European Student Think Tank

Italy is going to elec­tions by the end of this month after 14 months of technocratic-ruling admin­is­tra­tion. Pier Luigi Ber­sani, the center-left can­did­ate has a good chance of becom­ing Italy’s next leader and couple of days ago I atten­ded a short, yet very mean­ing­ful speech of him at the Ger­man Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions in Ber­lin. Pro-European, sharp and thought­ful, he delivered indeed a strong message.

The European Cent­ral Bank’s decision to launch OMT (the Out­right Mon­et­ary Trans­ac­tions pro­gramme) to pur­chase unlim­ited amounts of bonds, is a risky but neces­sary step, and has been mostly wel­comed by mem­ber states. There are good reas­ons for praise, but the Euro­zone is far from saved. What OMT does and what it doesn’t – read it here.

France’s bombs on Gbagbo and Italy’s bombs on Khadafi show that Europe’s coun­tries dare to act in their former colon­ies. Accus­a­tions of neo­co­lo­ni­al­ism by evil­do­ers should be accep­ted as com­pli­ments, as it means stand­ing up for human rights, even in coun­tries where act­ing mil­it­ar­ily is sensitive.

The dis­turb­ances in the Middle-East and North Africa have now truly reached Europe. The past week­end, Italy star­ted dis­trib­ut­ing human­it­arian visas to refugees from Tunisia, who had star­ted arriv­ing at the small Italian island of Lampedusa after the revolt in their home coun­try. Around 25.000 visas will be handed out, which gives them full travel pos­sib­il­it­ies through­out Europe. What will be the impact on the other mem­ber states?

Last week another series of accus­a­tion of paid sexual acts with minors was launched against Italy’s Ber­lusconi. An orgy with 33 women was the main accus­a­tion. Ber­lusconi him­self stated: `As a 75 year old man I won´t be able to sat­isfy 33 women at the same time´. One of the girls is the 18 year old Moroc­can Ruby Rubacuori. Hav­ing paid sex with a minor can res­ult in a sen­tence of 3 years in Italy and could bring Ber­lusconi, accord­ing to some observ­ers, for the first time in real prob­lems. It seems that his gov­ern­ment is shak­ing as a res­ult of these incid­ents. But does the essence of Berlusconi´s lead­er­ship lie in sex­ism and macho-leadership? No, there is much more.

A few days ago, Italy expressed the wish to sta­tion police officers of their own at the Tunisian shore. The reason is quite simple: a massive inflow of migrants fled Tunisia and arrived at the small island of Lampedusa. Res­ult: tur­moil on the islet. The Italian pro­posal to com­bat this tur­moil might seem a bit strange at a first glance, but isn’t entirely new. Below you’ll find an explanation.

On this web­site we have devoted a good amount of art­icles to the incon­sist­ent Human Rights agenda of the EU. While the EU is try­ing to turn the globe into a ‘Human Rights Para­dise’, its own Mem­ber States don’t seem to be very com­mit­ted to this agenda when it comes to their own internal policy: com­mon know­ledge for every edu­cated reader. Even though you might get tired of this con­stant, mono­tone, mes­sage of our blog­gers, I’d like to add another para­graph to the Mem­ber States’ ‘crim­inal record’: It con­cerns the Roma in Italy.