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In what amounts to a setback for centre-right Catalan nationalist party Convergencia i Unió (CiU) and its leader Artur Mas, CiU won 50 seats (30.6% of the vote) in Catalan local elections – 12 fewer than it had in the previous regional parliament. With 21 seats, the left-wing independence party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) doubled its presence in the Barcelona parliament to become the second political force in the region. If they succeed in overcoming their political differences, the two parties will be in a position to organise a referendum on Catalan independence.
Slide – El Periódico de Catalunya
The Eurogroup will meet in Brussels on November 26 to discuss conditions for the release of a further €44 billion in financial aid. Following the failure of negotiations last week, all eyes will be on Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde, who will both have to make concessions. As it stands, the German Chancellor has refused to reduce the rate of interest on loans that have already been granted, while the managing director of the IMF is adamant that Greek indebtedness should not exceed 120% in 2020.
Agreement in the hands of two ladies – To Ethnos
Bond purchases, interest rate reductions, reimbursement of Greek bonds at their price of issue (with no gain for the ECB), more time to reduce the country’s debt or more growth – now that further debt restructuring has been ruled out, in their bid to stabilise Greece, the members of Eurogroup should opt for the measure that is easiest to impose in their own countries.
A la carte aid for Greece – Financial Times Deutschland
November 26 will mark the start of the 18th UN Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar. Some 17,000 participants are expected to attend two weeks of discussions, which are supposed to conclude with a new treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions. “Notwithstanding unambiguous scientific warnings of a potential global catastrophe, there is no great optimism about the outcome of the summit,” says the newspaper.
How to pass on the message? – Information
Three of the 11 candidates for the presidential election have been eliminated by the Ministry of the Interior. However, the method used to verify the 50,000 citizens’ signatures, which they were required to present in order to stand for election, is contested by mathematicians and constitutional experts. If they opt to file suit, the Czech Republic’s first ever bid to elect a president by universal suffrage, slated for January 11 and 12, 2013, will likely be delayed.
11 - 3 = major chaos – Mladá Fronta DNES
More than 3m people voted in the first round of elections that will choose the centre-left candidate for 2013 election. The run-up had been spiced up by arguments between the Democratic Party leader Pierluigi Bersani, 61, who took 44.3% of the votes, and the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who advocates a generational change in Italian politics and took 36.2%. The two will face each other again in the second round, on December 2.
Record primaries for Renzi-Bersani ballot – La Repubblica
A week after the vote to choose the President of the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), the rift between the two candidates, the party’s outgoing General Secretary Jean-François Copé and former Prime Minister François Fillon, both of whom have claimed victory in the contest, appears to be irreconcilable. Now that the attempt by another former French Prime Minister, Alain Juppé, to find a solution has failed, several voices in the party are demanding a fresh vote.
UMP: live suicide – Le Figaro
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