Europe

By Al Jazeera Staff in Europe on May 16th, 2012

Al Jazeera gives you the latest developments affecting the eurozone, as European leaders fight to battle economic turmoil.

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By Robin Forestier... in Europe on May 13th, 2012
Robin Forestier-Walker/Al Jazeera
Moscow poets and writers led a "controlled walk" on Sunday across the centre of the capital to exercise their right to march without harassment. True to their word the police held back. To avoid a confrontation, nobody carried any placards or shouted much in the way of slogans. 

A Mexican wave of applause rippled along the road from Pushkin Square to Chistiye Prudy as the walkers realised with a frisson of excitement just how many of them were in step. 
By Robin Forestier... in Europe on May 11th, 2012

Anti-Putin protests on the streets of Moscow have been ticking over quietly for the past week. Despite President Putin's re-inauguration on Monday, protesters wearing white ribbons on their glasses or their wrists have vowed to continue to gather despite a ban on unsanctioned demonstrations.

Hundreds of protesters have been detained in recent days.

The latest protest site is a leafy park in the centre of the city called Chistye Prudy (which means Clean Ponds). It's an attractive place to eat one's lunchtime sandwich. But something different and exciting is happening there now. 

Tags: Putin
By Barnaby Phillips in Europe on May 11th, 2012
A Greek Orthodox priest walks in front of the parliament in Athens' Syntagma square [Reuters]

I'm walking late at night up the side of Syntagma Square. There, just across the road from the Greek parliament, stands a prostitute, self-consciously overdressed and waiting for clients.

She's a young black woman; perhaps one of the many Nigerians trafficked into Greece by ruthless gangs in recent years.

I happen to know the owner of the imposing building right next to where the woman is standing. He is a wealthy Greek, but these days he is a worried man.

The ladies of the night on the pavement are symptomatic of ominous changes. His commercial tenants have moved out of the building, fed up with riots, vandalism and strikes.

He has lost a valuable source of income, and although he's dropped the rent dramatically, he can't find another firm that wants to move in.

Tags: Athens
By Robin Forestier... in Europe on May 11th, 2012

Thursday saw Russia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) lose 3.6 per cent on the Micex Moscow stock exchange. It has much to do with what happened 1700m up a craggy mountain thousands of miles away in Java. 

The new Sukhoi Superjet 100 was supposed to be the saviour of the Russian aviation industry, and nobody knows yet why the pilots made the deadly decision to take the demonstration plane down to below 2000m near Indonesia's Mount Salak, where it crashed.

By Barnaby Phillips in Europe on May 8th, 2012
Reuters photo

Looking back, the signs were there.

At the final campaign rallies in Athens of the two political parties which have traditionally dominated government in Greece, New Democracy and the Socialist PASOK, the crowds were small and the atmosphere was lacklustre.

And something else was noticeable. There were lots of old people, but precious few young enthusiastic faces.

This perception, of a generation divide between the elderly who were too fearful to abandon what they knew, and the young who were desperate to punish their politicians, even resulted in a joke doing the rounds in Athens on the eve of the elections: "if you want change, lock up your grandparents during voting hours!"

In the end, I'm not even sure that would have been necessary.

Greeks of all ages, from all parts of the country, voted to punish New Democracy and PASOK.

Palpable anger

By Andrew Simmons in Europe on May 8th, 2012
Francois Hollande visits a street market in Tulle on May 5, 2012 [Reuters]

Deep in rural France, the market stalls are laid out and an elderly man remarks: "We produce good mushrooms here. And presidents, too."

This is Tulle, in the Correze Department, once the national fiefdom of right-wing leader Jacques Chirac. 

At first sight, it is a place that hasn't got a lot of character.  

A little like Francois Hollande, one might say, when the president-elect was striving to make Socialist inroads here more than 30 years ago, and eventually succeeded. 

Not only that, Hollande has defied the skeptics who would never have guessed that one Saturday in the future he'd be strolling around the Tulle market stalls, preparing to be elected president of France the following day.  

He tasted the local fare, kissed the babies and the ladies, and shook hands with ruddy faced men, one of whom pointed to his fresh chicken, insisting he could do a good deal in supplying the Elysee Palace. 

By Al Jazeera Staff in Europe on May 7th, 2012
France's newly-elected President Francois Hollande celebrates on stage during a victory rally in Paris [Photo: Reuters]

Al Jazeera brings you up-to-the-minute reporting from France for the 2012 presidential elections.

Tags: France
By Cajsa Wikstrom in Europe on May 7th, 2012

"We've been free since 8pm," a young man on the Paris metro declared, as he was heading to the Bastille Square to celebrate Francois Hollande's victory in France's presidential runoff.

After the announcement was made on state television, tens of thousands of people flocked to the iconic square - a symbol of the French revolution.

Dancing, chanting, waving flags and drinking beer - voters celebrated the victory as if they were in a rock festival.

And just as much as the party was about victory, it was about defeat of the incumbent president.

The chant "Sarkozy, c'est fini" echoed through the air - Sarkozy, it's over.

By Andrew Simmons in Europe on May 3rd, 2012

One analyst of Wednesday’s televised French presidential debate described President Nicholas Sarkozy as the boxer and Hollande as the judo fighter.

For French people, aching to see a little more substance in this campaign, it was more of a Punch-and-Judy show.

There was no knock out. And really it would have been far-fetched to even contemplate.

What France did see was a close up on the 2O-camera set of this one-off debate, was an intense portrait of how different the French presidency could become within a matter of days.

The men sat 2.5 metres apart, a distance agreed upon, like the camera angles, by political negotiation. But in thought, style and policy the distance between them was immeasurable.

From the start, insults were traded.  Hollande, “ Mr Normal” as he has been projecting himself effectively, was first to speak.  

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