Press views Davos ups and downs

Europe faces an uphill challenge

Europe's leaders seem to have found little cheer at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, as far as Europe's media reporting of the event is concerned.

Fears that expanding Asian markets are undermining Europe's position in the world economy preoccupied Western European commentators.

But in Russia and Eastern Europe, some newspapers thought the future looked a little brighter, even if political leaders sometimes appeared reluctant to attend.

"If Davos really gets into a celebratory mood, the Europeans will probably sit in the corner," Germany's Die Zeit newspaper said.

"The Asian national economies are running at high speed, Japan has recovered. The United States has pulled itself up."

"Headed by China and India, the Third World countries have become more self-confident. Their leading corporations... do not serve General Electric or Volkswagen as workbenches but enter the Western markets with their own products."

"Europe should do everything permitted by the market economy to keep or replace its jobs that are threatened by withdrawal to the East," the paper warned.

Uphill haul

France's Le Monde highlighted comments by former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, a critic of globalisation.

The paper approvingly quoted Mr Stiglitz as saying that the world had suffered greatly as a result of the idea that there was only one way to achieve economic growth.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told Ireland's RTE radio that Europe's economies faced difficult challenges, particularly Germany's laggard performance.

He said that German investment in its eastern regions was "holding back the lift that's necessary to get Europe going as good as it should".

Call-centre jobs are moving to Asia

An editorial in Germany's Handelsblatt said it was in the interest of the industrial nations to start world trade talks once again with attractive offers to developing countries.

"The World Bank estimates that success in the negotiations might free 140 million people from poverty by 2015. This would destroy fertile soil for international terrorism," it wrote.

'Premier league'

For some of those on the outside of Europe looking in - Russia and Georgia - there was relief they were no longer getting the wrong kind of attention at such forums.

Georgia's President-elect Mikhail Saakashvili, riding a wave of popularity since the ousting of veteran leader Eduard Shevardnadze, was clearly in good spirits after a few days rubbing important shoulders in the Swiss mountain resort.

"This is the premier league of world politics," he enthused to Rustavi-2 TV.

"This year America will effectively double its assistance to Georgia, which may amount to as much as $200m, at least twice what it has been before. It means that they trust us much more," he said.

"This Davos forum is rather unusual, because Russia is a bringer of good news," economist Mikhail Delyagin told Russian Mayak radio, citing healthy rates of growth in the Russian economy. "The fact that Russia is associated with success and not problems is in itself something of an achievement."

Blizzard of criticism

"Russia and Davos are losing interest in one another," commented the Moscow newspaper Gazeta gloomily. "In spite of his love of mountain skiing, Vladimir Putin has not visited Davos even once."

"In Moscow they are just glad that this means that there are no particular problems in our politics and economy," a more upbeat Izvestia editorial said.

Lithuania's Verslo Zinios newspaper was furious with embattled President Rolandas Paksas for failing to attend the forum, thereby, it said, blowing a chance to encourage foreign investment just as Lithuania is due to join the EU in May.

Even senior government ministers were apparently too busy to attend.

"Maybe the prime minister is not interested in events which do not include hunting and the parliamentary chairman knows other places to ski," the paper commented icily.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.