Social-liberal member of parliament (MP) Zenia Stampe has called for a review of Denmark’s stance on dual citizenship, as the Danish Ministry of Justice prepares a new proposal on the issue.

“It doesn’t just concern foreigners,” Stampe said. “We also want Danes outside of Denmark to be able to vote in their new countries as well. It’s an important issue that can ensure political and democratic participation from all active citizens.”

Denmark is currently one of seven EU countries (among which Germany, the Netherlands and Austria) that still refuse to grant double nationality to their citizens.

Speaking after a panel discussion organised by the non-governmental organisation Danes World Wide in Copenhagen, Stampe insisted that any arguments put against the notion are outdated and unpragmatic in an globalising world.

“We [Social-Liberals] see this as an opportunity to spread democracy as a whole,” she explained. “As a citizen you should be allowed to have an influence in the politics of the country you choose to live in, in the long-term, as you should in your home country as well.”

The opposition party Venstre, the largest in

Denmark’s parliament, stands its ground in opposing the notion. But Venstre MP Jan Jørgensen, also present at the debate, has hinted that the party could alter its opinion on the issue.

“We are discussing the matter in Venstre and I hope that the overall attitude will be a positive one,” Jørgensen said. “But there are some problems in allowing dual citizenship, which include personal loyalty to countries and conscription. What if the two countries become enemies in war?”

“That argument is not a modern reality,” Stampe said in reply. “Having dual nationals in a country can only be a positive, as they would give an alternative view to our political surroundings. It could help avoid future conflict rather than anything else.”

“It’s not just a benefit to the individual, but also good for Denmark as a whole,” she said.

‘Highly frustrating and unfair’

One such individual is British born retiree Valerie Kristiansen, who moved to Denmark 25 years ago. She felt that it is unjust to expect foreigner to pay tax but not take part in domestic politics.

The book consists of a 253 pages long series of quotes of the former Italian Prime Minister. Some of them sound genuinely hilarious, if not grotesque. Two examples:

“I am fighting Communism as Churchill fought Nazism”

“Only Napoleon did more than what I have done with my government”

At the time, the book was a huge hit. However, given the outcome of the last Italian elections, it appears few Italian voters did actually read it. Once again Berlusconi performed a miracle, catching up with the centre-left party on total number of votes.

The flamboyant leader of the centre-right coalition has pulled off an incredible comeback, recouping a gap of almost 20 percentage points – rising from a grim 10% in December’s polls to an incredible 29,18% in final voting results.

A campaign’s cunning

To give the devil his due, the media tycoon fully deserved this result. While Grillo mastered a campaign via Twitter and on his blog, Berlusconi has skilfully maneuvered the mass communications tool par excellence: TV.

In other words, Berlusconi has based his strategy on the opposite end of the media spectrum. It left the centre-left ‘stuck in the middle’, throwing away a solid leadership of ten percentage points because it was unable to get its message across.

While Grillo mastered a campaign on Twitter and his blog, Berlusconi skilfully maneuvered the mass communications tool par excellence: TV

Knowing that he could not turn to the internet to gain ground on his competitors, Berlusconi took the television stage with an unexpected determination.

From December onwards, he appeared on every show, including those of unknown local broadcasters and YouTube channels with a niece audience.

Aside from some staged interviews on his own network, Mr. B was aware he would be fiercely challenged – and he prepared for such challenges.

He regained his lost sheen of forceful orator. He refuted each accusation, craftily passing the blame onto the outgoing Monti government. The hike in the Italian bonds’ yield to maturity? A German conspiracy. The soaring number of youth unemployment? A consequence of the inept technocratic government. His countless trials? A prosecution carried out by a “ruthless magistracy”.

Moments where the interviewer managed to corner Berlusconi, were rare. When they did occur, the former prime minister always managed to break loose by resorting to his sense of humour.

During the show Ballarò, Berlusconi was played a clip of economists demonstrating the absurdity  of some of his electoral pledges. Once the clip ended, Berlusconi hit back by saying “well, it seems to me these economists are all communists” – a quip that caused everyone to double up with laughter.

Not only did Berlusconi crack witty jokes on screen. He also quarreled, screamed, shouted, beat his breast for his past mistakes, swore on his parents about the seriousness of his new commitment. And, time and time again, walked out of the arena with a few upticks in popularity in his pocket.

Pursuit of Elegance

Berlusconi’s return from oblivion reveals much about Italians’ psyche. What really set ‘Il Cavaliere’ apart in the past election was the ability to understand Italians’ weak spot: the desire to restore a long-gone wealth.

Truth is, Italians are the least able to withstand prolonged austerity policies. Their sophisticated habits and their tendency to pursue an elegant life even with a modest income is a fact of life.

Deprive them of this, and you will spur a bitter reaction.

Berlusconi has always been keenly conscious of this dynamic. He understood people were hoping for a saviour to come along: someone who could re-establish the feeling of prosperity that fell apart in the wake of the eurozone debt crisis.

Carlo Cerutti is Youropa’s Italy correspondent and a television reporter for CNBC Italy.

Give us your thoughts on his piece via twitter @youropadotorg. If 140 characters doesn’t satisfy your needs, drop us a line at youropa@youropa.org.

Only some 57,000 people live in Greenland’s small villages and towns, on an area about four times the size of Spain. Today, the population of this ‘world’s largest island’ will cast their votes to determine its future government.

It is an election followed closely by international media, in the EU and – for once – by mainland Denmark as well.

Tipped to continue
The Greenlanders will vote on a 31-men-strong parliament, with candidates from six different parties. The previous government was led by Kuupik Kleist from the center-left nationalists in Inuit Ataqatigiit.

In a recent poll, he was tipped as the favorite to take another term. But the large opposition party Siumut could surprise with the populists claim of forcing foreign mineral exploiters to pay higher royalties.

No matter who wins, the negotiations with the mining company London Mining will move into a decisive stage as the plans to construct an iron ore mine about 150 km north of capital Nuuk soon has to be wrapped up.

Kuupik Kleist, prime minister of Greenland

Independence urge
The natural resources adventure has been one of the main election issues throughout the last two months. It is a top priority for any incoming Greenlandic government to start up the first large-scale mining project. So, the political pressure to successfully finish negotiations with London Mining is tremendous.

If that deal comes through with substantial benefits for the Greenlandic society, it will pave the way for more investments and possibly a prosperous future for Greenland, independent of its former colonial ruler Denmark.

Right now, Greenland is as independent as they want and can be, since the Danish taxpayers supports Greenland to the tune of nearly 500 million euros each year.

That kind of fiscal support only comes as long as Greenland remains within the Kingdom, so in some way the dependency on money is the last remaining obstacle for Greenland to gain complete independency as an autonomous state.

Though independence could come at a high cost for the fragile artic nature and in terms of a new dependency on the natural mineral industry, most Greenlanders cannot wait to dig the gold out of the ground.

Drifting away
Greenland is the only country that has ever decided to leave the EU – or what was back then in 1985 named the European Economic Community (EEC). With a referendum showing 53 per cent for and 47 against leaving, the Greenlanders decided to exit the club they had joined along with Denmark a decade earlier.

It was mainly a concern over fishery policies that made them pull the plug. And for quite some years the relations between Brussels and Nuuk have been dominated by a beef over the traditional Greenlandic whale and seal hunting.

But as Greenland in recent years has emerged as a rich source of rare earth minerals vital to production of IT and telecommunication equipment, the relations to EU softened up remarkably.

Last summer, Kuupik Kleist signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Commission securing the EU access to the rare Greenlandic earth minerals. In return, the EU would pay  around 220 million euro’s over six years in projects such as geological investigations and environmental and social initiatives.

But last week Kleist warned that he would cancel the memorandum, if the European Commission did not put in place a real agreement and start up the development programmes as promised.

Der Spiegel

Thursday’s vote to give Palestine non-member status of the UN took a new turn: a few hours prior to the vote, Germany announced that they would abstain from voting instead of – expectedly – voting against the resolution.

The upgrade of the Palestinian Authority’s observer state status was passed at the UN General Assembly with 138 votes in favor, nine against, and 41 abstentions.

Historically, Germany has backed Israel and was once again expected to vote ‘no’ along with the US and Canada, and thus refusing a recognition of Palestinian statehood by holding back in granting Palestine the status of an observer country without formal membership of the UN.

But the German government decided to abstain and thereby showed how thick Berlin’s frustration is over Israel’s policy towards the Palestinians, wrote Der Spiegel. The magazine pointed out that the vote in fact is a vote of mistrust against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanjahu.

Only one EU country, the Czech Republic, voted against the resolution to grant Palestine UN observer status.

Czech Republic’s pro-Israeli stance could be a reaction to its effort to repair diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv that have been severely damaged after the 1967 Six-Day War where Czechoslovakia openly supported PLO. But last week’s ‘no’ vote also isolates Prague within Europe, at a time when not even Germany wants to deny further recognition of Palestine any longer.

Putin’s fight against corruption

The Economist

In Friday’s edition of The Economist, an oddly visible fight against high level corruption in Russia is examined.

The Economist notes that the Russian president Vladimir Putin has launched corruption cases against his inner circle and lets the state owned television Channel One dwell in murky details of the wrongdoing of former high-level bureaucrats.

The anti-corruption campaign began in October with the dismissal of Anatoly Serdyukov as defence minister, who was fired after investigations that linked him to a $100 million fraud. “That a high-level official with ties to Mr Putin could be so publicly dumped was unprecedented,” writes The Economist.

The unprecedented corruption fight might have to do with Putin’s own declining popularity in Russia. Putin has aggregated power since 2000, but lately Putin’s support has been dropping: recent polls show some of the lowest approval ratings ever.
So he feels “compelled to carry on a populist course, as if the elections were still ahead of him,” says Nikolay Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Centre to The Economist.

The magazine writes that corruption is a pillar of Putin-era stability as much as a threat to it. “Much of what could be called corruption has become formalised, if not legalised, through official tenders, court rulings and bank-approved loans. That makes it both more prevalent and amorphous—and harder to eliminate.”

Founded in 2009 by the former TV and theatric comedian Beppe Grillo, the “Five Star Movement” initially had the backing of less than three per cent of the population. Three years later, an economic crisis and an endless string of sexual scandals that engulfed Berlusconi’s People Party, Grillo’s movement is hovering about the 20 per cent level of the Italian electorate. And the enthusiasm surrounding it appears far from losing momentum.

Grillo, aged 64, is a comedian and entertainer whose satire, starting from the 1990s, has become increasingly devoted to the environmental cause. The hilarious verve that characterized his performances in the eighties evolved into a more sulky, refined dialectic, aimed at unearthing crimes and malpractices carried out by major corporations.

In one of his most memorable shows, Grillo anticipated the upcoming bankruptcy of the dairy enterprise Parmalat that, just a few weeks before going bust, was still deceiving thousands of small investors into blind spending on its corporate bonds.  This, along with other sensational revelations, made him the source for unbiased information.

Grillo’s movement is hovering about the 20 per cent level of the Italian electorate

Years later, Grillo emerged as one of the most influential bloggers in the world and he quickly took his supporters directly to the squares to protest against the malpractices of the Italian ruling class. Thousands of people gathered in the so-called “fuck-days”, because Grillo, shouting from the stage, incited the audience to pour out its anger by heaping insults at politicians.

Those events were nothing but a pure display of anger and frustration of an increasingly embattled and outraged middle class. They appraised Grillo’s political appeal, which turned out to be a roaring success. Grillo was now ready to take his political involvement to the next level, launching his movement, the Five Star Movement, in 2009.

The Guardian’s Data Blog

On Thursday, The Grauniad – or was it The Guardian? - broke down the numbers behind the EU’s budget debate.

The British daily’s Data Blog shows an interactive visualisation outlining the budget of 2011.

The piece shows you where your contributions are invested, whether it is supporting Southern and Eastern Europeans’ Competitiveness for Growth programmes, French farmers or EU other investment projects.

For those who missed the full coverage: in Brussels lingo, the budget debate is referred to as the “multiannual financial framework”. Member states, led by president of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, on Thursday and Friday discussed where the EU is to spend its money in the coming seven years.

Although it was foreseen the talks would be difficult, the negotiations on Friday did end unexpected – for the mere reason that they ended.

Earlier reports spelled out the belief of state representatives that talks would continue in the weekend.

Come Friday 5pm, the negotiators decided to call it quits. Next up are new meetings and the Council’s presidency has said to aim at the start of 2013 for a final agreement.

Youropa published an earlier analysis of the difficulties of the EU budget talks. Read it here.

The Economist’s Charlemagne Blog

According to an analysis by The Economist of the summit-gone-wrong, the decision to postpone a deal isn’t all too bad… or at least it didn’t push the union in a next political crisis.

“The EU could do with a show of decisiveness for once. What is important, though, is all the other things that did not happen: there was no veto, no isolation of Britain, no bitter falling out. In short, no drama,” the weekly magazine argues.

The EU has had a rough year, and all seemed glad that they made it through this summit without veto’s forcing the debate into deadlock.

The Economist quotes Alexander Stubb, Finland’s minister for European Affairs, tweeting “One of the most amicable EU summits I have experienced, even if we did not get agreement. Funny, really.”

One of the most amicable EU summits (Alexander Stubb, Finland)

Losing the consent of the UK was the biggest worry of negotiators in Brussels. But by avoiding a British veto, German Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel also kept clear the way for an agreement on the banking union proposals in next month’s summit, says The Economist.

On Thursday, the magazine also published an excellent overview of the positions of member states – still all too topical, since talks ended without a new deal. Read it on the Charlemagne blog, here.

Global Voices is running the project RuNet Echo to expand and deepen the understanding of the Russian language internet medias. In a recent article, the rise of blogging in Russia is investigated.

About 200 Russian bloggers met at the end of October in Moscow at the “UnForum”— an informal blogging conference organised by the Russian International News Agency (RIA). The fact that the state-owned news agency is attempting to actively engage new media is interesting in its own right, but “other aspects of the conference were even more intriguing,” writes Global Voices’ Andrey Tselikov.

Many of the participating bloggers had come from distant regions in Russia pointing to a diversification of the Russian blogosphere and media platform, while Moscow and St. Petersburg had been dominating the scene.

“In essence RIA is starting to actively expand into the regions, they need, as they say “people on the ground. Where do they begin? […] The obvious answer is bloggers,” said a blogger from the Altai region near the border to Mongolia.

The blogging conference embraced these issues. But it also set the scene of a minor scandal as, in the background, tweets with the conference’s hashtags were displayed live. As the Minister of Communications read out loud a greeting from Prime Minister Medvedev, someone tweeted: “#neforum fuck off with your Medvedev!”

EUobserver takes a look at the EU’s cultural sector in a new series of articles. Culture is facing a crisis in Europe: less than half of all EU citizens spend money on culture. And yet the sector has a significant impact and employs millions of citizens.

Europe is a cultural hub, writes the EUobserver in their new series on culture. Not only does Europe harbour more UNESCO world heritage sites than any other region in the world, it also exports 50 per cent more cultural goods than it imports. But only half of the all EU citizens spend money on cultural activities, writes the EUobserver in its recent article.

“We are currently facing one of the biggest cultural crises that the modern, Western socio-economic model has ever been through,” says Culture Action Europe, a network of European culture organisations.

The cultural sector in the EU employs about 1.7 per cent of the workforce. On average, EU citizens spend around four per cent of their budget on culture – from movies and music to theatre and art.

The European Union today spends about €170 million per year on subsidising arts – about 0.1 per cent of its total budget. That is likely to become even smaller, warns the EUobserver in another article in their culture series.

That is food for thought for Europe’s leaders who seem more keen than ever to support democracy in the Arab world, perhaps as a way to forget that former dictators used to be allies. The relationship between Tunisia and Europe is complicated. On one side, the EU stands for democracy and human rights. On the other, Europe did nothing to support democracy before the Tunisian people decided to go for it themselves.

In 1995, Tunisia was the first country in the region to sign the Association Agreement, in which the EU promised to support Tunisia’s economic and political development “based on the respect for human rights and democratic principles”. But as the deal was made with the ruling dictator Ben Ali, Europe seemed to look through the obvious democratic violations in the country and instead focused on efforts to ensure free trade and economical development.

As late as in 2010, the EU Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood, Stefan Füle, visited Ben Ali’s Tunisia in an effort to strengthen cooperation, and he showed no real concern over the undemocratic nature of Ben Ali’s rule and instead praised Tunisia as “an example for the region.”

Tunisia is an example for the region – Stefan Füle in 2010 and 2011

As Tunisians revolted against their dictator and overthrew him in early 2011, the EU suddenly found itself in an ambivalent position as long-time partners of Ben Ali and yet, in principle, supporters of democracy.

After Ben Ali fled, the same EU Commissioner, Stefan Füle, who before encouraged Ali’s rule, used the same phrase of “Tunisia is setting an example for the region” – but in a completely different context. At last he admitted his own and EU’s previous failings:

Tunisia's prime minister, Hamadi Jebali, meets with president of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy, in September 2012.

“Europe was not vocal enough in defending human rights and local democratic forces in the region. Too many of us fell prey to the assumption that authoritarian regimes were a guarantee of stability in the region. This was not even Realpolitik. It was, at best, short-termism —and the kind of short-termism that makes the long term ever more difficult to build,” said Füle in a speech in February 2011.

The new Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, who himself was imprisoned and tortured by the former Tunisian regime for his actions as an human rights activist, has bluntly criticized the inaction of the West.

“I didn’t understand how people living in democratic countries accept to have a good relationship with dictatorships. How could you behave democratically in your own country and accept to support dictators in other countries?,” said Moncef Marzouki recently during a visit to the American Council on Foreign Relations.

“We don’t owe our freedom, our liberty to anybody, not to the West, not to the East. We did it by our own. It’s our freedom,” he said and continued: “We are building our democracy, not to please the West, not to please the East, not to please anybody. It’s for our own interests.”

Carlo Cerutti is an Italian journalist based in Milan. Reach him by dropping a comment below!