TRANSATLANTICA

THE gritty small towns of the Sluknov foothills in northern Bohemia are a long way from the baroque delights of Prague. A simmering social problem is now boiling over into violent clashes between Roma (gypsies) and locals. The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, in an interview with the newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes, has urged the police to respond “mercilessly” to the escalation, which has included narrowly foiled attempts to storm the squalid hostels in which many Roma families live.

Relations have been tense for years. Poverty, prejudice and crime fester among the 300,000-odd Roma in the Czech Republic. Governments have dodged the problem. In the 1990s European Union pressure forced the town of Usti nad Labem to pull down a wall that it had built around a Roma ghetto. Many observers complain that large sums (including EU grants) budgeted for do-gooding are wasted on consultants or irrelevant projects.

The new element is Roma retaliation. In August three Roma men used a machete to attack “whites” (as non-Roma are called in Czech) in a gambling joint. Some 20 truncheon-wielding Roma youths beat up six young white men outside a disco. A far-right political party has fanned the flames. But the main fuel is local anger over crime and migration. Property businesses have been moving Roma tenants into cheap local housing in order to sell their renovated former houses in richer parts of the country. Some 2,360 such displaced Roma have arrived in the town of Rumburk alone in the past 18 months.

The rhetoric has become incendiary. Foes of the Roma call them “unadaptables”. Many want them confined in walled ghettos, a growing practice in Slovakia—where a far-right politician, Jan Slota, has said that the Roma should have a separate state (he didn’t say where). Harsh words are reminding some of Nazi persecution of Jews and Roma—and of Czech wartime collaboration with it.

Although overtly neo-Nazi parties are illegal, even respectable Czech politicians flirt with anti-Roma sentiment. A former deputy prime minister, Jiri Cunek, began his career in local politics by moving Roma families from a town centre into shipping containers on its outskirts. TOP 09, a junior partner in the Czech coalition, has boycotted cabinet sessions to demand the firing of Ladislav Batora, an education-ministry adviser with lurid anti-Roma views. (He has now been moved to another post.)

Mr Batora is a protégé of Mr Klaus, who likes to lambast political correctness and has a penchant for hiring mavericks as aides. He publicly backed the deputy head of his office, Petr Hajek, after he came under fire for denouncing participants in this summer’s Gay Pride march in Prague as “deviants” and for opposing the “media lynching” of skinheads who had petrol-bombed a Roma home. Some suspect that Mr Klaus may be planning to form a new nationalist, Eurosceptic party when he leaves the presidency in 2013. He should have no problem winning support from disgruntled “white” Czechs.

Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2011

In an effort to address rising obesity rates and health care costs, Hungary on Thursday implemented a law imposing special taxes on foods with high fat, salt and sugar content. The move comes as other European countries also consider policies to fight obesity.

By Catherine Cheney

The dobostorta cake, a five-layer vanilla and chocolate buttercream dessert with a caramel-glazed top layer, is probably Hungary’s best-known treat — at least after goulash. The cake can be seen in the vitrines of coffee houses and bakery shops lining the streets of Budapest.

“Hungarians are really into desserts,” said Carolyn Banfalvi, co-founder of Taste Hungary. The tour company operator describes Hungarian food in general as “very fatty,” with traditional cooking ingredients that include pork and goose fat. “What they call bacon here is often pieces of pure lard,” she said.

The Hungarian government argues that this kind of diet is also leading to obesity and increased health problems, and that those who partake in indulgences like sweets should also pay a premium to help offset those costs. Enter the “fat tax.”

Beginning Sept. 1, Hungarians will have to pay a 10 forint (€ 0.37) tax on foods with high fat, sugar and salt content, as well as increased tariffs on soda and alcohol. The expected annual proceeds of €70 million will go toward state health care costs, including those associated with addressing the country’s 18.8 percent obesity rate, which is more than 3 percent higher than the European Union average of 15.5 percent according to a 2010 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In Germany, by comparison, 13.6 percent of adults are obese, with Romania at the bottom of the list with 7.9 percent.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said, “Those who live unhealthily have to contribute more.” In other words, the new law is based on the idea that those whose diets land them in the hospital should help foot the bill, particularly in a country with a health care deficit of €370 million.

Governments Take on Girth

The controversial “fat tax” is the most comprehensive on unhealthy foods in the world to date; but with other European countries closely watching Hungary’s move, it is unlikely to be the last. Obesity rates are rising across Europe, and several countries are already taxing unhealthy foods to tackle plunging budgets and expanding waistlines.

Denmark is one of several European countries to tax sodas, and it has imposed a levy on candy for nearly 90 years. The country was the first in the world to pass a law banning trans fats, with Austria and Switzerland following closely after. Later this year, Denmark also plans to levy a sin tax on foods with high saturated fat content.

“What Denmark plans to do interests us,” Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen said this spring, hinting at the domino effect the introduction of these taxes can have in other European countries. “Finland and Denmark have introduced taxes on sugared products such as soft drinks, ice cream and chocolate. A saturated fat tax is a logical next step.”

Romania also considered a “fat tax” early last year, expanding beyond sodas and candies and trans fats to tackle junk food more broadly. Romanian Health Minister Attila Cseke said the tax would “be a percentage of the sale of fast-food products” and that the revenue would be used “to increase the budgets of health programs and fund investments into the system’s infrastructure.”

The idea was axed after the government considered its potential impact on consumers, particularly given rising food prices. There were also concerns that the tax might lead low-income Romanians to resort to even cheaper products, potentially worsening their diets.

But the Hungarian parliament seemed to believe that the benefits outweighed the risks when, on July 12, it passed a tax very similar to the one rejected in Romania.

Will Tax Put Poor at Disadvantage?

Initially dubbed the “hamburger tax,” the new legislation is now referred to as the “chip tax” or “fat tax,” because it applies to products like packaged snacks and sugary drinks rather than fast food.

“The Hungarian tax is a tax on products with high sugar, salt, and/or caffeine; taxable products include soft drinks with added sugar, energy drinks with added sugar and caffeine, pre-packaged sweetened products, salty snacks, high salt content condiments, soup mixes, gravy mixes and bases,” explained Lisa McCooey, director of communications for Food Drink Europe, an industry lobby group.

Hungarians already spend 17 percent of their income on food, and they pay an extra 25 percent tax on most of the food and drink products they consume — one of the highest rates within the EU. A major criticism of the new tax is that it will hit low-income groups the hardest, given their higher consumption, on average, of processed foods. “The economic situation here is really pretty bad. A lot of people don’t have any extra money to spend on anything,” said Banfalvi. “Life here is not cheap if you’re an average Hungarian making an average salary.”

While generally supportive of the new tax, Archie Turnbull of the Brussels-based European Public Health Alliance, a network of public health NGOs, suggested in a letter to the Hungarian government that it “consider using other pricing mechanisms or subsidies to make the healthy options” of fresh fruits and vegetables “more widely available and affordable.”

‘Not An Effective Instrument’

There are also questions over the effectiveness of fat-tax legislation. The growing list of taxes on unhealthy foods is leading to a debate on whether an increase in taxes can actually translate to a decrease in obesity.

“Scientific research shows that taxation is not an effective instrument in addressing consumer behavior and will have no impact on obesity rates,” McCooey argued. “Consumer information and education, not tax, is the way to advance consumer understanding of healthy eating.”

“The link between the price of a product and its purchase is clear and has been well substantiated,” countered EPHA’s Turnbull. But, he added, taxes alone cannot lead to healthier habits. “Combined with health promotion measures designed to increase awareness of the health issues associated with a poor diet, the impact of fiscal measures applied to food policy can be significant.”

But in a country where goose fat is common in cooking and where, as Banfalvi says, “the salads are just different plates of pickled vegetables,” an increase in prices for unhealthy foods is no small change

DAWN breaks over western Kosovo, and a bearded monk in black, flowing robes walks around the Serbian Orthodox monastery church of Visoki Decani hammering a long wooden board to call the faithful to prayer. But, as the monastery lies in majority-Albanian (and Muslim) western Kosovo, there are hardly any Serbs outside the perimeter wall to heed his call. 

Visoki Decani is one of the most beautiful places in the Balkans. The church was built between 1327 and 1335. Legend has it that knights who died at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, when the Serbs and their Balkan allies were defeated by the invading Ottoman Turks, are buried here. The church is decorated with more than 1,000 well-preserved frescoes. Because much of the local Albanian population is hostile to the monks, the monastery has been protected by Italian NATO soldiers since 1999. No monk has dared to walk in the nearby town since then. 

In June Father Sava, a well-known figure in Kosovo’s public life, became the monastery’s abbot. Once known as the “Cybermonk” because of his early embrace of modern technology to spread the word, he has consistently worked in favour of reconciliation with Albanians. 

Twenty years ago the future of the monastery looked bleak. Only five elderly monks lived there. But in 1992 the church invited a number of young monks to take over. Now the monastery is flourishing. It has a farm and produces wine. It houses 24 monks, but more are on the way: a new wing, with 40 modern cells, is under construction, near the site of an old one that burned down in 1948. The monks are preparing for the monastery’s next 700 years.

(c) The Economist Newsletter Limited 2011

Former Soviet Countries: Where are they now?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14489883

HUNGARIANS have long been known for their inventiveness. The definition of a Magyar, the old joke goes, is someone who enters a revolving door behind you but comes out in front. The government now seems to be applying a similar ingenuity to jurisprudence.

Government officials and MPs from the ruling right-wing Fidesz party are calling for legal action against three former Socialist prime ministers, Péter Medgyessy, Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai, for allowing the state debt to spiral from 53% of GDP in 2002 to 80% in 2010.

A parliamentary committee concluded that “a political crime against Hungary” had been committed, said Péter Szijjártó, spokesman for Viktor Orbán, the prime minister (pictured). Should any legal investigation find that there is a case to answer, the prosecutor’s office could bring criminal charges.

The announcement caused uproar in parliament. Opposition MPs condemned the move as “nonsense” and “political persecution”. But Hungary is not the only European country to consider making its former leaders pay for their mistakes. Geir Haarde, a former prime minister of Iceland, is on trial before a special court, accused of negligence contributing to the 2008 banking crash. He denies the charges.

Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister, is also on trial, accused of signing a dodgy gas deal with Russia during her time in office that caused damages worth $190m. She calls the trial a farce. Many Greeks argue that the leaders who led their country into the economic abyss should be called to account. As a proportion of national output, Greece owes roughly twice as much as Hungary.

Most Hungarian commentators see Mr Gyurcsány as Fidesz’s real target. In 2006 headmitted, in private, that his government had repeatedly lied to the country about the real state of the economy. His speech—which was recorded and leaked, sparking days of rioting—would doubtless be used by prosecutors.

Mr Gyurcsány reacted angrily to the accusation, saying Fidesz was launching a political attack. “This criminalisation action, making it retrospective, raises many questions. I cannot see how it is lawful. This is part of the complicated political game led by Fidesz [to discredit me],” he told the Financial Times.

Talk of show trials is nonsense, says Zoltan Kovacs, the government communications minister. “These are very serious problems. The country was ruined between 2002 and 2010. These economic decisions were made here by people who knew the numbers. Any legal process that follows from this will be clear and transparent.”

Tibor Navracsics, the deputy prime minister and justice minister, told Hír TV, a television station sympathetic to the government, that there was no need for new legislation as the criminal code already contains provisions covering the reckless increase of public debt. 

Disquiet over the government’s move is not confined to the liberal-left. Writing in Mandiner.hu, an independent-minded conservative blog, Ákos Balogh, the editor-in-chief, argues [link in Hungarian] that responsibility for the state debt is a political rather than legal issue.

None of this is likely to calm the growing concern in western capitals about the direction of Hungary’s democracy. The alarm bells seem to be ringing loudest in the United States. Hillary Clinton, on a recent visit to Budapest, called for a “real commitment to the independence of the judiciary, a free press and government transparency”.

Thomas Melia, a senior official in the state department, reinforced those concerns when he told a committee of the House of Representatives that Fidesz should slow down the “pace of change”. (His comments did not go down well in some quarters.)

Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis, America’s woman in Budapest, echoed this call yesterday in an op-ed article for Magyar Nemzet, the main conservative daily. (The article does not seem to be available at the paper’s website but can be read on the embassy’swebsite.)

Like Mrs Clinton, Mrs Kounalakis does not question Hungary’s basic democratic credentials. But she does want the government to move more slowly (a call repeated not just by opposition MPs but even by László Kövér, a Fidesz MP and speaker of parliament).

Hungary must, Mrs Kounalakis says, take the “time and effort to get it right” while drafting the numerous so-called “cardinal” laws needed for the new constitution. “The most important of these will pertain to an independent media and judiciary, and free and fair elections. The system cannot be permanently tilted to favour one party or another.  Everyone must have the opportunity to debate openly, be judged fairly, and compete freely.”

Including, presumably, former Socialist prime ministers.

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000167 EndHTML:0000001148 StartFragment:0000000487 EndFragment:0000001132 <!— @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } —>

(c) The Economist Newspaper Limited 2011. All rights reserved.