacted to the PMI ...
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Syrians, Iraqis and Kurds plead with border guards to let them into Macedonia, as more than 10,000 refugees create bottleneck of tent cities behind them Hope springs eternal. It is what keeps young men like Muzahmen Al Turki trekking to these muddy parts.
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Watch: Aerial footage of crowded migrant camp on GREECE-Macedonia border. Thousands of migrants have become stranded in a make-shift camp on ...
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Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas today met with the Indian Ambassador to Greece, M. Manimekalai. During the talks, which took place in an excellent atmosphere, emphasis was put on the upcoming meeting of the Greece-India Joint Interministerial Committee, which is to be convened in New Delhi in November 2016. Mr. Mardas and Ms. Manimekalai stressed the need to develop the volume of bilateral trade, expressing the conviction that the bilateral meeting in November will impart fresh impetus to economic and trade cooperation between the two countries. Asked about aspects of the migration and refugee issue and the first...
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Barely 200 refugees were allowed to trickle across the Greek border into Macedonia. Around 10,000 more are waiting in a crowded tent camp on the Greek side of the frontier tonight - with no sign from authorities that they are going to be allowed to travel ...
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The UNHCR has warned of a "looming humanitarian crisis" due to Macedonia's decision to stem migration. Around 25,000 migrants are stranded in Greece after several European nations decided to block passage to refugees. Macedonian authorities on Wednesday ...
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According to GREEK police, very few people have been able to cross the border. A mere 30 passed from Greece on Monday; 70 passed between ...
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The US Embassy in Athens announced on Wednesday its support for the participation of 12 GREEK professionals at the South by Southwest Festival ...
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Greece’s “heavy industry”, which would be none other than the tourism sector, just got a boost from Internet giant Google, which recently unveiled its “Grow Greek Tourism Online” for businesses on Crete. The initiative allows tourism businesses to receive technical support from Google and also use basic tools such as Google My Business and Google AdWords […]
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A special event was held in the Greek Parliament’s Senate chamber on Wednesday the occasion of the 69th anniversary of the official raising of the Greek flag on the Dodecanese islands, a year before the formal union with the rest of Greece in 1948. The event was entitled “The Dodecanese’s Union with Greece: A historical […]
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Forecasts are predicting 40 % drop in the number of Bulgarian tourists visiting Greece over the long weekend which begins on Thursday with the celebration of Bulgaria’s national holiday (Liberation Day) and lasts until Sunday. According to figures of the ...
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[Deniz Sidour (C) hugs her daughters as they are reunited after being seperated while crossing from Turkey to Greece, on March 2, 2016, in the port of Mytilene]A Syrian refugee mother separated from five of her children while crossing from Turkey to Greece was reunited with them on Wednesday, the UN refugee agency said.
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Tirana, 2 March 2016/Independent Balkan News Agency While neighboring countries such as Greece and FYR Macedonia are facing a large wave of refugees and their growing numbers are expected to cause more concern, Albania seems not to be affected by this phenomenon. Recently there have been reports for attempts by illegal refugees who through Albania […]
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Ankara, March 2, 2016/Independent Balkan News Agency By Manolis Kostidis Ankara denies the information indicating that it puts obstacles in the negotiations on NATO operations in the Aegean, which will aim to prevent the refugee flow from Turkey. The Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgiç, referred to those publications and after denied them reiterated the […]
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Greek police said around 240 crossed on Wednesday as Macedonian border guards opened the gates for a few hours at a time. About 10,000 people remain camped at the crossing, awaiting their turn. Caroline Haga, an emergency co-ordinator for the International ...
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GREECE accused the International Monetary Fund of unreasonably delaying the disbursement of more aid to the country, saying the stance risks ...
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On a rainy day in April 1990, I journeyed to the outskirts of Warsaw to one of those functional Communist-era apartment building complexes to meet with Antoni Macierewicz. The opposition leader’s apartment contrasted sharply with its grim institutional surroundings. It was an aristocratic enclave full of books, antiques, and prints on the wall. Macierewicz himself exuded an Old World kind of charm that Polish intellectuals worked so hard to preserve during difficult times. A long-time dissident, Macierewicz had been something of a leftist in the 1970s, supporting the Revolutionary Left Movement in Chile and protesting the U.S. war in Vietnam. He was a key figure, with Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik, in the creation of the Committee for the Defense of Workers (KOR) in 1976 and then Solidarity in 1980. Over the years, however, he’d moved steadily rightward until he’d become, by 1990, a leading figure in a coalition of conservative Christian groups. These groups had cooperated with Solidarity during the 1980s. But now that Poland had put the Communist era behind it, Macierewicz was staking out a distinct political terrain for his version of clerical anti-Communism. Government policy, he told me that afternoon in 1990, should follow Church teachings, and so should instruction in public schools. The economic reforms that Poland was then undertaking were not, he argued, sufficiently anti-state, for they did not guarantee access to capital and ownership to the largest number of Poles. And the new Polish state, stripped down to its minimal functions, should make a clean break with the past to eliminate any lingering influence from former Communist functionaries. Perhaps naively, I didn’t see much of a future for Macierewicz and his Catholic nationalists. The last thing I imagined Poles wanted after 1989 was to swap one variety of political intolerance for another. Poles were overwhelmingly Catholic, of course. But church attendance was far from universal — 53 percent in 1987 — and religious zealotry was a distinctly minority passion. Meanwhile, most Polish voters were gravitating toward the middle of the political spectrum. Solidarity politicians were establishing a set of center-right parties, and the former Communists were struggling to rebrand themselves as a center-left party (though “left” and “right” meant something quite different in terms of actual policies in Poland at that time). And indeed, in the next parliamentary elections in 1991, Macierewicz’s forces in Catholic Election Action managed a mere 8.7 percent of the vote for the Sejm (though the coalition captured a bit more, 17.4 percent, for the Senate). But Macierewicz himself vaulted into the position of minister of internal affairs in 1991. The following year he released the infamous Macierewicz List, which identified 64 members of the Polish government and parliament as former secret Communist agents. Even more controversially, he accused then-president Lech Walesa of also being an informer. These claims produced immediate outrage — from those who believed that the government was unacceptably compromised as well as those who were appalled that such unvetted accusations were made public. A successful no-confidence vote in parliament led to the resignation of the government and the abrupt end of Macierewicz’s term in office. A subsequent parliamentary inquiry concluded that only six of the 64 had signed any agreements with the secret police, and Macierewicz also had to face charges of publishing state secrets. Macierewicz had established a reputation as Poland’s Ted Cruz — a firebrand willing to take down his political opponents even at the cost of his own position. But it gets worse than that. Macierewicz never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like. In the 2000s, he was still convinced that a majority of Polish diplomats were former Communist informers, earning him a skeptical appraisal in a U.S. diplomatic cable. He believed that the Russians were behind the 2010 airplane crash in Smolensk that killed then-Polish President Lech Kaczynski and many other prominent Poles on their way to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre. And, in an infamous interview with the right-wing Catholic Radio Maryja, he put in a good word for the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, adding that “Polish experience, especially in recent years, shows that there are such groups in Jewish circles who think in a cunning way and act deliberately to the detriment of, for example, Poland.” It would be nice to report that Macierewicz remains at the fringes of Polish politics, that his past actions and rhetoric have disqualified him from serving in high positions. But that would be wishful thinking. As of last December, Antoni Macierewicz is Poland’s minister of defense. READING THE TEA LEAVES Poland is frequently held up as the success story of Central Europe’s transition from Communism. It has experienced relatively steady economic growth, even during the financial crisis of 2007-8. It has implemented a successful political decentralization plan. It continues to boast a thriving civil society. But in the parliamentary elections last year, the right-wing Law and Justice Party (PiS) capitalized on widespread resentment and anger not only to come in first, but also to secure the country’s first parliamentary majority in the democratic era. As with the victory of Viktor Orban’s right-wing Fidesz party in Hungary, PiS has set about to transform the country into what Orban has famously called an “illiberal democracy.” The appointment of Macierewicz as defense minister is only the tip of the spear. Poland expert David Ost, writing in _The Nation_, argues that Poland’s PiS is pursuing > _an uncompromising revolution from above that abandons the > institutions of liberal democracy and any ethos of compromise in > favor of an unchallenged monopoly of power. The new authorities call > for a “strong” state instead of a “lawful” state, to be > guided by “Polish values” and “Christian traditions,” deeply > hostile to any political opposition, and imagining itself in a > historic battle with a Europe committed to “totalitarian” ideas > like gender equality and resettling refugees._ Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of Lech who died in the Smolensk air disaster, is the force behind PiS. He has remained in parliament to control the party while elevating the more diplomatic Beata Szydlo as prime minister and getting his attack dog, the Cruz-like Macierewicz, appointed as defense minister. Together, they are presiding over a transformation in Poland not unlike what the Tea Party would dearly like to accomplish in the United States. Let’s begin with Macierewicz and his obsessions. As an opposition politician, Macierewicz refused to accept the official version of the Smolensk air disaster, holding hearings in parliament that featured “experts” who relied on Internet photos rather than site visits. Macierewicz rejected the notion that some combination of fog and pilot error caused the Tupolev 154 plane to crash, the conclusion of the official investigations of _both_ Poland and Russia. Instead, like something out of _House of Cards_ or _Madame Secretary_, he has insisted that an explosion caused the crash and the Russians were behind it. Macierewicz’s determination to reopen an official inquiry into Smolensk is sure to aggravate the already dicey relations between Moscow and Warsaw. As importantly, it will polarize what is already a deeply divided Polish society. “Smolensk” has all the hallmarks of the “birther” movement in which facts count for a lot less than insinuation. Just as only one-third of Republican voters believe that President Obama was born in the United States, nearly one-third of Poles believe that Lech Kaczynski was assassinated. The Russians are not the only evil-doers in this drama. If the official Polish inquiry was flawed, the previous government of Donald Tusk and the Civic Platform (PO) — the chief political opposition to PiS — emerge as dangerous co-conspirators. The enemy within is the real focus of Poland’s Tea Party. For instance, Macierewicz hasundertaken a purge of the military as if it were populated by Communist-era appointees rather than officials designated by the previous center-right government. The purge included the rector of the National Defense University. The new government even went so far as to conduct a raid on NATO’s Counter-Intelligence Center of Excellence, which is based in Warsaw, to replace its head. This is how coup leaders, not democratically elected governments, go about the business of cleaning house. On military issues more generally, Macierewicz wants to nearly double the size of the Polish army, and he’d trade participation in the coalition bombings in Syria for the stationing of NATO units in Poland. If the reopening of the Smolensk inquiry doesn’t deepsix relations with Moscow, this buildup on Poland’s eastern borders will do the trick. After seething over various official efforts over the last couple decades to repair relations with Russia, Macierewicz is after nothing less than a revival of the age-old hostility between the two countries. KACZYNSKI SETTLES SCORES In the early 1990s, the politics of revenge in Central Europe were clear-cut. The new political elite took aim at the former Communists, lustrating them out of government, stripping the party of its assets, and throwing a couple of the top leaders in jail (or attempting to). But as opposition coalitions fragmented into a kaleidoscope of parties, the politics of revenge in the region became increasingly complicated. Jaroslaw Kaczynski and PiS have broadened their campaign of revenge far beyond Communism. They have scores to settle with former allies as well. Take, for instance, the campaign against Lech Walesa. The august Polish leader has always been firmly on the right side of the political spectrum. But he and the Kaczynski brothers crossed swords in the 1990s. It’s no surprise, then, that new charges of Walesa as a Communist collaborator surfaced just this month. Kaczynski and company maintain that the Solidarity movement unnecessarily compromised with the Communist Party during the transition period — keeping General Wojciech Jaruzelski as president rather than throwing him in prison, for instance, and allowing the_ nomenklatura_ to cash in on the new capitalist economy. Walesa’s collaboration in the 1970s is supposed to represent the fatal flaw of the accommodationist wing of Solidarity. The historical revisionism of PiS is part of what the Germans call _kulturkampf_, or cultural struggle. Their goal is to “purify” the country of Poles of the “worst sort,” as Kaczynski has described his opponents. In uglier days, the “worst sort” of Poles might have been Jews, who were accused of being Communists or rapacious capitalists or simply disloyal “outsiders.” Today, the enemy is a motley collection of liberals, secularists, critical intellectuals, and cosmopolitans. Poland’s Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski has warned against “a new mixing of cultures and races, a world made up of bicyclists and vegetarians, who … fight all forms of religion.” With the Communist bogeyman gone, the best that PiS can come up with is bicyclists and vegetarians? To combat these threats to Polish society, PiS began to ram through legislation in a top-down effort to remake Polish society. Like Fidesz in Hungary, PiS has first targeted the constitutional court, which represented an obstacle to its revolutionary program. PiS doesn’t have a large enough parliamentary majority to easily change the Polish constitution. So it pursued two strategies — to pack the court with its appointees and slow down its functioning by requiring two-thirds majority rulings rather than a simple majority as before. Other legislation has included a law giving the government greater surveillance powers as well as the authority to appoint the heads of public media. It’s as if Viktor Orban and Fidesz have served as unofficial advisors because PiS is following virtually the same playbook. No surprise, then, that Kacyznski met with Orban for six hours in January. And five years ago, the Polish politician declared: “Viktor Orban gave us an example of how we can win. The day will come when we will succeed, and we will have Budapest in Warsaw.” That day has come. And this time the European Union is reacting. Writes Jan-Werner Mullerin _The New York Review of Books_: > _Unlike in the case of Hungary, the European Union has reacted > quickly. Leading EU figures declared that fundamental democratic > values were threatened by Warsaw. And on January 13, the European > Commission was sufficiently concerned to open a “probe” into the > workings of the rule of law in Poland, a step that is unprecedented > in EU history._ It’s not just Poland’s internal politics that worries the EU. The Union has encountered considerable pushback from Central European countries, including Poland, about accepting their fair share of refugees coming from the Middle East. Poland, with a miniscule immigrant population, has also seen a large outflow of population over the last two decades. In other words, there’s plenty of room for newcomers. But Kaczynski has made clear that refugees are not welcome. “There are already signs of emergence of diseases that are highly dangerous and have not been seen in Europe for a long time: cholera on the Greek islands, dysentery in Vienna,” he said during the 2015 election campaign. “There is also talk about other, even more severe diseases.” This rhetoric echoes Nazi descriptions of Jews as carriers to disease. The more moderate of the anti-refugee politicians in Poland have, like Donald Trump, argued that only the Christians among the asylum-seekers should be allowed in. The success of PiS is not simply a function of the failures of the previous center-right government of Donald Tusk, who decamped in late 2014 to become the president of the European Council. Rather, as in Hungary, the Kaczynski crowd has benefited from the collapse of the left in Poland. When it was in charge, the left embraced a pro-West platform of austerity economic reforms, accession to NATO and the EU, and a (relatively) tolerant set of cultural policies. The support for “shock therapy” cost the mainstream left its base among those who have not benefitted from economic reforms. This opened up a vast opportunity for right-wing parties that have fed on anger and resentment of the “losers of transition” — farmers, industrial workers, pensioners — by offering, like the Tea Party, vaguely populist economic policies. In this Polish culture war, however, the “worst sort” of Poles are fighting back. Demonstrations have again become commonplace in Warsaw, and the liberal left is banding together in the face of the new threat. Macierewicz and the other Mad Hatters of the Polish “Tea Party” movement will no doubt do a lot of damage during their tenure in power. But perhaps, as in 1992, they will overreach and be overwhelmed by a backlash that will prove powerful enough, finally, to push Poland kicking and screaming into 21st-century Europe. Crossposted with Foreign Policy In Focus -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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Greece’s Minister for Migration Yannis Mouzalas shocked his audience today, representatives of the Greek Municipalities. Mouzalas suggested that the Refugees will stay in Greece for 2-3 years and that the Idomeni-Border to FYROM should be considered as closed. Mouzalas was speaking at the emergency meeting with the Board of the Central […]
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Slovak prime minister Robert Fico suffered a delirium attack and claimed “there will be a single hot spot and its name will be Greece.” Threatened by his opponents ahead of the upcoming elections on Sunday, the Slovak official accused Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras for having “brought the crisis upon […]
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The largest exhibition that has ever been organized in Japan, will contain Greek showpieces exclusively from Greek museums and will take place in three different locations starting in the summer of 2016. The touring exhibition “Α Journey to the Land of ...
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What is your favorite moment that made you most proud of being a GREEK member? Any of the GREEK Week or Homecoming events. Just because I like ...
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The European Commission proposed the creation of a $760 million humanitarian assistance program, mostly to accommodate tens of thousands of migrants stuck in Greece as the main migrant route into Europe is cut off.
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With numerous academic programs and advantages, going Greek has proven to be a beneficial option for improving students’ grade point averages. On average, participants in Greek life have a GPA of 3.05, while non-affiliated undergraduates have a GPA of 2.86.
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Almost 9,000 refugees and immigrants in Idomeni on Greece's northern border are trapped due to frontier restrictions implemented by neighboring Balkan countries. According to Greek police, very few people have been able to cross the border. A mere 30 ...
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Brussels (AFP) - Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos warned Wednesday that his country's massive bailout programme could fail if the EU and IMF persist in delaying the completion of a crucial review. "We haven't got endless time," Tsakalotos told ...
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Syrian refugees should be transferred directly to Germany, cutting out the countries on the European migration route, Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said Wednesday. Germany “should set a daily quota, and according to it, bring refugees directly from Greece, Turkey and Jordan to Germany,” he told the Austrian newspaper Kurier. “Austria cannot and must not become a distribution hub [for refugees].” “If Schengen is supposed to work, which we want, it can’t be that refugees from Greece come through Austria,” he said. “Every day thousands of people are waved through (Austria), and then Germany informs us that only 1,000 or 2,000 will be allowed to enter Germany.” On Tuesday, the Austrian chancellor said refugees should be processed at the EU’s external borders, mainly in Greece and Italy. Austria is not the “waiting room” for Germany, he said. * [GREECE-EUROPE-MIGRANTS] Also On Politico POLICE FIRE TEAR GAS ON MIGRANTS AT GREECE-MACEDONIA BORDER Ivo Oliveira * [BELGIUM-EU-JUSTICE-HOME-AFFAIRS-COUNCIL] Also On Politico GREECE WON’T WELCOME VISIT BY AUSTRIAN MINISTER Ivo Oliveira Asked if he believed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s claim that she has no plan B on migration, Faymann said: “I’m afraid her plan B is to continue to wave through refugees. And that’s not an acceptable plan.” The German government dismissed the Austrian suggestion. “Germany does not operate with daily quotas,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert, adding that images of refugees at the Greece-Macedonia border show how important it is that European countries work together.
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This is due to failures in the implementation of the agreement controlling the readmission of migrants from GREECE to Turkey, he explained.
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Europe Turns Its Back On GREECE Over Migrants. European leaders visit the Greek-Macedonian border to review the fortified defences, ignoring ...
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In the wake of GREECE'S massive influx of migrants, the European Union decided the small country should be "sacrificed" to become a giant refugee ...
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BRUSSELS (AP) — The head office of the European Union on Wednesday sought to swiftly push through a proposal to earmark 700 million euros ($760 million) in humanitarian aid to improve the situation for migrants in need of shelter. The EU Commission proposal for funding will still need to be approved by the European parliament and the member states. Since the beginning of 2015, over a million refugees and other migrants have entered the EU, mainly through Greece, to seek a better life in wealthy EU nations like Germany and Sweden.
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