How the Italian election, Bersani’s to lose, became a Berlusconi-Monti dogfight

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Kevin Lees

There are now less than two weeks to go before Italians select a new prime minister, and if you watched the dueling soundbites, you would be forgiven if you thought the two main contenders were current prime minister Mario Monti and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. But while Berlusconi and Monti have taken up much [...]

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‘La bataille des chiffres’: EU leaders agree new budget deal

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Kevin Lees

Guest post by Michael J. Geary European Union leaders reached agreement Friday on the EU budget (the multi-annual financial framework or ‘MFF’) for the period from 2014 to 2020.  After months of bickering, the 27 member states signed off on a deal totaling €908.4 billion, and the European Parliament will vote on the budget in March. [...]

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Can Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy survive the kickback scandal?

Posted on February 6, 2013 by Kevin Lees

It’s hard not to feel some compassion for Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s government, which limped to its one-year anniversary only in December 2012. In that time, Rajoy’s government has weathered all of the following: the passage of four budget cut packages and painful tax increases — income tax rates have increased, tax breaks for [...]

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Tsipras predicts Greek debt haircut after German elections

Posted on January 22, 2013 by Kevin Lees

The great thing about Washington, D.C. is the flow of visitors we see from throughout the world and the relative access to top officials through top-notch organizations such as the Brookings Institution, which hosted Greek opposition leader Alexis Tsipras for a 90-minute session Tuesday. The beleaguered Greek economy has receded from headlines somewhat since the [...]

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Who is Jeroen Dijsselbloem?

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Kevin Lees

Most indications are that the next Euro Group head will be a relative newcomer to the group of eurozone finance ministers — Dutch minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who declared his formal candidacy for the job today. As I noted at the beginning of the year in my piece on 13 up-and-coming politicians to watch in 2013, [...]

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Why is the Slovak economy doing so much better than the Czech economy?

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Kevin Lees

Former Czechoslovakia is very much in the news this month, with January 1 marking the 20-year anniversary of the split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and with the upcoming Czech presidential election. But one of the more interesting questions in 2012 and in 2013 has been the variance between the Czech economy and the [...]

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Monti resigns as prime minister in light of Berlusconi’s political return

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Kevin Lees

It’s been an incredibly fast-moving weekend for Italian politics — shortly after Silvio Berlusconi announced he would return to the leadership of his floundering Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) on Saturday, prime minister Mario Monti announced that he would resign as prime minister upon the completion of Italy’s 2013 budget, meaning that the next Italian election [...]

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Five reasons Berlusconi returned to run in the upcoming Italian election

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Kevin Lees

After leading a symbolic ‘walk-out’ among his center-right Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom) from the Italian senate on Thursday in opposition to the austerity measures and other reforms of caretaker prime minister Mario Monti, Il Cavaliere himself, Silvio Berlusconi (pictured above), today announced that he will lead the PdL as its candidate for prime minister [...]

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Bersani routs Renzi in ‘centrosinistra’ primary to lead Italian left next spring

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Kevin Lees

Florence’s brash, young mayor Matteo Renzi and his campaign to lead the Italian left threatened to remake Italian politics at a time of upheaval and uncertainty greater than at any point in the past two decades. But the rank-and-file of the Italian left chose the more familiar path on Sunday, elevating instead the familiar, older [...]

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Bersani leads as Italian ‘centrosinistra’ primary heads to Sunday runoff

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Kevin Lees

After last weekend’s first round of the primaries to choose the Italian center-left (‘centrosinistra‘) candidate for prime minister in advance of expected national elections in April, the current leader of Italy’s largest center-left party, the Partito Democratico (PD, Democratic Party), Pier Luigi Bersani looks like a favorite — even if just slightly — to win the runoff this [...]

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Lithuania’s president throws post-election coalition talks into disarray

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Kevin Lees

Lithuanian’s highly respected president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, has upended what everyone thought would be a broad leftist coalition following the second and final round of Lithuanian parliamentary elections on Sunday. Following a victory by the social democratic Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania), which won 38 seats after the first round on October 14 and October [...]

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Lithuanian Social Democrats in place to run next government

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Kevin Lees

So we have the results of Lithuania’s full two rounds of elections: the Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) have won the greatest number of seats in the Seimas, Lithuania’s parliament, following a runoff election yesterday. Although 70 seats are determined by proportional representation on the basis of the first-round vote on October 14, the [...]

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Today’s Sicilian elections showcase potential party strength before 2013 Italian election

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Kevin Lees

Today, one of Italy’s most iconic regions — Sicily — goes to the polls to elect the 90 members of its regional legislature and, indirectly, a new regional president. For all the beauty of its landscape, the majesty of its architecture and the divinity of its food and wine, Sicily, the home of the well [...]

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Greek government, troika reach agreement on Greek bailout

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Kevin Lees

It seems all but done — Greece’s government and the ‘troika’ of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission have reached an agreement on the latest disbursement of funds that Greece needs to finance government operations, in exchange for a series of budget cuts and labor market reforms.  In an additional [...]

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Spanish conservatives take Galicia; Basque nationalists win Euskadi

Posted on October 21, 2012 by Kevin Lees

Sunday’s regional elections in Galicia and Euskadi (i.e., the Basque Country) have given just about everyone in Spanish politics something to be happy about. In Galicia, the ruling center-right Partido Popular de Galicia (PPdeG, People’s Party of Galicia) of Galician president  Alberto Núñez Feijóo (pictured above, top right), the local branch of Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s Partido Popular (PP, [...]

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