In The News

Southeastern European Nations Unite to Battle Sex Trafficking

David Binder August 15, 2004
According to the International Organization for Migration, 200,000 women are trafficked through Southeastern Europe each year. In response to this tragic crime rate, the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative in Bucharest has conducted three regional sweeps against human traffic rings. The Initiative, which opened in 2001 with American assistance, recently helped arrest five offenders in a...

German Firms Applaud Libya Deal

Aaron Kirchfeld August 13, 2004
Though Germany and Libya already enjoyed “consistently good to very good economic relations,” the door to increased bilateral trade opened wider recently when Tripoli agreed to pay $35 million to the non-American victims of a 1985 Berlin discotheque bombing. Germany has responded by guaranteeing credits for German exports to Libya. The prospect of increased trade has piqued the interest of...

Signs Across the Atlantic: 'Europeans for Kerry!'

Shada Islam August 12, 2004
With the US presidential elections nearing, Europe is carefully evaluating its tumultuous relationship with its transatlantic neighbor. Shada Islam, a Brussels-based journalist who specializes in EU foreign policy, says that differences between the two sides run almost as deep as the ocean that separates them. The relationship between the EU and the Bush administration has been plagued by...

Irish Find Big Challenges Facing Small Languages

John Murray Brown August 7, 2004
With the mass emigration that accompanied the potato famine in the mid-1800’s, Ireland’s Irish-speaking population dwindled and was pushed to areas that hug the country’s Atlantic fringes. After Irish independence in 1919, however, study of the language was made compulsory in public schools and, recently, with the relaxation of that requirement, much of the Irish middle class is proactively...

Germans Brace for Longer Workweek

Heidi Sylvester July 30, 2004
In June, German technology firm Siemens forced Germany’s powerful IG Metall trade Union into expanding work hours without compensation by threatening to move 2,000 jobs to Hungary. Since that time, Daimler Chrysler and Bosch have undertaken similar measures, and Volkswagen looks likely to do the same. German politicians have responded to changes in work schedules by calling for the increased...

Berlin to Ban Religious Symbols

Elizabeth Goetze July 23, 2004
Berlin’s ruling coalition of Social Democrats and the Party of Democratic Socialism decided after much deliberation to pass a bill introduced by the city’s Interior Minister, Ehrhart Körting, that bans the display of any religious symbols by those employed in the public sector. Unlike previous legislation passed by several German states, this bill transcends the Muslim headscarf and includes...

Protests as Italy Expels Migrants

July 22, 2004
With its long coastline, Italy is one of most Europe’s most vulnerable countries in terms of illegal immigration. Largely African and Asian groups of migrants come via boat from places like Libya, where Italian officials believe up to 2 million more migrants may be waiting for transit into the European Union. In response to the influx of people, Italy put a tough anti-immigration law into...