-Caveat Lector- >From The Age
}}}>Begin Europeans redraw political map By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard March 20 2002 Europe is turning its back on benevolent socialism and voting for free-market reform and tough curbs on immigration. Italy, Denmark and Norway have all swung sharply to the right during the last year. Now Portugal has joined the club, opting last weekend for the conservative leader Jose Manuel Durao Barroso. An admirer of Margaret Thatcher, he has promised to cut taxes and take a machete to his country's bloated public sector, selling off parts of the health service in a large-scale privatisation drive. The final result of the election will not be known until March 27, but Mr Durao Barroso's conservatives (named Social Democrats) are expected to form a coalition with the even more radical Popular Party. His goal is turn to Portugal into an economy along the lines of Ireland, with flexible labour markets and light regulation. During the coming months, Germany, France, Holland and Sweden face elections, and polls indicate some likelihood that the machinery of day-to-day government will pass from left-leaning coalitions to parties that spent their opposition years studying the American "productivity miracle". If the present trend continues, Europe's political map could be changed beyond recognition by the end of the year. Heather Grabbe, research director of the Centre for European Reform, said that Right-wing parties across Europe were making hay by demanding a clampdown on immigration and aslyum seekers. She said: "The rhetoric has changed but if you look at what they're offering it's really not that different. They all have to respect the Geneva Convention protecting the rights of refugees, so what are they actually going to do about asylum? Not much." In Denmark, the free-market Venstre party won the elections last November after 80 years in the wilderness, promising a boost to public health care and education, but tapping into fears that immigration threatened the nation's cradle-to-grave welfare model and the tight-knit tribal feeling of Danish society. Italy's alarm over criminal gangs from the Balkans and a surging immigration from Africa was central to the victory of Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia last year. In France the Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin pledged on Monday to cut income tax and crack down on crime if elected president, closely mirroring promises made by his chief rival, the conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac. Mr Jospin's platform included plans to eradicate homelessness, cut unemployment by 900,000 in five years and launch a major reform of France's overburdened pension system. - Telegraph This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/ 03/19/1016519808643.html End<{{{~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. 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