By Ruth Brown
Barack Obama isn’t the only world leader suffering over leaked information about NSA surveillance—Germany’s Angela Merkel is also in the firing line. On Friday, she spent her annual news conference dealing with increasing concerns that the US has been spying on German citizens, the New York Times reports. “We… …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
The sounds of raucous protest echo in the Presidential Palace, unemployment is rising to levels not seen in over a decade, and his country’s economy has been called a potential time bomb at the heart of Europe.
Francois Hollande, among the most unpopular French leaders in modern history, remains calm.
Lacking the early-career charisma of President Barack Obama or the hard-nosed reputation of Germany’s Angela Merkel, Hollande rose to power in the Socialist Party as a consensus-builder — someone who went out of his way to avoid confrontation. But the amiability that propelled him to the presidency a year ago is turning against Hollande, as poll after poll finds deep disappointment among many who believe he is incapable of the swift, determined choices needed to yank France out of a malaise he himself says threatens generations to come.
“I remain solid and serene,” Holland told a handful of journalists in his office at the Presidential Palace, above the shouts of a crowd demonstrating against his plan to legalize gay marriage. Without camouflaging the difficulties, he admitted it’s been a trying year. “I grasp the seriousness — it’s the task of the president to remain steady and to see further than the storms of a moment. It’s called perseverance.”
Judgment, he said in the interview earlier this month, will come only at the end of his five-year term.
But, seated comfortably in his office armchair, Hollande insisted he was anything but indecisive.
“My will is to pull the country together and restore its confidence. This will take time, but I have no other goal,” he said. “You can criticize my decisions, think that I’m on the wrong path, say I’m foundering, but if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that I’ve made major choices for France in the past year.”
He cited the accord reached in January between unions and business leaders to relax some of France‘s famously strict labor protections. Hollande had championed the agreement, saying the costs and difficulties of hiring in France were hurting its ability to compete globally. But unemployment has only risen since then, and the brief optimism generated by the agreement — which is expected to become law by next month — has since faded. This week, it reached 10.6 percent, the highest level since 1999.
Hollande talks a lot about the French
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
“Welcome to a better world,” President Sebastian Pinera told Mariano Rajoy of Spain as a 60-nation summit got under way on Friday, teasing his counterpart with barbs reflecting the changing fortunes of a Europe mired in crisis as Latin America booms.
The economies of Latin America have resisted the global downturn with solid domestic demand, growing by 3.1 percent last year compared to a 0.5 percent contraction in Europe, and are forecast to grow even faster this year as the Old World remains stuck in recession. Spain is particularly troubled, with a record 26 percent unemployment, putting nearly 6 million people out of work.
“You’re in better shape than I imagined, in good health and in shape,” Pinera told Rajoy, grinning widely.
“We do have a sense of humor, which is what you need to stay in this business,” Spain‘s president responded.
Only a few years ago, European companies were using ample cash to buy up assets in a Latin America mired in debt and inflation. Now that the tables have turned, they’re using their cultural and heritage ties to plead for Latin executives to invest on the other side of the Atlantic.
Spain needs help desperately. The country is in its second recession in three years following the collapse of its once-booming real estate sector. Rajoy’s year-old conservative government has made financial reforms and applied severe austerity measures, cutting wages and raising taxes in hopes of a turnaround.
“We’re going to maintain our current economic policy in Spain,” Rajoy said during his joint appearance with Pinera at La Moneda, Chile‘s presidential palace.
European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani brought along 49 executives from the EU‘s nine member countries, representing companies that ultimately employ 2 million people, the EU said. The commission’s goal for the weekend is to help small and medium-sized European businesses gain more market share in rapidly-growing Latin America, where EU countries already make up 43 percent of the region’s international trade.
Other top government leaders attending the European Union-Latin America-Caribbean summit include Germany’s Angela Merkel, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Mexico‘s new president Enrique Pena Neto and Nicolas Maduro, who is making his first international appearance as Venezuela‘s acting president while Hugo Chavez is hospitalized with cancer in Cuba.
Cuban President Raul Castro also arrived Friday to take over the rotating presidency of the CELAC group of countries from Pinera. Castro’s presence in Chile infuriated the hard-right party in Pinera’s coalition, which accuses Castro of harboring criminals responsible for assassinating the Chilean party’s political leader in 1991.
To mollify them, Pinera agreed to give Castro a folder containing “new evidence” in the case. The party’s lobbying has already led to street clashes outside Cuba‘s embassy and some politicians say Cuba has no place in the alliance of democracies.
Protesters were also expected on the streets of Santiago Friday night for an alternative “people’s summit” calling for everything from free education and environmental protections to an end to a controversial anti-terror law that Chile is using to quell violence in a southern region that the Mapuche, the country’s largest indigenous group, considers its usurped ancestral land.
__
Associated Press writers Michael Warren and Federico Quilodran in Santiago, Chile contributed to this report.
__
Luis Andres Henao on Twitter:
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News