Bank Woes Deepening in Europe

Eric Lalmand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

From left, the chairman of KBC Bank, Jan Huyghebaert; Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium; and the Belgian finance minister, Didier Reynders in May.

By Landon Thomas, Jr.
The New York Times

When the financial crisis struck the global economy last autumn, European governments moved swiftly to keep their biggest banks from falling into an abyss — never mind fears over nationalization.

But now, as big banks on this side of the Atlantic show signs of recovery, a number of their counterparts overseas are sinking into a spiral of deepening losses that has prompted the European Union to consider a more aggressive approach to cleaning up its banking system.

Few people outside Belgium have ever heard of KBC Bank. But the travails of this lender, based in Brussels, highlight the broader challenges Europe is facing by not having more fully confronted the deteriorating health of its financial institutions.

Since October, KBC Bank has had to seek government relief three times. In all, it has received $41.5 billion in financing and guarantees to recover from disastrous mortgage bets that its financial engineers and traders made when times were good. For a bank with a balance sheet of just $425 billion, it is an astounding sum, exceeding the bailout of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

KBC is not alone. Souring loans and festering portfolios of securitized mortgages still plague a number of national banks....(Remainder.)

Burqa Politics in France

What happens when feminism and sexual liberation become tools for nationalism?

By Michelle Goldberg
The American Prospect

Photo used under Creative Commons license, courtesy of Flickr user superblinkymac.

On Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy became the first French president since Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to address the Parliament, thanks to recent reforms that scrapped a 19th-century law meant to protect the independence of the legislature. Given the occasion, it was rather odd that Sarkozy's strongest words were reserved for denouncing a garment that hardly any women in France wear. The burqa, he said, "is a sign of the subjugation, of the submission, of women." It is, he added, "not welcome in France." Headscarves have been banned in French schools since 2004. Now Sarkozy wants to go much further, banning burqas, loose, full-body veils that cover women entirely, as well as niqabs, or face veils, from being worn anywhere in public.

This was partly a rebuke to Obama, who outraged the French with parts of his Cairo speech. When Obama said that he rejects "the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal," many people in France heard a shot at the country's republican laïcité, which demands that faith be wholly relegated to the private sphere. "There was a "great outcry and a sense of being gravely insulted," says Joan Scott, a historian at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and author of the 2007 book The Politics of the Veil. "I think you can't read Sarkozy's words as anything but a response to that."

Perhaps more important than the anger itself was the opportunity it created, giving Sarkozy a chance to reach out to the anti-immigrant French right without offending the left. The clothing of Muslim women has long been a contentious political issue in France, as well as in several other European countries. The debate about headscarves, veils and burqas is a synecdoche for larger, more fraught questions of cultural identity in the age of mass Muslim immigration. Islam is changing European life in a way that makes many Europeans unhappy, but it's hard for Europeans to talk about without seeming racist or xenophobic. The one place where Europeans do feel confident about defending the superiority of their own culture is in sexual matters. Feminism and sexual liberation become tools of nationalism.

We saw this most clearly with Pim Fortuyn, the flamboyant, anti-immigrant politician who nearly became prime minister of the Netherlands before his 2002 assassination. Fortuyn crusaded against the threat he claimed Muslim immigrants posed to the famously tolerant Dutch culture. He spoke of men suddenly being afraid to hold hands in the streets, of teachers reluctant to admit their homosexuality to immigrant students. "I have no desire," he told a reporter, "to have to go through the emancipation of women and homosexuals all over again."...(Remainder.)

Belgian Headscarf Ban Sparks Heated Reactions

Many Muslim girls who wear a headscarf feel targeted by the measure.

By Expatica.com

The state secondary schools in Antwerp and Hoboken (also part of Antwerp) are in the midst of heated discussion regarding a decision taken by the school administration to ban all religious symbols from the next school year.

The principal of the state secondary school in Antwerp, Karin Heremans, explains that the decision to ban religious symbols stemmed from a growing pressure on Muslim girls to wear veils, even if they don't want to. The idea behind the ban is to take away the growing peer pressure.

When Karin Heremans addressed the students in the courtyard to explain the measure her words were met with booing. The police were massively present in the neighbourhood, but no incidents were reported.

During a protest action in the school the Antwerp imam Nordine Taouil, also chairman of the Muslim Executive, called on muslim parents to keep their children at home and not send them to school as long as there is a ban on headscarves. "I'm calling on all parents, muslim parents, not to send their children to school from the first of September until our rights are guaranteed," said the imam.

Other muslim associations are more moderate, but they are also protesting against the new school regulation. They do not back the imam's call to keep children at home.

Flemish nationalists especially are vocal about their disappointment

The Flemish conservative nationalist N-VA party (the big winners of the recent regional elections), thinks the imam has gone too far. The N-VA labels the imam's call to keep children at home "irresponsible".

"Mr Taouil talks about rights, but there are other rights too. Like the right of children to get an education," says Flemish MP Kris Van Dijck....(Remainder.)

Battle of the Burka

Photo: AFP

By Presseurop

Whether it's the burka in France, or the niqab or headscarf in Belgium, the debate about whether to ban certain Islamic forms of dress is back on the European agenda. The European press has been weighing up the issue at a national level about the need to legislate or not.

In France, the debate on burkas (long robes that entirely cover the face and body worn by some Muslim women) was recently relaunched by a communist member of parliament.  On 17 June, André Gerin submitted a proposal to create "a parliamentary commission of enquiry on the wearing of burkas or niqabs [which reveal the area around the eyes] on French national territory." A few days later, at a congress that brought together both houses of the French parliament in Versailles, President Sarkozy announced his position when he declared that "Burkas are not welcome on French national territory."

In the Daily Telegraph Cassandra Jardine wonders what would happen if the Queen of England went before a combined meeting of the House of Lords and Commons to announce that her government intended to "ban the burka?" Nothing of the kind is likely to happen in a country that tolerates the wearing of religious symbols, though the idea might be favourably received by some members of the Muslim community. Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Education Centre of Oxford praises the French President's initiative, and describes the growing belief that Muslim women should cover their faces as "doctrinaire brain-washing." Other Muslims were outraged to the point where they wondered if Nicolas Sarkozy had ever spoken to any of France's four million Muslims. They were also puzzled by the fact that he should choose to target the burka, which is only worn by 5% of Muslim women. Muslim News journalist Ahmed Versi remarks that when Labour Minister Jack Straw complained that he felt "uncomfortable" talking to someone whose face he could not see, “more women began to wear veils just to defy him.”

In France, there is a consensus that an enquiry should be undertaken to establish the extent of the phenomenon which jars with French social and cultural mores, but commentators have expressed doubts about the usefulness of a legalistic approach. In Le Monde, Hassan Safoui, the leader of the 15 March Committee, an association which advises Muslim schoolgirls on the 2004 law banning religious symbols in schools, questions the ability of legislation "to draw a distinction between someone who is forced to wear a burka and someone who wears one voluntarily." With a view to identifying people, managers of some public buildings like town halls, railway stations and banks, can refuse access to people wearing burkas or niqabs. But is it possible to regulate what adults wear in the street, without specifically targeting Muslims?...(Remainder.)

Our New Apartment

As many of you will all ready know, Jan and I recently moved from the house we were renting to an apartment near the center of Antwerp. The neighborhood we've moved to it kind of hip and trendy, with lots of cool restaurants and shops. To give you kind of a general overview, and I mean "OVERVIEW," I've mapped when we've moved to on Google Maps:

View Larger Map
Here are some pictures of our new place. Please ignore the big mountain of junk is a couple of the pictures, we've only been here for a few days, and we're still getting organized.

Far-Right Having Difficulty Clubbing Together in EU Parliament

By Leigh Phillips
EU Observer

BRUSSELS - Like chocolate and mustard, or orange juice and toothpaste, the various flavours of far right in the new European Parliament just don't seem to go together and are already having trouble cooking up a united bloc in the chamber, despite the gains the extremists made in the European elections on the weekend.

The ‘softer' far-right parties so far seem more interested in jumping aboard the UK Tories' proposed European Conservatives grouping than cobbling together a nationalist bloc, but it is an open question whether the attraction will be requited.

The European elections on the weekend delivered a moderate advance of eight seats on the number of MEPs in the last parliament, eliciting fears that they might club together in a political grouping in the parliament, a move that would open a tap to thousands of euros in EU funds.

However, while it is still too early to make any definitive predictions, there seems to be an unbreachable antagonism between the more moderate parties and their cousins further to the right.

Some of the new MEPs from the likes of Dutchman Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) or the Danish People's Party may well be opposed to migrants, Muslims and minorities, but they are reluctant to embrace the militant nationalism of the more classically ‘fascistic' parties such as the British National Party, France's Front National or newcomer Jobbik from Hungary, with its paramilitary Hungarian Guard straight out of the 1930s.

At the same time, even such a division - the far-right ‘classic' and far-right ‘lite' as Glyn Ford, centre-left MEP and longtime monitor of parties to the right of the conservative mainstream, describes the two rough wings of European extremism - simplifies a situation that is further complicated by personal rivalries, competing nationalist narratives and in some cases just an inability to play together nicely....(Click for remainder.)

March of the Greens?

By Renard Sexton
FiveThirtyEight

The end of the speculation is near in the European elections, with final results from four days of voting to be released this evening at 20:00 GMT. In the meantime, we'll take a look at a curious trend regarding the protest vote and small parties in Europe - something that has possibly played into this cycle of voting.

The buzz around western Europe has been that in France and elsewhere, the Greens are on the move. With a charismatic leader in Daniel Cohn-Bendit (French-German fellow), and widespread dissatisfaction with the larger parties in France (and Germany), many people are looking at Les Verts as a good "lefty" option, but without the ugly party politics of the Socialists or Communists. Particularly among the young, green social democracy has become a new leftward movement, fueled in part by frustration with the mainstream system, and the recognition that environment damage, particularly climate change and natural resource depletion are the burden of the younger generation.

It turns out, however, that a "green" sensibility has a lot more power at the European level than at the national level in most big EU countries.

Across each of the four largest delegations to the European Parliament, green factions outstrip their national counterparts by wide margins. Only in Germany do Die Grünen have a significant presence, where green politics have made great inroads to the mainstream left since the reunification in the early 1990s. Perhaps green movements, which recognize the need for cooperative global action on issues such as climate change, are the pragmatic new leaders of the pan-European movement, following the first wave of economic liberals and trade integrationists?

Perhaps. It also turns out that far-right/right wing & nationalists are also far more powerful at the European level than they are at home.*

(Click for remainder.)

Far Right Make Gains in Ten Member States

By Leigh Phillips
EU Observer

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Across Europe, the far right is on the march, claiming increased numbers of seats in ten different member states. However, in Belgium, France and Poland, the far right saw some significant losses as well.

In total, the far right is up eight seats on the 2004 European elections.

In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and the UK, the far right made moderate to significant advances.

However, the extreme right saw sharp declines in Belgium, and France, and were completely wiped out in Poland.

While the far right across Europe made significant gains, in France, Jean Marie Le Pen's Front National lost four seats (Photo: Wikipedia)

"The far right growth is a really bad sign, and this is clearly linked to the economic crash," Gerry Gable, the editor of Searchlight, a long-standing anti-fascist monthly magazine out of the UK, where the British National Party elected its first-ever MEP, told EUobserver.

"This is the entirely predictable result of the social fall-out of the financial crisis," he added. "It's a particularly worrying trend, especially in Austria and the Netherlands."

The Netherlands leads the way with four seats for the anti-immigrant and anti-Islam Freedom Party of the platinum blond Geert Wilders, the producer of the notorious Muslim-baiting film short Fitna.

Austria as well delivered two seats to the identically named Freedom Party, up one seat from 2004 and winning 13.4 percent of the vote.

The BVO of the late Joerg Haider, a breakaway from the FPO, however was denied any representation in the European Parliament, although it did manage to win the support of 4.6 percent of voters.

Together, Austria's far right won a clean 18 percent.

Hungary too returned three MEPs from the Movement for the Better Hungary, or Jobbik, on some 15 percent of the vote. The group is the founder of the Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary outfit whose uniforms recall the Nazi youth organisations from Europe's darkest days....(Click for remainder.)

EU Voters Punish Leftist Parties

By Al Jazeera English

The European parliament appeared set for a shift to the right after voters turned away from leftist parties in elections for the 736-member assembly.

Early results and exit polls on Sunday showed conservative parties and the far-right making gains in many of the 27 nations at the expense of left-leaning parties.

Graham Watson, the leader of the centre-right Liberal Democrat grouping in the parliament, said early results suggested a rejection of the Socialist approach.

"People don't want a return to socialism and that's why the majority here will be a centre-right majority," he said.

The citizens of 19 nations went to the polls on Sunday, after the other eight EU nations had voted in the huge transnational election earlier in the week.

But the election was marked by voter apathy, with just 43.01 per cent of the 375 million eligible voters casting their ballots compared with 45.47 per cent at the last election in 2004, according to a survey by TNS-Opinion pollsters.

Conservative success

In Germany, the conservatives of Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, seemed likely to emerge as the largest party group, raising hopes that they will be able to dispense with the left-right "grand coalition" after a general election in four months....(Click for remainder.)

Swedish Pirate Party Headed for Brussels

By The Local

Sweden's pro-file sharing Pirate Party is on its way to Brussels having secured more than 7 percent of the country's votes in the European Parliament elections, according to early exit polls.

Scenes of wild jubilation broke out at the party's election headquarters when state broadcaster SVT announced a projection likely to give the party enough votes to claim two seats in the EU parliament.

"The polls beforehand had us at between eight and nice percent, but everything over four percent is a political sensation," party leader Rick Falkvinge told news agency TT.

12 percent of men and 4 percent of women plumped for the Pirate Party, according to the SVT survey.

Among voters aged under 30, some 19 percent are believed to have cast a vote for the Pirate Party.

"They are the biggest party among young people, bigger than both the Social Democrats and the Moderates," said politics professor Sören Holmberg.

Pirate Party voters said they considered the freedom to file share by far the most important issue when deciding their party allegiance.

The party was founded in January 2006 and quickly attracted members angered by controversial laws adopted in Sweden that criminalised filesharing and authorised monitoring of emails.

Its membership shot up after a Stockholm court on April 17th sentenced four Swedes to a year in jail for running one of the world's biggest filesharing sites, The Pirate Bay.

Sunday's election attracted more voters than in 2004, the last time Europe went to the polls. With 80 percent of the votes counted, projections showed a 42.5 percent turnout this time round, up 5 percentage points on the previous European Parliament election....(Click for remainder.)