The.Economist.2007-02-10 (966424), страница 20
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Nationalgovernments and local authorities across Europe are looking to link CO2 emissions to taxes, congestioncharges and even parking fees. Change is coming, and big engines will not outrun it.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipAlbania's energy problemSwitching on the lightsFeb 8th 2007 | ATHENSFrom The Economist print editionNot enough help from the neighboursGet article backgroundWINTER in Albania, Europe's second-poorest country (after Moldova), is awretched season, bringing power-cuts of 12 hours a day in the cities and20 hours in the countryside.
Hence the brisk import each autumn ofportable oil-fired generators: without their own private electricity supply,the thousands of small businesses that drive the economy would collapse.This year the electricity shortage is worse than usual. A drought hasseverely reduced water levels in dams that feed the elderly hydro-powerplants along the Drin river in the north of the country. Thirty years agothese were the pride of the late Enver Hoxha's Stalinist regime: Albaniaeven exported electricity to Greece and Yugoslavia.Now the situation is reversed: electricity demand is growing at almostthree times the European average as more Albanians move to the citiesand furnish their homes with dishwashers, tumble-dryers and electric heaters—paid for by remittances fromrelatives working abroad.
KESh, the inefficient and corrupt state electricity utility, struggles to send bills to, andcollect money from, people living without addresses or electricity meters in squatter suburbs around Tirana.Albania used to get by with free or heavily subsidised electricity imports from Italy, its friendliest neighbour, andwith cheap supplies from Bulgaria, the region's biggest exporter. But last month two Chernobyl-era units wereshut down at Kozloduy, Bulgaria's nuclear-power complex on the Danube, as a condition of Bulgaria's accession tothe European Union. That has led to Bulgaria cutting electricity exports by more than two-thirds—and so tosoaring energy prices in the Balkans.
Meanwhile, Albania's electricity shortage is showing up in slower economicgrowth and less foreign investment than elsewhere in the western Balkans.In an attempt to find a solution, the World Bank, Italian energy companies and private consultancies have comeup with a stream of proposals to modernise hydro-power plants, reduce transmission losses and build new powerstations close to fast-growing towns in the centre and south of the country. But only one large project has madeprogress. After several years of foot-dragging by the energy ministry, an Italian company has won a tender tobuild a 100-megawatt oil-fired plant at Vlore in Albania's south. It should start producing electricity in 2010.With local elections due on February 18th, Sali Berisha, the prime minister, is under attack for letting the lights goout.
Voters are poised to punish his Democratic Party for not delivering on its promise at the general election in2005 to clean up KESh and provide cheap, year-round power. Last month he made a joint appeal with SergeyStanishev, his Bulgarian counterpart, for units 3 and 4 at Kozloduy to stay open (units 1 and 2 are already closed;units 5 and 6 are more modern and safer). Bulgarians argue in Brussels that Balkan countries need as muchenergy as the region can produce if they are to grow faster.Andris Piebalgs, the EU energy commissioner, is not convinced.
On February 1st he told Mr Berisha that instead ofteaming up with the Bulgarians to demand special treatment he should do more to sort things out at home. Thiswas not quite the pre-election response Mr Berisha had been hoping for.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipItalian footballAn unflattering reflectionFeb 8th 2007 | ROMEFrom The Economist print editionA tragic death may yet lead to reformIF SPORT mirrors society, then Italian football, amid national soul-searching over the death of a policeofficer following a soccer riot on February 2nd, surely reflects the country's wider woes.
Italy brims withtalent. Its footballers won the World Cup last year. Its manufacturers enjoy a global reputation for flair,but their efforts are persistently hampered by flaws in the society in which they operate, notablycorruption. Out of 163 nations in Transparency International's 2006 corruption perceptions index, Italyranked 45th, beaten only by Greece in the “old” EU.
Football confirmed the perception with a scandal lastyear showing games in Serie A (the top division in the professional championship) were rigged to ensurericher sides won. Stiff penalties for the wrongdoers have since been watered down.The latest events have spotlighted the role of the militant or “ultra” fan clubs, responsible for the stadiumviolence. They have secured extraordinary power for themselves. They run local radio stations. Theirleaders receive tickets to resell at a profit. Some move freely in and out of the players' dressing room.Others travel to matches on their clubs' private jets.Such is the arrogance of the ultras that, like the Sicilian Mafia in the 1990s, they feel ready to challengethe state. Instead of fighting each other, they battle the police.Last week's death, at a stadium in Sicily, was hardly Italian football's first fatality: there have been 18since 1963.
But Inspector Filippo Raciti was the first servant of the state to be killed. That may helpexplain why, as happened after the assassination of two prominent anti-Mafia prosecutors in Sicily in1992, the state's reaction has been unusually vigorous. The championship was immediately suspendedand the government quickly agreed with sporting officials on a package of draconian measures, including aban on the re-opening of stadiums whose security did not comply fully with the law.This is scant assurance for the future.
Guido Rossi, the lawyer-turned-businessman appointed to reformfootball after last year's scandal, maintains that his country's worst maladies are “the rejection of rulesand an aversion to change”.In Italian soccer there is ample evidence of both. Since 1989, at least five attempts have been made totackle the various problems of the game, including the propensity to violence by the fans. One wasscrapped after lobbying by club presidents. Another was dropped for fear of infringing civil liberties. Threemore were either partly or wholly ignored, including a 2005 law requiring the installation of turnstiles atstadiums and the issuing of tickets bearing the name of each spectator.The result is that Italian clubs, like other businesses, have lost competitiveness and struggle to retain bothspectators and players.
Fabio Cannavaro, Italy's captain, left for Real Madrid soon after bringing home theWorld Cup.So will things change? Just as Romano Prodi's centre-left government is promising to tackle the economywith a programme of liberalisation, so the interior minister, Giuliano Amato, is pledging fullimplementation of the 2005 law.Like his boss, Mr Amato faces a struggle.
Only four Serie A grounds comply with the law. So some ofItaly's proudest sides, including AC Milan and Internazionale, could be forced to play at home to emptystadiums until the changes are made. Their presidents are determined to secure a compromise, as are thepetrol-station owners who have begun a series of two-day strikes aimed at weakening Mr Prodi'sliberalisation programme.Will the government relent? “We have a duty to law-enforcement officers and the public to resist [these]pressures,” Mr Amato told parliament. If he is as good as his word, something important will havechanged in Italy.
And not just in football.Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.About sponsorshipTurkey's KurdsLet justice be doneFeb 8th 2007 | VANFrom The Economist print editionA human life is worth 60 sheepSIXTEEN years ago, Semsettin Korkmaz, a member of a government-run Kurdish militia called “the villageguards”, was hunting separatist PKK rebels near Turkey's border with Iraq when his left foot was blown offby a landmine. The Turkish state, he says, offered neither medical care nor compensation, leaving him tohobble on a wooden foot that he made for himself.Now, “thanks to Rojbin”, he feels “like a man again”.
RojbinTugan, a 35-year-old human-rights lawyer, last year managed toget Mr Korkmaz fitted with a prosthetic foot, so adding to herreputation in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast as a doggeddefender of the poor or oppressed. Heads turn as she entersrestaurants; patrons vie to pay her bill.Amberin ZamanMiss Tugan's myriad crusades include a project to rid themountainous terrain bordering Iran and Iraq of tens of thousandsof landmines planted by Turkish security forces and PKK rebelsalike during the Kurdish insurgency in the 1990s.
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