barcelona press reports
various | 17.03.2002 16:13
Peaceful protests soured by end-of-summit riots
Police clashed with more than 2,000 protestors as rioting erupted last night on the streets of Barcelona at the end of the European leader’s summit, reports the Sunday Times. The trouble came towards the end of a march of 250,000 which had for the most part been peaceful.
Demonstrators hurled bottled, rocks and fireworks at police. In response to the violence, the Spanish police used tear gas and rubber bullets. According to the BBC, 18 people were left injured, including some policemen. More than 60 protestors were arrested, some by undercover officers who had mixed with the marchers.
The march started four hours before the end of the summit and had been organised by anti-globalisation protestors. The rioting began in the Placa de Catalunya, before spreading to Columbus Square and across a 1Å- square-mile area of the city centre.
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?selected_topic=9&action=view&article_id=5600
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Barça-Real Delayed By Anti-Globalisation Activists
News Archive
Editor's Spotlight
The Spanish Derby: Barcelona-Real Madrid
03/16/2002. Three anti-globalisation activists walked onto the Nou Camp stadium pitch to disturb the "Super Clasico" game between Barcelona & Real Madrid.
The protestors were wearing shirts with an anti-globalisation slogan: "Paramos a la Europa del capital" - "Stop Capitalistic Europe".
The police took seven minutes to get rid of them under the boos and jeers of the 105 000 crowd. Onr protestor handcuffed himself to Roberto Bonano's goal-post.
http://www.soccerage.com/en/13/d0204.html
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Violence at anti-globalisation march
AP - Spanish riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets put down marauding anti-globalisation vandals following a peaceful march and rally by tens of thousands of protesters, hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit in Barcelona on economic reforms.
Police said seven officers were injured. At least three journalists, including an Associated Press photographer, were injured, two clubbed by policemen and one bashed in the face by a rifle butt.
Police said they had arrested 38 people by 10pm (0800 AEDT). Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour and a half later.
Witnesses said some 200 troublemakers began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police. The rally had ended there a half hour before the violence began.
Police said they could not confirm or deny the use of rubber bullets.
"We will have a full report later, but officers are authorised to use the force necessary to stop people from throwing molotov cocktails at them," a spokesman said on the customary condition of anonymity.
In one confrontation, rioters set a garbage bin afire and turned over a car, panicking people in nearby restaurants and theatres, the national news agency Efe said. Police detained 20 of them after they holed up in an automatic bank teller booth.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
Amid fears of rioting and possible terrorist attacks, leaders of 28 European nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day European Union summit. Security measures in Barcelona included the deployment of 8,500 officers, as well as combat jets, ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast.
Municipal officials estimated 250,000 people participated in yesterday's march. Organisers said a half million took part - far more than they had expected.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and the EU's plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
The crowd banged drums, blew whistles and carried banners with slogans such as "Terror USA" and "Against A Capitalist Europe."
Police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units in vans were posted at street intersections to ensure demonstrators did not leave the prearranged protest route.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
In a related incident across town, two protesters chained themselves to the goalposts at Barcelona's Camp Nou soccer stadium, delaying the start of play for five minutes of a game between Barcelona and visiting rival Real Madrid.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/World/story_27647.asp
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Police arrest 30 protestors after EU summit
Last updated: 17-03-02, 06:44
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful rally by thousands of demonstrators.
At least 30 people were arrested during the skirmishes which broke out just hours after European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were among the 18 people injured. At least three journalists, including a photographer, were also hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
Witnesses said some 200 protestors began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police.
It was reported police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after the trouble erupted towards the end of a march.
Leaders of 28 EU countries had met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day summit where a number of moves designed to push forward free-market reforms were agreed.
City officials estimate 250,000 people participated in yesterday’s march, while the organisers put the figure at half a million.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and EUs plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
PA
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0317/breaking5.htm
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Scattered Violence Follows Anti-Globalization Protest in Barcelona
AP
Spanish riot police fire rubber bullets towards protesters during an anti-globalization demonstration in Barcelona.
Saturday, March 16, 2002
BARCELONA, Spain — Riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets subdued a group of violent protesters who rioted Saturday following a peaceful rally by tens of thousands of demonstrators hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Witnesses said some 200 protesters began smashing windows and throwing gasoline bombs and rocks at riot police near a statue of Christopher Columbus on a pedestrian promenade where the anti-globalization rally had ended had 30 minutes earlier.
Police said that seven officers were injured and that they had arrested 38 people by 10 p.m. Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour an a half later.
City officials estimated 250,000 people participated in the march, while organizers said there were twice that many — far more than the 10,000 to 50,000 they said they had been hoping for.
One of the protest organizing committee's own crowd controllers, Jordi Oriola, said the turnout made it difficult for organizers to control demonstrators. "There were so many people the security groups could not manage," he said.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets surrounding the Columbus statue. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
The Spanish news agency Efe said two of its journalists were clubbed by police, and Associated Press photographer Alvaro Barrientos was slightly injured by a blow to the face from a police rifle butt.
At Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium, a soccer match between Spain's most popular teams was halted for seven minutes when two protesters with anti-capitalist, anti-European slogans on their T-shirts ran onto the field handcuffed themselves to the goalposts.
Protesters belonged to diverse organizations, some created at the spur of the moment, but they aimed their wrath at globalization and the European Union's plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
Speakers at the rally said European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
The demonstration began four hours after the EU summit ended.
Banging drums, blowing whistles and carrying banners with slogans such as "Terror USA" and "Against A Capitalist Europe," the crowd made its way through the city as police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units manned vans at intersections to keep demonstrators on the protest route.
Protest leaders said authorities had busloads of would-be demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain from entering Barcelona, and Efe reported that more than 1,000 people had been barred from crossing the border from France.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48088,00.html
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Capitalism eats the world: protesters target EU meeting in Spain.
Anti-globalisation protesters target Spain's banks
Protesters smashed up at least two Spanish banks during an anti-capitalist protest march in Barcelona, after the European Union summit ended in the city.
In Barcelona's historic old town, protesters smashed plate glass windows at branches of two banks on the route of the march, which local police say was attended by 250,000 people.
"Eat the rich" was daubed in red paint on one of the bank windows.
Officers at the scene, gazing at office chairs and smashed computer monitors strewn on the pavement outside, say protesters had caused the damage.
However, it is not clear whether anyone had been detained.
In one bank a photocopier lay halfway through a broken window.
Three hours after it got under way the march appeared to have largely broken up without other major incident.
Some witnesses say baton-wielding riot police had broken up one group of protesters, after they had thrown bottles and stones at the window of a multinational clothing chain store.
EU Summit
Earlier European leaders completed a two-day summit with an agreement to open up electric and gas markets, deregulate labour laws and raise the retirement age.
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair had described this as a "make or break" EU meeting.
Although the deregulation of energy markets only applies initially to business consumers, it has been hailed by Mr Blair as important progress.
"For a long time there's been an idea that the European social model is effectively about more and more regulation, state control, an old fashioned attitude towards change and technology," he said.
Mr Blair says now there is momentum for free market reform.
Trade unions have condemned the deregulation, while outside the summit a heavy police presence has so far contained anti-globalisation demonstrations
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/03/item20020317075014_1.htm
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Police battle with anti-globalisation protestors
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful march and rally by thousands of demonstrators.
Hours earlier European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were injured, while at least three journalists, including a photographer, were hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=11709331&method=full
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Police Battle With Anti-globalisation Protestors
Ananova
Sunday March 17, 2002 12:47 PM
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful march and rally by thousands of demonstrators.
Hours earlier European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were injured, while at least three journalists, including a photographer, were hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
Dozens of people were arrested. Witnesses say some 200 protestors began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police.
A police spokesman said: "We will have a full report later, but officers are authorised to use the force necessary to stop people from throwing molotov cocktails at them."
In one confrontation, rioters set a dustbin on fire and turned over a car. Police detained 20 of them.
Amid fears of rioting and possible terrorist attacks, leaders of 28 EU countries met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day summit.
City officials estimate 250,000 people participated in Saturday's march, while the organisers put the figure at half a million.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and EUs plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-1591244,00.html
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First created :
17 March 2002 0856 hrs (SST) 0056 hrs (GMT)
Last modified :
17 March 2002 0856 hrs (SST) 0056 hrs (GMT)
Some 300,000 protest against EU summit, energy deal sealed
More than 300,000 anti-capitalist protesters have marched through the streets of downtown Barcelona as European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Riot police fired tear gas at the end of the protest to disperse the small gangs of anarchists who smashed bank windows with metal bars along the route of the 2-1/2 hour march.
Several dozen people were slightly injured in the melee.
But the protest was largely peaceful, in sharp contrast to the violence that has rocked past EU summits.
Marching behind a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital -- another world is possible," the demonstrators trooped from Placa de Catalunya to the harbourfront.
They represented a host of causes, many of them opponents of free-market globalization, but also large numbers of Catalan and Basque nationalists.
At the summit site on the other side of town, leaders from the 15 European Union nations earlier agreed in principle to open Europe's gas and electricity market for industrial and business users in 2004.
France had held up the deal but finally agreed with its EU partners to press ahead on free-market reform in return for concessions on rail freight reform.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/europe/view/2651/1/.html
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Violent Protests Mar EU Summit
Sunday March 17, 2002 4:40 AM
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - Riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets subdued a group of violent protesters who rioted Saturday following a peaceful rally by tens of thousands of demonstrators hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Witnesses said some 200 protesters began smashing windows and throwing gasoline bombs and rocks at riot police near a statue of Christopher Columbus on a pedestrian promenade where the anti-globalization rally had ended had 30 minutes earlier.
Police said that seven officers were injured and that they had arrested 38 people by 10 p.m. Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour an a half later.
City officials estimated 250,000 people participated in the march, while organizers said there were twice that many - far more than the 10,000 to 50,000 they said they had been hoping for.
One of the protest organizing committee's own crowd controllers, Jordi Oriola, said the turnout made it difficult for organizers to control demonstrators. ``There were so many people the security groups could not manage,'' he said.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets surrounding the Columbus statue. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
The Spanish news agency Efe said two of its journalists were clubbed by police, and Associated Press photographer Alvaro Barrientos was slightly injured by a blow to the face from a police rifle butt.
At Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium, a soccer match between Spain's most popular teams was halted for seven minutes when two protesters with anti-capitalist, anti-European slogans on their T-shirts ran onto the field handcuffed themselves to the goalposts.
Protesters belonged to diverse organizations, some created at the spur of the moment, but they aimed their wrath at globalization and the European Union's plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
Speakers at the rally said European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
The demonstration began four hours after the EU summit ended.
Banging drums, blowing whistles and carrying banners with slogans such as ``Terror USA'' and ``Against A Capitalist Europe,'' the crowd made its way through the city as police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units manned vans at intersections to keep demonstrators on the protest route.
Protest leaders said authorities had busloads of would-be demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain from entering Barcelona, and Efe reported that more than 1,000 people had been barred from crossing the border from France.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-1590730,00.html
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More than 300,000 protest at EU summit,9 taken to hospital
BARCELONA, Spain, March 16 AFP|Published: Sunday March 17, 10:16 AM
More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of downtown Barcelona today in one of the biggest demonstrations ever to coincide with a summit of European Union leaders.
Some 50 people were seen being detained as riot police fired tear gas at the end of the protest to disperse small gangs of anarchists who smashed bank windows with metal bars along the route of the early-evening march.
Several dozen people were slightly injured in the melee, including at least three press photographers. Nine people were taken to hospital with light injuries, medical sources said.
But the bulk of the protest was orderly, in sharp contrast to the violence that has rocked past EU summits - particularly in Gothenburg, Sweden, last June when the city centre was ravaged and a demonstrator shot and wounded.
Marching behind a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital - another world is possible," the boisterous demonstrators trooped for almost three hours from Placa de Catalunya to the Mediterranean harbourfront.
They represented a host of causes - many of them opponents of free-market globalisation, but also large numbers of Catalan and Basque nationalists - as they moved forth under a forest of banners and flags.
Organisers estimated the crowd at 300,000 to 500,000 while municipal police said at least 150,000 had massed in the streets.
Shops along the 2km route drew their shutters though some department stores and cafes opted to stay open, their doors guarded by police.
Two police helicopters hovered noisily overhead.
Organisers, cheered by a week of largely trouble-free protests, had been hoping for 100,000 participants, even with a big soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid elsewhere in the city.
That match was interrupted by three protesters, two of whom managed to scramble onto the pitch and chain themselves to one of the goals.
Fans threw objects at them during the seven-minute delay, and all three were arrested.
About 100,000 people turned out Thursday for a boisterous but disciplined march along much the same route, organised by the mainstream European Trade Union Confederation.
Yesterday, as the two-day summit of EU heads of state and government got under way at a heavily guarded convention centre, 24 people were detained in skirmishes with baton-wielding police in various parts of the city.
"In terms of participation and reach of our message, the activities of the day by far exceeded our targets," said the Campaign Against the Europe of Capital, a coalition of 150-odd groups that has been coordinating protests.
Jose Bove, the mustachioed French activist best known for leading an assault on a McDonald's fast-food outlet in south-west France in August 1999, was in the city for the march.
"Europe's leaders are implementing policies and directives that only serve the interests of liberalisation and attack the rights of workers," Bove told AFP earlier in the day.
Security was tight throughout the summit with 8,500 police officers - many bused in from other parts of Spain - in the bustling Catalan capital to guard against the double threat of street riots and Basque terrorist attacks.
Several hundred people also demonstrated today in the streets of the French town of Perpignan, close to the Spanish border, and planned to join the protesters in Barcelona.
But for a third straight day, Spanish police at the border with France turned back cars and buses with people whom they suspected were planning to join today's march.
"Some people think that they can do things that do not meet the approval of the vast majority of the population," said Spanish Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy. "Action had to be taken."
The EU leaders met at a convention centre on the suburban north-west side of the city, surrounded by police armoured cars and chain-link fences. Most if not all were expected to have left the city before today's late-day march.
The last big anti-globalisation protest in Barcelona, in June last year during a World Bank meeting, led to violent clashes on the streets and a political debate in Spain over police brutality at demonstrations.
By Robert MacPherson
http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/2002/03/17/FFXIVZAQVYC.html
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EU nears summit deal, Spanish police fear protests
Friday March 15, 7:08 PM EST
By Alastair Macdonald
BARCELONA, Spain, March 16 (Reuters) - European Union leaders hope to thrash out a compromise with France on Saturday in a test case for free-market reforms as thousands of Spanish police brace for mass protests on the streets of Barcelona.
Scattered clashes between anti-capitalist activists and baton-wielding riot police on the first of two days of an EU summit in the city on Friday fell far short of the feared repeat of bloody riots at an international meeting in Genoa last July.
Police said 24 people had been detained so far. But they fear greater trouble when thousands of young people gather for, among other events, a free concert organised by anti-globalisation groups on Saturday afternoon.
Cocooned behind a massive security shield several km (miles) from the downtown port area which saw most of the trouble on Friday evening, EU ministers expect a deal to end a French state monopoly on electricity supply in what has become a litmus test of the EU's will to open up some of its protected markets.
Though the details will seem arcane to most Europeans, creating competition in the power sector is part of a grand plan to pare back trade barriers and regulations in many areas, such as transport and welfare provision, that their leaders hope can help them match the dynamism of the freewheeling U.S. economy.
French voters and trade unions representing power workers remain attached to the familiar certainties of monopoly supplier Electricite de France.
President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin have therefore had little incentive to agree to EU demands that they change things -- especially since they face off against each other in a presidential election next month.
FRENCH CONCESSION
Nonetheless, Jospin told his EU colleagues in Barcelona on Friday that Paris was prepared to accept that business users in France, though not households, should be allowed to buy power from private competitors eventually -- under certain conditions.
While disappointing to more ardent free marketeers in the Union, other EU leaders said that this would probably form the basis of a deal on Saturday, breaking a long deadlock.
"Naturally it would be better if we said yes to a liberalisation of everything, even for households," said Italy's business tycoon prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
"But there are national interests one has to face up to."
The pain of even limited economic coordination among the 15 states, a dozen of whom completed the launch of the euro single currency in January, has raised concerns about the viability of the bloc, especially as it plans to take in a dozen or so new members, mostly from eastern Europe, in the next few years.
The scale of the task has been brought home with the presence for the first time of leaders of the 13 membership candidates as part of the full summit.
Among other items likely to be included in statements issued on Saturday, EU leaders will reaffirm their support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said.
The EU was also expected to make clear its disapproval of Zimbabwe's controversial election, EU diplomats said.
http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_ge.jsp?section=news&news_id=reu-l15440117&feed=reu&date=20020315&cat=USMARKET
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Violence erupts at Barcelona
anti-globalisation protest
Last updated: 16-03-02, 21:21
Spanish riot police charge anti-globalization protesters in central Barcelona Photo: Reuters
Spanish police have fired rubber bullets at demonstrators taking part in a massive anti-capitalism protest march in Barcelona after the European Union summit.
Some demonstrators had set fires in the streets after the march by around quarter of a million people and one appeared to fire a flare at a government building.
Baton-wielding police moved in to disperse the crowds, lashing out with sticks and boots. Some fired rubber bullets.
A sea of demonstrators from a wide range of different groups had marched through city streets to reject the free-market agenda approved by the EU leaders in the city hours earlier.
The march began good humouredly but turned sour after darkness fell, leaving a trail of damage in its wake.
One Reuters correspondent in Barcelona's historic old town saw smashed plate glass windows at branches of two banks on the route of the march.
"Eat the rich" had been daubed in red paint in Spanish on one of the bank windows.
Officers at the scene, gazing at office chairs and smashed computer monitors strewn on the pavement outside, said protesters had caused the damage but it was not clear whether anyone had been detained.
Witnesses reported other clashes between police and protesters.
Municipal police estimated some 250,000 people took part in the protest. Organisers estimated that as many as half a million people had joined the march and said they believed it was the biggest demonstration in Barcelona's often turbulent history.
Some 8,500 police officers had been drafted in to the Catalan capital for the summit amid fears of a repetition of protests against globalisation that culminated in the death of a young protester at the hands of Italian police at Genoa last July.
Anti-globalisation activists from across Europe had descended on Barcelona for today's march, held under the title Against the Europe of Capital, to reject the liberal, free-market economic agenda espoused by Europe's leaders.
Some 1,200 protesters from Belgium and France who had hoped to go to Barcelona were barred at the Franco-Spanish border.
Several small demonstrations in Barcelona yesterday ended in clashes with police and 29 people were arrested for disorder and damaging property. Police struck out with batons on two occasions to break up crowds of demonstrators.
Organisers said they had expected the march to be peaceful and said they had commitments from the most hardline groups not to cause trouble.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0316/breaking46.htm
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Protesters, police clash after EU summit
March 16, 2002 Posted: 5:41 PM EST (2241 GMT)
The protest was held after the end of the summit
BARCELONA, Spain -- Pockets of anti-globalisation protesters broke windows and clashed with police in Barcelona late Saturday after European Union leaders ended a two-day economic summit.
A largely peaceful march by 250,000 anti-globalisation demonstrators turned violent late Saturday, when groups of protesters threw Molotov cocktails and fired small incendiary devices at police and broke windows of banks and other businesses in downtown Barcelona.
The clashes broke out near the national police headquarters when "small, violent groups tried to provoke" police, and it quickly spread to other locations downtown, a police spokeswoman told CNN. Seven police officers were injured and 38 demonstrators were arrested, she said.
Earlier, demostrators carried banners with slogans such as "Terror U.S.A." and "Against A Capitalist Europe" as they made their way from Plaza de Catalunya down Via Laietana to the city's port area two kilometers (1 mile) away.
MORE STORIES
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VIDEO
European Union leaders are discussing ways to make the group's economy more competitive. Robin Oakley reports from Barcelona.
Play video
(QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)
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In-depth: Changing Face of Europe
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• Analysis: Poor progress report for EU
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The march followed efforts by leaders of the 15-member bloc to inject some momentum into ambitious economic reform plans first broached two years ago in Lisbon.
They announced they had clinched a deal on the issue of France's state electricity monopoly and made progress on other matters.
Behind the intense security the main business of the EU summit had been to revive a plan to open up European markets and strip away regulation in areas ranging from transport and energy to job security.
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said after the summit that the issue of the liberalisation of electricity and gas markets for industrial and other business users had been resolved.
"We have taken a fundamental step today," Aznar said.
France agreed to a partial opening of its energy market that will by 2004 let French businesses, but not domestic consumers, buy their power from private competitors to state-owned Electricite de France.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the deal a "limited but solid achievement."
"There is no doubt this is a change of gear for Europe. Momentum for economic
change has been secured," he said.
"I said before this was a `make or break' summit. It was important, that having stalled in Stockholm, that we moved forward and we have moved forward."
French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had told their EU partners on Friday they could not go any further on energy liberalisation.
"It is progress, but not quite the progress some member states would have liked," an EU diplomat told Reuters.
Among other items, Aznar said EU leaders reaffirmed their support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and condemned "terrorism."
Blair said the EU summit also agreed that the re-election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe had not been free and fair.
The EU leaders met amid tight security
Earlier, the heads of government issued a draft communique expressing support for collective action against U.S. steel tariffs through the World Trade Organization (WTO).
EU officials made clear on Friday the bloc would seek compensation for U.S. President George W. Bush's tariffs.
For the first time, 13 mainly ex-communist states who hope to eventually join the EU have also taken full part in talks at the Barcelona summit.
The EU has to reform its economic practice if it is to compete with the U.S. Sweden, for example, has complained that it costs four times as much for a business to set up in Europe than it does in the United States.
The EU must also open up labour and trade markets to competition but CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said the gap that existed between free-marketeers and social welfare protectionists remains wide.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/16/barcelona.summit/index.html
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Sunday, March 17, 2002 Nisan 4, 5762 Israel Time: 17:25 (GMT+2)
Last update - 12:29 16/03/2002
Thousands pour into Barcelona ahead of anti-globalization rally
By The Associated Press
BARCELONA, Spain - Thousands of demonstrators Saturday poured into Barcelona ahead of a planned mass anti-globalization rally as European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Police said 29 people had been detained so far during the two-day meeting, including five in clashes with police overnight. Among the detainees were five foreigners from Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Slovenia and Britain, a police spokesman said.
Protest leaders said authorities were refusing entry into Barcelona of busloads of demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain.
Newspapers reported clashes on the border, about 130 kilometers (75 miles) north of Barcelona, as police tried to prevent entry to demonstrators. Spain has reinstated border controls previously scrapped under European Union treaties. Authorities have said they would turn back anyone suspected of
planning to instigate violence.
On Friday, police fired rubber bullets and clubbed several dozen protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans and rampaged through downtown Barcelona as leaders of 28 nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city. No major injuries were reported.
Organizers estimated between 20,000 to 50,000 demonstrators are swarming into Barcelona to protest EU leaders' plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
A major demonstration has been called for Saturday evening by the umbrella organization of protest groups, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Friday night, hundreds of young people gathered for a candlelight memorial for Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester shot and killed by police at a summit last summer in Genoa, Italy. On a wall, a demonstrator spray painted: "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth."
At the Palacio de Congresos, EU leaders are expected to sign off on new pledges to cut red tape and boost Europe's floundering economies Saturday, including opening up energy markets.
Security measures around the city include the deployment of 8,500 officers, as well as combat jets and ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast. NATO has also sent a surveillance jet to provide early alert against a possible terrorist attack from the air.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=142004&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
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Protesters, police clash after EU summit
March 16, 2002 Posted: 2241 GMT
The protest was held after the end of the summit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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BARCELONA, Spain -- Pockets of anti-globalisation protesters broke windows and clashed with police in Barcelona late Saturday after European Union leaders ended a two-day economic summit.
A largely peaceful march by 250,000 anti-globalisation demonstrators turned violent late Saturday, when groups of protesters threw Molotov cocktails and fired small incendiary devices at police and broke windows of banks and other businesses in downtown Barcelona.
The clashes broke out near the national police headquarters when "small, violent groups tried to provoke" police, and it quickly spread to other locations downtown, a police spokeswoman told CNN. Seven police officers were injured and 38 demonstrators were arrested, she said.
Earlier, demostrators carried banners with slogans such as "Terror U.S.A." and "Against A Capitalist Europe" as they made their way from Plaza de Catalunya down Via Laietana to the city's port area two kilometers (1 mile) away.
MORE STORIES
EU summit: Issue of Iraq dodged
VIDEO
European Union leaders are discussing ways to make the group's economy more competitive. Robin Oakley reports from Barcelona.
Play video
(QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)
EXTRA INFORMATION
In-depth: Changing Face of Europe
MORE STORIES
• Analysis: Poor progress report for EU
• French rivals pledge unity
The march followed efforts by leaders of the 15-member bloc to inject some momentum into ambitious economic reform plans first broached two years ago in Lisbon.
They announced they had clinched a deal on the issue of France's state electricity monopoly and made progress on other matters.
Behind the intense security the main business of the EU summit had been to revive a plan to open up European markets and strip away regulation in areas ranging from transport and energy to job security.
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said after the summit that the issue of the liberalisation of electricity and gas markets for industrial and other business users had been resolved.
"We have taken a fundamental step today," Aznar said.
France agreed to a partial opening of its energy market that will by 2004 let French businesses, but not domestic consumers, buy their power from private competitors to state-owned Electricite de France.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the deal a "limited but solid achievement."
"There is no doubt this is a change of gear for Europe. Momentum for economic
change has been secured," he said.
"I said before this was a `make or break' summit. It was important, that having stalled in Stockholm, that we moved forward and we have moved forward."
French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had told their EU partners on Friday they could not go any further on energy liberalisation.
"It is progress, but not quite the progress some member states would have liked," an EU diplomat told Reuters.
Among other items, Aznar said EU leaders reaffirmed their support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and condemned "terrorism."
Blair said the EU summit also agreed that the re-election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe had not been free and fair.
The EU leaders met amid tight security
Earlier, the heads of government issued a draft communique expressing support for collective action against U.S. steel tariffs through the World Trade Organization (WTO).
EU officials made clear on Friday the bloc would seek compensation for U.S. President George W. Bush's tariffs.
For the first time, 13 mainly ex-communist states who hope to eventually join the EU have also taken full part in talks at the Barcelona summit.
The EU has to reform its economic practice if it is to compete with the U.S. Sweden, for example, has complained that it costs four times as much for a business to set up in Europe than it does in the United States.
The EU must also open up labour and trade markets to competition but CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said the gap that existed between free-marketeers and social welfare protectionists remains wide.
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/16/barcelona.summit/index.html
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Riot police fire teargas as protests mar summit
Two plainclothes policemen detain a demonstrator in Barcelona yesterday after 2,000 anti-globalisation activists protested during the EU leaders' summit in the city
SPANISH riot police lashed out at protesters near the EU summit in Barcelona yesterday as European Union leaders struggled to overcome divisions on free-market economic reforms.
Central Barcelona was turned briefly into a battle-zone as Spanish police baton-charged hundreds of anti-globalisation activists.
After refusing to disperse from the city's main thoroughfare, Las Ramblas, the police dragged away protesters and fired teargas into the crowd.
Setting fire to rubbish bins as they fled down side streets of the historic heart of the port city, a number of British and French protesters were arrested.
An eyewitnesses said police had tried to move on a crowd of people gathering around Barcelona's Liceu opera house. Scuffles followed by a hail of chairs greeted the police when they moved in. Restaurants and shops swiftly brought down their shutters, trapping customers inside.
"I suddenly found myself trapped just as I was finishing my lunch, but it created a sort of war-time atmosphere and we just had another bottle of wine," said one tourist.
The incident was the most violent among a spate of minor clashes that took place far away from the heavily secured conference centre where the 15 heads of state were gathered.
However, despite fears voiced by Spanish police of a possible attack by the ETA Basque separatist terrorist group, there were no indications of any breach to the cordon they enforced with 10,000 officers drafted in from all over the country.
Yesterday's trouble contrasted with the peaceful atmosphere of a 100,000-strong march by trade union activists a day earlier. They were protesting the liberalisation agenda. Unions fear liberalisation will be used as a cover word by employers to make it easier to sack staff.
Conor Sweeney and Chris Glennon
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=713907&issue_id=7069
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Barcelona hit by anti-capitalist riots
Riot police used truncheons to beat back rock-throwing protesters yesterday in Barcelona, while EU leaders including Tony Blair held a summit in the Spanish city.
Police said protesters were arrested but gave no figures. No major injuries were reported.
Thousands of demonstrators had swarmed into the city to protest against EU plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
"It is an illusion that liberalisation will give consumers more freedom of choice," said 18-year-old political science student Julien Peine. "It will only give a few big companies more power."
The clashes showed that anti-globalisation violence may once again be returning to international political meetings following a lull after September 11.
As marchers moved down Las Ramblas, a boulevard lined with outdoor cafes, a group of hooded demonstrators strode towards a police line.
Police charged the group twice and snatched several people as the demonstrators hurled stones and swung wooden poles.
"The police started it," said protester Ruben Bayona. "I'm not saying they were not provoked, but it takes very little to provoke them."
Police chief Juan Cotino said around 100 protesters had been detained earlier this week at the French border after they tried to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other crude weapons to start riots.
http://yorkshirepost.co.uk/scripts/editorial2.cgi?cid=3&aid=446587
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EU meeting undisturbed despite anti-globalisation protests
Riot police have broken up anti-globalisation protests in Barcelona, where European leaders have gathered for discussions on economic policies.
Riot police with batons broke up the anti-globalisation protests, charging the demonstrators and at one point firing shots into the air.
But inside a heavy security cordon, discussions between the European Union leaders continued undisturbed.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has once described the event as a "make or break" meeting.
He and other leaders like Italy's Silvio Berlusconi are pushing for a liberalisation of labour laws, much to the annoyance of European unions.
However, it is unlikely in this German and French election year there will be any controversial decisions
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/03/item20020316072237_1.htm
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Sunday, March 17, 2002 Nisan 4, 5762 Israel Time: 17:29 (GMT+2)
Last update - 19:41 15/03/2002
Police clash with anti-globalization demonstrators at EU summit
By The Associated Press
BARCELONA, Spain - Riot police used truncheons to beat back rock-throwing protesters mounting an anti-globalization demonstration on Barcelona's famous flower and bird market Friday during a summit of leaders from 28 European nations.
Police said protesters were arrested for public disorder and resisting authority, but gave no figures. No major injuries were reported.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators have swarmed into Barcelona from around Europe and Spain - especially the violence-scarred Basque region - to protest European Union leaders' plans liberalize energy and financial markets.
"It's an illusion that liberalization will give consumers more freedom of choice," said 18-year-old political science student Julien Peine. "It will only give a few big companies more power."
Friday's clashes indicated that anti-globalization violence may once again be returning to international political meetings following a lull in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed as police vans and a chopper followed crowds of protesters marching through Barcelona's central shopping district as the summit got underway at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos on the city's outskirts.
As marchers moved down Las Ramblas, a boulevard lined with outdoor cafes, vendors hawking colorful displays of tulips, roses and carnations, and stalls with birds chirping inside stacked cages, a group of hooded demonstrators strode toward a police line. Police charged the group twice and snatched several people as the demonstrators hurled stones and beverage cans and swung wooden poles torn from circular fences around sidewalk saplings.
"The police started it," said protester Ruben Bayona. "I'm not saying they weren't provoked, but it takes very little to provoke them."
Earlier, police arrested five people at a demonstration outside the Sacred Family Church, a Barcelona landmark designed by architect Antonio Gaudi, Spanish media reported.
Authorities are seeking to prevent running street battles of the sort that erupted during previous international summits, as well as the possibility of a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists or Basque separatists.
Security measures include the deployment of 8,500 officers around the city, as well as combat jets and ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast. NATO has sent an AWACS jet to provide early warning against a potential attack from the air.
Police chief Juan Cotino said in a television interview that around 100 protesters had been detained earlier this week at the French border after they tried to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other crude weapons to instigate riots. However, Peine said that when his group crossed the border police confiscated poles they had intended to use to hold up protest banners.
Spain has temporarily resumed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
Twenty rallies and other events have been officially scheduled for this weekend, including a candlelight memorial for Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester shot and killed by police at a summit last summer of the world's richest nations in Genoa, Italy.
A mass demonstration sponsored by an array of social and political movements is expected to draw up to 50,000 people on Saturday.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=141960&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
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Anti-globalisation protest broken up by police
Riot police have broken up a crowd of protesters at the opening of the European Summit in Barcelona.
Several hundred anti-globalisation campaigners had gathered for the start of talks.
They were reportedly beaten with batons as police moved in.
© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=11705649&method=full
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Thousands in Barcelona EU summit protest
(Filed: 14/03/2002)
AROUND 60,000 union members took to the streets of Barcelona today as part of a protest ahead of this weekend's EU summit there.
Demonstrators marched behind a banner demanding full employment and social rights in an expanding European Union.
Thousands also joined a demonstration called by the Barcelona Social Forum which groups together 50 political parties, unions and protest groups.
Some 8,500 police had been sent to the city to keep a watchful eye on anti-globalisation and trade union protests.
Madrid reinstated passport controls at the border with France and in Spain's airports last weekend in a an attempt to bar known militants from entering Barcelona
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/14/ubarca.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/03/14/ixport.html
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Military guard for Spanish summit
March 14, 2002 Posted: 1950 GMT
Warships in Barcelona port are part of the extensive security arrangements
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BARCELONA, Spain (CNN) -- Security is tight in Barcelona ahead of a European summit starting on Friday, with police, army and navy on alert for violence.
While a peaceful trade unionist protest of about 100,000 caused no problems in the city on Thursday, the 8,000 police on summit duty are prepared for violence from other groups.
Police are on alert for any terrorist threat or mass demonstration.
"I am very confident everything will go well," says Julia Garcia Valdecasas, one of the government officials playing a key role in protecting leaders of the 28 European nations due in Barcelona.
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Analysis: Poor progress report for EU
"Barcelona will be able to host the European summit and also the protesters who oppose its policies."
Spanish media reported extensive security arrangements were in place, including F-18 fighters on alert to intercept intruding aircraft and a NATO airborne warning and control system plane patrolling the skies, Reuters news agency said.
Ground-to-air missiles have been brought in to the military section of Barcelona airport and naval patrol ships are watching the Catalan coast, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo said.
Organisers say they don't want any violence this time but concede they can't be sure it won't happen.
"You will see how the politicians are going to meet locked inside their own castle," says Marcelo Exposito of the Movement for Global Resistance.
Police inspect the sewer tunnels below the Barcelona hotel where officials are to stay while attending the summit
"And what we usually say is, 'Today the city is blocked -- actually it's an act of violence against people -- and we're going to unblock the city."
But not if the police have their way. They have been training for months in riot control. It's the tightest security Barcelona has seen since the Olympics a decade ago.
While police have sealed off the conference site with barricades, officials admit that violence across town could jeopardize the summit.
Officials consider ETA the biggest threat. Police have arrested 50 suspected ETA members or collaborators this year, putting a dent in the group's plans to attack the summit.
Authorities also have not ruled out Islamic terrorist attacks.
"The less said about security the better. We're not going to reveal our exact plans," says Valdecasas.
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/13/barcelona.security/index.html
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Thousands march against capitalism
Peaceful protest ends European Union gathering
Thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators march through central Barcelona, Spain, on Saturday.
BARCELONA, Spain, March 16 — Tens of thousands of anti-capitalist protesters marched through Barcelona on Saturday after a European Union summit in the city aimed at driving forward free-market economic reforms.
AS A SEA OF PEOPLE rolled forward from a central square towards the harbor, one Reuters correspondent watched the column of marchers pass steadily down a wide avenue for an hour. No police estimate of crowd numbers was available.
The crowd of mainly young people held up banners with slogans such as “Europe with peace and justice” and the 1960s mantra “Make love not war.”
Anti-globalization activists from across Europe have descended on the Spanish city for a march under the title “Against the Europe of Capital” to reject the liberal economic agenda espoused by Europe’s leaders.
Ada Colau, a spokeswoman for a coalition of more than 100 groups staging the event, said there were “many, many thousands” of people taking part.
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“It’s a massive participation even though they (the authorities) tried to stop us with a fear campaign and stopped many buses at the (French) border,” she said.
A French trade union said several hundred French and Italian anti-globalization activists heading for Barcelona were turned back at the Spanish border on Friday.
Several small demonstrations in Barcelona on Friday ended in clashes with police and 29 people were arrested for disorder and damaging property. Police struck out with batons on two occasions to break up crowds of demonstrators.
Some 8,500 police officers were drafted in to Barcelona to guard the summit amid fears of a repetition of the protests against international meetings that culminated in the death of a young protester at the hands of Italian police at Genoa in July.
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Police helicopters hovered over the demonstrators on Saturday but police kept a low profile on the ground. The march began in a jovial atmosphere with bongo drums and whistles.
French activist Jose Bove, a hero in the anti-globalization movement, warned Spain on Saturday against cracking down on protesters, saying a heavy hand would only fuel greater demonstrations in the future.
Organizers said they had expected the march to be peaceful and said they had commitments from the most hardline groups not to cause trouble.
Complicating matters for police, one of the biggest Spanish soccer matches of the season, between bitter rivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, takes place in the city on Saturday evening.
© 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/725172.asp?cp1=1
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Anti-globalism demonstrators halt Barcelona v Real Madrid match
Two anti-globalist demonstrators halted a major Spanish league football match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid for seven minutes.
Demonstrators ran onto the field and handcuffed themselves to the goalposts behind Barcelona goalkeeper Roberto Bonano just after the start of the game at the Nou Camp.
They were wearing T-shirts with "Let's stop capitalist Europe" printed in Catalan.
© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=11709180&method=full
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Demonstrators riot in Spain
16th March 2002
housands of demonstrators Saturday poured into Barcelona ahead of a planned mass anti-globalization rally as European leaders wrapped a summit on economic reforms.
Police said 29 people had been detained so far during the two-day meeting, including five in clashes with police overnight.
Among the detainees were five foreigners from Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Slovenia and Britain, a police spokesman said.
Protest leaders said authorities were refusing entry into Barcelona of busloads of demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain.
Newspapers reported clashes on the border, about 130 kilometers (75 miles) north of Barcelona, as police tried to prevent entry to demonstrators.
Spain has reinstated border controls previously scrapped under European Union treaties.
Authorities have said they would turn back anyone suspected of planning to instigate violence.
On Friday, police fired rubber bullets and clubbed several dozen protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans and rampaged through downtown Barcelona as leaders of 28 nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city. No major injuries were reported.
Organizers estimated between 20,000 to 50,000 demonstrators are swarming into Barcelona to protest EU leaders' plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
A major demonstration has been called for Saturday evening by the umbrella organization of protest groups, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Friday night, hundreds of young people gathered for a candlelight memorial for Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester shot and killed by police at a summit last summer in Genoa, Italy. On a wall, a demonstrator spray painted: "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth."
At the Palacio de Congresos, EU leaders are expected to sign off on new pledges to cut red tape and boost Europe's floundering economies Saturday, including opening up energy markets.
Security measures around the city include the deployment of 8,500 officers, as well as combat jets and ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast.
Nato has also sent a surveillance jet to provide early alert against a possible terrorist attack from the air.
http://www.femail.co.uk/pages/standard/article.html?in_article_id=105333&in_page_id=2
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March 16, 2002
Tourists caught up in protest mayhem
From Stephen Burgen in Barcelona
FRIGHTENED tourists fled yesterday as riot police baton-charged protesters on La Rambla, Barcelona’s most popular thoroughfare.
The trouble started outside the Liceu opera house in the early afternoon after a stand-off between police and up to 500 supporters of the anti-globalisation group Marc-Attac, who were staging a protest.
The police needed little prompting before they charged the protesters, batons flailing, at the start of two hours of running battles.
Two young women from London, a little the worse for sangria, ran as the retreating crowd sent their table flying. The police were pelted with bricks, bottles and pot plants from flower stalls as they drove the crowd back. There were ten arrests.
Carol and Peter Perry, a retired couple from Newbury, who were in the city to celebrate their wedding anniversary, were baffled by the scenes. “Are they students?” Mrs Perry asked as a group of riot police lined up a few yards away, teargas guns at the ready. “It’s not for us, this sort of thing,” her husband said.
More disturbances were expected last night as antiglobalisation websites called for actions across the city.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-237379,00.html
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Postcards from Barcelona: The leaders joke, the activists protest
By Stephen Castle
16 March 2002
European summit
Inside the Palace of Pedralbes, leaders of 30 countries sat down to a lavish lunch to mark a milestone in the reunification of Europe.
On the streets of Barcelona, riot police beat back hundreds of anti-globalisation demonstrators and arrested dozens more as the tide of protest made itself felt, once again, at an international summit.
Facing a twin threat from protesters and Basque separatists, the Spanish authorities took no chances yesterday, deploying 8,500 police, warships, anti-aircraft missiles and aerial surveillance planes.
As it turned out, the threat was more low-tech. Clashes occurred in the Ramblas avenue near the Liceu theatre when up to 500 protesters tried to break a police cordon. Police, who outnumbered demonstrators by about three to one, charged with their batons.
Europe's great and good were not disturbed, however. The summit and the lunch, hosted by King Juan Carlos, were attended by leaders, foreign and finance ministers from the 15 EU nations, and from the 13 which are applying to join, plus the presidents of Yugoslavia and Montenegro. Top of the agenda was a plan designed to make the EU the most competitive economic bloc in the world by 2010.
The Spanish Defence Minister, Federico Trillo, rejected criticisms of the security operation. "This is not a besieged city," he said. "It is a safe city."
Also from the Europe section.
EU withholds backing for action against Iraq
Blair praises EU's 'change of gear' on economic reforms
French politics is for oldies, mon vieux
EU imposes mild sanctions against Zimbabwe
Blair attacks unions' cry of 'betrayal'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=274987
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Police Battle With Anti-globalisation Protestors
Ananova
Sunday March 17, 2002 4:42 AM
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful march and rally by thousands of demonstrators.
Hours earlier European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were injured, while at least three journalists, including a photographer, were hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
Dozens of people were arrested. Witnesses say some 200 protestors began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police.
A police spokesman said: "We will have a full report later, but officers are authorised to use the force necessary to stop people from throwing molotov cocktails at them."
In one confrontation, rioters set a dustbin on fire and turned over a car. Police detained 20 of them.
Amid fears of rioting and possible terrorist attacks, leaders of 28 EU countries met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day summit.
City officials estimate 250,000 people participated in Saturday's march, while the organisers put the figure at half a million.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and EUs plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
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Police subdue Barcelona rioters
From AP
The Associated Press
16mar02
BARCELONA: Police have fired rubber bullets and clubbed protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans in downtown Barcelona as leaders of 28 European nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city.
Police said 24 people were arrested in clashes throughout the day. These included six Basque nationalists who overturned a car.
No serious injuries were reported.
Protesters accused the authorities of provoking the violence.
"We are seeing here a state of siege. This is clearly police provocation," said a spokesman for the organising committee, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. He identified himself only as Arnau.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from around Europe are in Barcelona to protest against European Union plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Montse Arias of the French anti-globalization group Attac said eight busloads of protesters, lawyers and journalists had been forced to turn back today at the French border with Spain.
Spain has temporarily re-imposed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
Police spokesman Federico Cabrero said travellers were being detained at the border for trying to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other crude weapons. He said he was unaware of buses being refused entry.
Today's clashes indicated that anti-globalisation violence may once again be returning to international political meetings, following a lull in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed and police vans and a helicopter followed protesters through central Barcelona as the two-day summit got under way at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos.
Authorities are seeking to prevent running street battles of the sort that erupted during previous international summits, as well as the possibility of a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists or Basque separatists.
"It's an illusion that liberalisation will give consumers more freedom of choice," said political science student Julien Peine, 18. "It will only give a few big companies more power."
Marijuana smoke filled the air as people in their teens and early 20s listened to music and sat in circles drinking beer and chatting while circus artists performed on a high wire.
"We're radical and violent. Violence makes things change," said a young Spaniard who gave his name as Randy Elf from New Kids on the Black Block, a self-described anti-capitalism group.
www.news.com.au
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EU Summit Wraps Up as Protestors March Against Integration
Roger Wilkison
Barcelona
16 Mar 2002 19:25 UTC
Listen to Roger Wilkison's Report from Barcelona (RealAudio)
Wilkison Report - Download 320k (RealAudio)
Leaders of the 15-member European Union have ended a two-day summit in Barcelona with a hard-fought agreement to partially open up their domestic energy markets. Although the leaders have now gone home, a big protest march against their plans for closer European integration is scheduled to take place in the Spanish city later on Saturday.
EU leaders agreed two years ago that they would make their bloc the most dynamic economy in the world. But every piecemeal step toward greater integration and more competition has been the result of tough bargaining.
That was the case Saturday with a deal that will allow competition in the supply of gas and electricity to industrial and commercial users by the year 2004. France blocked any extension of the deal to household consumers, but said it could reconsider in a year's time.
French politicians of every stripe are worried about offending powerful labor unions five weeks ahead of a presidential election. And they are also determined to defend the monopoly of the state-owned power company EDF.
Jose Maria Aznar
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who chaired the summit, said the compromise should still be seen as a shot in the arm for the economic reform process. He says the march toward open markets in such areas as energy and financial services is irreversible.
Romano Prodi, the head of the Brussels-based European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has been a driving force for opening up the European market.
He said the deal obtained Saturday is the best that could be hoped for, given the present circumstances.
The EU leaders also gave the green light to a network of navigation satellites called Galileo that will compete with the U.S. military global positioning system, or GPS. The idea has drawn fire from Washington, which sees the EU project as unnecessary duplication. But the EU is uncomfortable with being technologically dependent on the United States.
In foreign affairs, the leaders condemned the conduct of last week's elections in Zimbabwe, saying the vote could be judged neither free nor fair. They also demanded that Israel lift all travel restrictions against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Barcelona is bracing for a protest march by a coalition of groups that fear closer European integration aids large multinational companies. The demonstrators are also concerned about any attempt by EU leaders to ditch the generous social safety nets that shield Europeans from the harsher aspects of no-holds-barred capitalism of the type the protesters say holds sway in the United States.
Demonstrators Clash With Spanish Police Near EU Summit
Roger Wilkison
Barcelona
15 Mar 2002 16:14 UTC
Listen to Roger Wilkison's Report from Barcelona (RealAudio)
Wilkison Report - Download 302k (RealAudio)
Spanish riot police clashed with anti-globalization demonstrators in downtown Barcelona, as European Union leaders meeting in the city were wrestling with ways to revitalize the 15-nation bloc's economy and make it more competitive. The EU leaders and their counterparts from 13 countries that want to join the EU are also discussing such international issues as the Middle East and Zimbabwe.
Police wielding truncheons waded into a crowd of rock-throwing youths along Barcelona's main downtown artery and arrested at least 10 people for disrupting public order.
Demonstrators staged sporadic confrontations with police to protest what they see as the EU's pro-free market tendencies, just as the EU leaders were debating how fast they should open up national energy markets and make labor laws less stringent.
Leaders attending EU summit in Barcelona, Spain
The violence came a day after 100,000 trade unionists marched through Barcelona to protest against undoing Europe's generous labor and social welfare legislation to enable EU countries to compete effectively with the more dynamic American economy.
Despite host Spain's push for a revitalization of ambitious economic reforms, especially in the energy sector, there is no chance that France will go along with the plan. President Jacques Chirac and his main rival in next month's presidential elections, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, are both reluctant to offend powerful labor unions by allowing private firms to compete with the government-owned electric power monopoly.
The EU leaders are also expected to urge Israel to immediately pull all of its forces out of Palestinian areas. But Britain's top official for European affairs, Peter Hain, would only say that a statement on the Middle East is still being prepared.
"We're expecting an agreement that both sides be urged to take immediate and effective action to stop the bloodshed, and that the European Council will warmly welcome the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1397, which, for the first time, called for the recognition of a state of Palestine coexisting in peace and with security alongside the state of Israel, (which would also be) guaranteed its security," Mr. Hain said.
Mr. Hain said the leaders will also issue a tough statement condemning as invalid the recent election in Zimbabwe. He said they will ask their foreign ministers to consider hardening sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe when they meet next month
VOA.com
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Riots erupt on Spanish streets
By JEROME SOCOLOVSKY
17mar02
BARCELONA: Anarchy erupted on the streets of Barcelona as protesters staged running battles with police last night.
The fighting broke out as anti-globalisation campaigners gathered outside a compound housing the leaders of the 28 nations attending the European Union summit in the city.
Police fired rubber bullets and clubbed protesters who threw rocks and rubbish bins.
Police said 24 people were arrested, including six Basque nationalists.
No serious injuries were reported.
Protesters accused the authorities of provoking the violence.
"We are seeing here a state of siege. This is clearly police provocation," said a spokesman for the organising committee, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from across Europe are in Barcelona to protest against the EU's financial policy.
Montse Arias, of the French anti-globalisation group Attac, said eight busloads of protesters, lawyers and journalists had been forced to turn back at the French border with Spain.
Spain has temporarily re-imposed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of an EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
A police spokesman said travellers were being detained at the border for trying to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other weapons.
Yesterday's clashes were the first signs that anti-globalisation violence may be returning to international political meetings, following a lull in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed and police vans and a helicopter followed protesters through the city as the two-day summit started at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos.
AP
the sunday times
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Riots erupt on Spanish streets
By JEROME SOCOLOVSKY
Sunday Herald Sun
17mar02
BARCELONA: Anarchy erupted on the streets of Barcelona as protesters staged running battles with police last night.
The fighting broke out as anti-globalisation campaigners gathered outside a compound housing the leaders of the 28 nations attending the European Union summit in the city.
Police fired rubber bullets and clubbed protesters who threw rocks and rubbish bins.
Police said 24 people were arrested, including six Basque nationalists.
No serious injuries were reported.
Protesters accused the authorities of provoking the violence.
"We are seeing here a state of siege. This is clearly police provocation," said a spokesman for the organising committee, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from across Europe are in Barcelona to protest against the EU's financial policy.
Montse Arias, of the French anti-globalisation group Attac, said eight busloads of protesters, lawyers and journalists had been forced to turn back at the French border with Spain.
Spain has temporarily re-imposed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of an EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
A police spokesman said travellers were being detained at the border for trying to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other weapons.
Yesterday's clashes were the first signs that anti-globalisation violence may be returning to international political meetings, following a lull in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed and police vans and a helicopter followed protesters through the city as the two-day summit started at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos.
AP
www.news.com.au
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Sunday March 17, 2:41 PM
EU summit ends with energy deal, 300,000 join Barcelona protest
Leaders of the 15-nation European Union took key steps towards freeing up Europe's markets, but 300,000 demonstrators beg to differ in one of the biggest protests ever to coincide with an EU summit.
Some 50 people were seen being detained as riot police fired tear gas at the end of the twilight demonstration, dispersing anarchists who smashed bank windows with metal bars along the route of the 2-1/2 hour march.
Several dozen people were slightly injured in the melee, including at least three press photographers. Nine people were taken to hospital with light injuries, medical sources said.
But the bulk of the protest was orderly, in sharp contrast to the violence that rocked past EU summits -- particularly in Gothenburg, Sweden last June when the city center was ravaged and a demonstrator shot and wounded.
Blowing whistles and marching behind a forest of banners, the Barcelona protesters represented a wide range of causes -- including Catalan and Basque nationalists, and opposition to free-market globalization.
At the summit in a heavily secured convention center, the EU heads of state and government agreed in principle to open Europe's gas and electricity market for industrial and business users in 2004.
France, which is in the midst of a general election campaign, had held up the deal, but finally agreed with its EU partners to press ahead on free-market reform in return for concessions on rail freight reform.
"This is a fundamental step" that will open 60 to 70 percent of Europe's energy market, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar told reporters. Spain currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
The EU's commitment to ambitious free-market reforms -- agreed two years ago in Lisbon, with the goal of overtaking the United States in the new economy by 2010 -- was at stake in Barcelona.
France's reluctance before the summit to expose state-owned electricity group EDF to competition ahead of the election showed how national politics can cast shadows over broader EU undertakings.
Neither conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac nor socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, campaigning hard to succeed him, wanted to be seen caving in on the issue with French jobs possibly at stake.
Security was tight throughout the two-day summit with 8,500 police officers -- many bused in from other parts of Spain -- in the bustling Catalan capital to guard against the double threat of street riots and Basque terrorist attacks.
On Friday baton-wielding riot police skirmished with small bands of youths in the bustling city center, where the coalition of protest groups staged 25 different "happenings" in various neighborhoods.
Other reforms pledged at Lisbon in March 2000, but delayed in the EU policy-making pipeline, include measures to facilitate cross-border corporate takeovers, greater job mobility, more integrated financial markets, and a common EU patent law.
The leaders in Barcelona found it easier to agree on international issues.
They voiced strong support for this week's UN resolution that spoke for the first time of a Palestinian state, and offered to send observers to facilitate a renewed Middle East peace process. The EU has been playing an ever-bigger role in the region.
With prodding from Britain, the EU leaders added their voice to the international outcry against the re-election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in violence-marred polls that his opponents and foreign observers are calling unfair
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020317/1/2lhc5.html
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EU SUMMIT More than 100,000 join final Barcelona protest, say organisers
BARCELONA (AFX) - More than 100,000 people joined a final protest march against the EU economic summit here, according to first estimates by organizers.
Led by a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital -- another world is possible," the overwhelmingly young demonstrators headed from Placa de Catalunya to the harborfront.
They did so amid a large deployment of riot police, and two surveillance helicopters overhead, amid fears of a repeat of the street violence that has marred top-level EU gatherings in the past.
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Running battles conclude EU summit
Police moved in after missiles were thrown
Police in Barcelona have fired tear gas and rubber bullets during running skirmishes with protesters marching in response to the EU economic summit, which ended on Saturday.
The trouble - which left 18 injured, including seven policemen - came towards the end of a march which for the most part was noisy but peaceful.
We're here to say 'no' to the European Union
Protester Ada Colau
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant says it is not clear how the clashes began, but the vast majority of the marchers, from anti-globalisation campaigners to Basque nationalists, were not involved.
The EU leaders had earlier agreed a number of moves designed to push forward free-market reforms.
The centre-piece was a compromise deal to allow competition in supplies of gas and electricity to businesses from 2004.
But a bid to extend this to supplies for homes was blocked by France.
Various grievances
The demonstrators - who had been marching from Placa de Catalunya to the harbour front - were protesting against everything from the Euro and free-market globalisation to Israeli violence.
The press were also caught in the violence
Along with communists, Greens, and the opponents of globalisation are Catalan and Basque nationalists.
There was also a group of anti-Americans masquerading as Afghan prisoners detained at Camp X-ray in Cuba.
Police moved in as young militants, some hooded or wearing masks, set fire to rubbish cans and threw stones bottles and flares.
Police said some banks and storefronts were wrecked and there were 38 arrests.
The game at the Nou Camp was delayed
"We're here to say 'no' to the European Union, which... is becoming a model for globalisation and is more like the US in favour of arms and war," said Ada Colau, a spokeswoman for the march organisers.
The protest even encroached on one of the biggest Spanish football matches of the season, between Barcelona and Real Madrid, in Barcelona on Saturday evening.
The game had to be stopped briefly as two demonstrators who had handcuffed themselves to the goal posts were removed.
Elections condemned
Ending their two-day summit, European leaders agreed to open up electricity and gas markets, to raise the retirement age and to increase job mobility.
They also condemned last weekend's elections in Zimbabwe, called on Israel to withdraw its forces from all Palestinian areas, and hailed Serbia and Montenegro's decision to form a loose federation.
Aznar: "Fundamental step"
The summit's key decision is to allow industries and businesses to shop around between different countries' electricity and gas suppliers from 2004 onwards.
But in a concession to France, where the issue is sensitive ahead of next month's presidential election, non-business consumers will not be included.
According to one report, France agreed to the deal after Spain dropped a proposal for rapid liberalisation of the rail freight market.
Though some leaders expressed disappointment at the compromise, Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, said business consumers made up 70% of the market.
"We have taken a fundamental step today," he said.
Tax cuts
In an attempt to encourage workers to look for jobs abroad, the summit agreed on the creation of an EU-wide health insurance card, guaranteeing the holder treatment in any country.
They also agreed by 2010 to:
boost funding for research and development to 3% of GDP
provide daycare for 90% of children of working mothers
raise the average retirement age from 58 to 65
There were also pledges to increase vocational training and education standards, boost internet usage by young Europeans, and cut taxes for low earners.
The leaders agreed that they were behind schedule with the changes planned at the Lisbon summit two years ago, to make the EU the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010 and to create 20 million new jobs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1876000/1876889.stm
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Barcelona blues
Mar 15th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda
As European Union heads of government gather in Barcelona for a special summit, their ambitious aim of making Europe the world’s most competitive region by 2010 looks doomed to fail. The best they can hope for is to break the deadlock on electricity deregulation—and French resistance will make even that difficult
Reuters
The smiles are fixed
In Depth: Changes at the European Central Bank
WHAT could be more pleasant than Barcelona in the spring, with a stroll down the Ramblas or tapas by the port? Sadly, the EU leaders in Barcelona for their special summit are going to spend much of their time there engaged in a lengthy discussion of electricity liberalisation in an airless conference room. And if that is not bad enough, there is worse: the ten-year rolling programme of economic reforms that they unveiled with great fanfare in Lisbon two years ago is in deep trouble.
The “Lisbon process” was launched in large part because the EU countries recognised they were falling behind the United States economically. In 1991 America's GDP per person was 42% greater than the EU average; by the end of 2001 the gap had widened to 54%. At Lisbon, Europeans were promised a programme of economic reforms that would make the EU the “most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. Yet recently Frits Bolkestein, the EU's commissioner for the internal market, declared that “most of the key reforms announced at Lisbon are still on paper, waiting to be approved and implemented. The credibility of all community institutions is at stake. We can't keep on saying the cheque is in the mail.” And on March 13th, Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish prime minister and the man who will chair the summit, said Barcelona would be an important landmark: it was, he said, vital to show the world that Europe is serious about reform. By now, Mr Aznar must have his fingers firmly crossed, hoping the summit is not the wrong kind of landmark.
100,000 march against EU summit
(ninemsn) Sun 15:12 GMT
EU: Finland, Bucking Energy Trends, Calls For More Nuclear Power
(Radio Free Europe) Sun 14:52 GMT
EU calls for full Israel withdrawal from PA areas
(Jerusalem Post) Sun 14:41 GMT
EU leaders tiptoe around Iraq at Barcelona summit
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(CNN Europe) Sun 14:08 GMT
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European competitiveness: Lisbon's lost legacy
Dec 14th 2001
The EU's stalled liberalisation efforts
Nov 1st 2001
The European Union posts the agenda for the Barcelona summit, and publishes the lengthy Lisbon meeting conclusions from the previous summit at Laeken. The EU details its policies on energy, takeovers and patents. The Centre for European Reform, a British think-tank, provides research and analysis on the EU's economic policies, and other EU policy issues.
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World population growth Mar 13th 2002
About Global Agenda
As the frustrated Mr Bolkestein points out, there is still “more poetry than motion”. He highlights two reforms that were meant to have been wrapped up by the end of last year but which remain stuck. Efforts to create an EU-wide system of patent law, called a “community patent”, have foundered on arguments about which languages patents can be filed in. This issue is so sensitive and so bound up with national pride that the Barcelona summiteers do not plan even to try to solve it. And plans to simplify EU rules on public procurement, which accounts for some 15% of the countries' aggregate GDP, have stalled. These were meant to have been approved last year. Efforts to create a pan-European code for corporate takeovers likewise came to grief last year, after 12 years, when they ran into opposition in Germany and in the European Parliament. The European Commission has appointed some “wise men” to try to find a way forward—to little effect so far.
But the outlook is not entirely bleak. A bundle of measures to liberalise telecoms markets was pushed through last year; limited liberalisation of Europe's postal services has been agreed on; and a financial-services “action plan” is making progress, raising hopes that European companies will soon have better access to more capital. Meanwhile the commission remains pretty strict in upholding the existing laws of the EU's internal market. It has started investigations of possible illegal state aid from Greece to Olympic Airways. A thumbs-down from the commission could bankrupt the Greek national carrier.
Yet even genuine advances for economic liberalisation threaten to be offset by a new wave of labour-market regulation which runs counter to Lisbon's professed desire to cut unemployment. The EU is working on a new directive to ensure that temporary workers hired through agencies receive the same pay and conditions as equivalent full-time workers.
If the Barcelona summit fails to give liberalisation a boost, then it is likely that the outside world will stop listening to the high-sounding promises made in Lisbon two years ago. For that reason, if no other, European leaders want to come up with something they can point to as an achievement.
Hence their concentration on electricity liberalisation. This issue has assumed a totemic significance because of France's stubborn refusal to free its markets and expose EDF, its state-owned electricity supplier, to competition. Just ten days before the summit, France blocked a draft deal on electricity that was acceptable to all the other 14 EU countries. A compromise may yet be possible in Barcelona, whereby France would agree to open its market for business users of electricity, while allowing EDF to continue to overcharge householders. Even that limited success cannot be guaranteed. French sources talk about this “managed opening” of energy markets without wanting to spell out a date by which it would be completed: and even for this concession the French are looking for an implicit linkage with progress on “social Europe”—code for labour-market regulation.
With the presidential campaign under way in France, both the left and the right are talking tough in public. On March 14th, on the eve of the summit, public sector workers demonstrated in Paris against further deregulation, and President Jacques Chirac, wanting to sound tough, publicly ruled out full privatisation of EDF. Not to be outdone, the French finance minister, Laurent Fabius, a socialist, made it clear on March 13th that deregulation for domestic customers is not on the agenda. And some, at least, of France's European partners are trying hard to show their understanding ahead of the elections. The German finance minister, Hans Eichel, has made it clear that though his country favours liberalisation the Germans do not want to pick a fight with the French at Barcelona. None of this sounds like a victory for ordinary Europeans but liberalisers, desperate for any good news, will doubtless talk up any deal Europe’s leaders can come up with.
Meanwhile, events many miles from Barcelona may deepen the gloom at the summit. Europeans have long been urged to look to the United States for lessons in the benefits of liberalisation. America's decision to impose tariffs on steel imports, including those from Europe, will encourage Europe's powerful anti-globalisation movement to believe that the tide of the argument is now turning its way.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1043718
Police clashed with more than 2,000 protestors as rioting erupted last night on the streets of Barcelona at the end of the European leader’s summit, reports the Sunday Times. The trouble came towards the end of a march of 250,000 which had for the most part been peaceful.
Demonstrators hurled bottled, rocks and fireworks at police. In response to the violence, the Spanish police used tear gas and rubber bullets. According to the BBC, 18 people were left injured, including some policemen. More than 60 protestors were arrested, some by undercover officers who had mixed with the marchers.
The march started four hours before the end of the summit and had been organised by anti-globalisation protestors. The rioting began in the Placa de Catalunya, before spreading to Columbus Square and across a 1Å- square-mile area of the city centre.
http://www.euobserver.com/index.phtml?selected_topic=9&action=view&article_id=5600 ----------------------------------------------------
Barça-Real Delayed By Anti-Globalisation Activists
News Archive
Editor's Spotlight
The Spanish Derby: Barcelona-Real Madrid
03/16/2002. Three anti-globalisation activists walked onto the Nou Camp stadium pitch to disturb the "Super Clasico" game between Barcelona & Real Madrid.
The protestors were wearing shirts with an anti-globalisation slogan: "Paramos a la Europa del capital" - "Stop Capitalistic Europe".
The police took seven minutes to get rid of them under the boos and jeers of the 105 000 crowd. Onr protestor handcuffed himself to Roberto Bonano's goal-post.
http://www.soccerage.com/en/13/d0204.html -----------------------------------------------------
Violence at anti-globalisation march
AP - Spanish riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets put down marauding anti-globalisation vandals following a peaceful march and rally by tens of thousands of protesters, hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit in Barcelona on economic reforms.
Police said seven officers were injured. At least three journalists, including an Associated Press photographer, were injured, two clubbed by policemen and one bashed in the face by a rifle butt.
Police said they had arrested 38 people by 10pm (0800 AEDT). Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour and a half later.
Witnesses said some 200 troublemakers began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police. The rally had ended there a half hour before the violence began.
Police said they could not confirm or deny the use of rubber bullets.
"We will have a full report later, but officers are authorised to use the force necessary to stop people from throwing molotov cocktails at them," a spokesman said on the customary condition of anonymity.
In one confrontation, rioters set a garbage bin afire and turned over a car, panicking people in nearby restaurants and theatres, the national news agency Efe said. Police detained 20 of them after they holed up in an automatic bank teller booth.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
Amid fears of rioting and possible terrorist attacks, leaders of 28 European nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day European Union summit. Security measures in Barcelona included the deployment of 8,500 officers, as well as combat jets, ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast.
Municipal officials estimated 250,000 people participated in yesterday's march. Organisers said a half million took part - far more than they had expected.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and the EU's plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
The crowd banged drums, blew whistles and carried banners with slogans such as "Terror USA" and "Against A Capitalist Europe."
Police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units in vans were posted at street intersections to ensure demonstrators did not leave the prearranged protest route.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
In a related incident across town, two protesters chained themselves to the goalposts at Barcelona's Camp Nou soccer stadium, delaying the start of play for five minutes of a game between Barcelona and visiting rival Real Madrid.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/World/story_27647.asp ---------------------------------------------------
Police arrest 30 protestors after EU summit
Last updated: 17-03-02, 06:44
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful rally by thousands of demonstrators.
At least 30 people were arrested during the skirmishes which broke out just hours after European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were among the 18 people injured. At least three journalists, including a photographer, were also hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
Witnesses said some 200 protestors began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police.
It was reported police fired tear gas and rubber bullets after the trouble erupted towards the end of a march.
Leaders of 28 EU countries had met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day summit where a number of moves designed to push forward free-market reforms were agreed.
City officials estimate 250,000 people participated in yesterday’s march, while the organisers put the figure at half a million.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and EUs plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
PA
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0317/breaking5.htm --------------------------------------------------------
Scattered Violence Follows Anti-Globalization Protest in Barcelona
AP
Spanish riot police fire rubber bullets towards protesters during an anti-globalization demonstration in Barcelona.
Saturday, March 16, 2002
BARCELONA, Spain — Riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets subdued a group of violent protesters who rioted Saturday following a peaceful rally by tens of thousands of demonstrators hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Witnesses said some 200 protesters began smashing windows and throwing gasoline bombs and rocks at riot police near a statue of Christopher Columbus on a pedestrian promenade where the anti-globalization rally had ended had 30 minutes earlier.
Police said that seven officers were injured and that they had arrested 38 people by 10 p.m. Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour an a half later.
City officials estimated 250,000 people participated in the march, while organizers said there were twice that many — far more than the 10,000 to 50,000 they said they had been hoping for.
One of the protest organizing committee's own crowd controllers, Jordi Oriola, said the turnout made it difficult for organizers to control demonstrators. "There were so many people the security groups could not manage," he said.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets surrounding the Columbus statue. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
The Spanish news agency Efe said two of its journalists were clubbed by police, and Associated Press photographer Alvaro Barrientos was slightly injured by a blow to the face from a police rifle butt.
At Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium, a soccer match between Spain's most popular teams was halted for seven minutes when two protesters with anti-capitalist, anti-European slogans on their T-shirts ran onto the field handcuffed themselves to the goalposts.
Protesters belonged to diverse organizations, some created at the spur of the moment, but they aimed their wrath at globalization and the European Union's plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
Speakers at the rally said European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
The demonstration began four hours after the EU summit ended.
Banging drums, blowing whistles and carrying banners with slogans such as "Terror USA" and "Against A Capitalist Europe," the crowd made its way through the city as police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units manned vans at intersections to keep demonstrators on the protest route.
Protest leaders said authorities had busloads of would-be demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain from entering Barcelona, and Efe reported that more than 1,000 people had been barred from crossing the border from France.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,48088,00.html ----------------------------------------------------
Capitalism eats the world: protesters target EU meeting in Spain.
Anti-globalisation protesters target Spain's banks
Protesters smashed up at least two Spanish banks during an anti-capitalist protest march in Barcelona, after the European Union summit ended in the city.
In Barcelona's historic old town, protesters smashed plate glass windows at branches of two banks on the route of the march, which local police say was attended by 250,000 people.
"Eat the rich" was daubed in red paint on one of the bank windows.
Officers at the scene, gazing at office chairs and smashed computer monitors strewn on the pavement outside, say protesters had caused the damage.
However, it is not clear whether anyone had been detained.
In one bank a photocopier lay halfway through a broken window.
Three hours after it got under way the march appeared to have largely broken up without other major incident.
Some witnesses say baton-wielding riot police had broken up one group of protesters, after they had thrown bottles and stones at the window of a multinational clothing chain store.
EU Summit
Earlier European leaders completed a two-day summit with an agreement to open up electric and gas markets, deregulate labour laws and raise the retirement age.
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair had described this as a "make or break" EU meeting.
Although the deregulation of energy markets only applies initially to business consumers, it has been hailed by Mr Blair as important progress.
"For a long time there's been an idea that the European social model is effectively about more and more regulation, state control, an old fashioned attitude towards change and technology," he said.
Mr Blair says now there is momentum for free market reform.
Trade unions have condemned the deregulation, while outside the summit a heavy police presence has so far contained anti-globalisation demonstrations
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/03/item20020317075014_1.htm ------------------------------------------------------
Police battle with anti-globalisation protestors
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful march and rally by thousands of demonstrators.
Hours earlier European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were injured, while at least three journalists, including a photographer, were hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=11709331&method=full --------------------------------------------------
Police Battle With Anti-globalisation Protestors
Ananova
Sunday March 17, 2002 12:47 PM
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful march and rally by thousands of demonstrators.
Hours earlier European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were injured, while at least three journalists, including a photographer, were hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
Dozens of people were arrested. Witnesses say some 200 protestors began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police.
A police spokesman said: "We will have a full report later, but officers are authorised to use the force necessary to stop people from throwing molotov cocktails at them."
In one confrontation, rioters set a dustbin on fire and turned over a car. Police detained 20 of them.
Amid fears of rioting and possible terrorist attacks, leaders of 28 EU countries met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day summit.
City officials estimate 250,000 people participated in Saturday's march, while the organisers put the figure at half a million.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and EUs plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-1591244,00.html -----------------------------------------------------
First created :
17 March 2002 0856 hrs (SST) 0056 hrs (GMT)
Last modified :
17 March 2002 0856 hrs (SST) 0056 hrs (GMT)
Some 300,000 protest against EU summit, energy deal sealed
More than 300,000 anti-capitalist protesters have marched through the streets of downtown Barcelona as European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Riot police fired tear gas at the end of the protest to disperse the small gangs of anarchists who smashed bank windows with metal bars along the route of the 2-1/2 hour march.
Several dozen people were slightly injured in the melee.
But the protest was largely peaceful, in sharp contrast to the violence that has rocked past EU summits.
Marching behind a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital -- another world is possible," the demonstrators trooped from Placa de Catalunya to the harbourfront.
They represented a host of causes, many of them opponents of free-market globalization, but also large numbers of Catalan and Basque nationalists.
At the summit site on the other side of town, leaders from the 15 European Union nations earlier agreed in principle to open Europe's gas and electricity market for industrial and business users in 2004.
France had held up the deal but finally agreed with its EU partners to press ahead on free-market reform in return for concessions on rail freight reform.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/europe/view/2651/1/.html ------------------------------------------------------
Violent Protests Mar EU Summit
Sunday March 17, 2002 4:40 AM
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) - Riot police swinging clubs and firing rubber bullets subdued a group of violent protesters who rioted Saturday following a peaceful rally by tens of thousands of demonstrators hours after European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Witnesses said some 200 protesters began smashing windows and throwing gasoline bombs and rocks at riot police near a statue of Christopher Columbus on a pedestrian promenade where the anti-globalization rally had ended had 30 minutes earlier.
Police said that seven officers were injured and that they had arrested 38 people by 10 p.m. Reporters saw more arrests being made an hour an a half later.
City officials estimated 250,000 people participated in the march, while organizers said there were twice that many - far more than the 10,000 to 50,000 they said they had been hoping for.
One of the protest organizing committee's own crowd controllers, Jordi Oriola, said the turnout made it difficult for organizers to control demonstrators. ``There were so many people the security groups could not manage,'' he said.
Shattered glass and crumbled bricks littered the streets surrounding the Columbus statue. Windows were broken in business and store windows and telephone booths.
The Spanish news agency Efe said two of its journalists were clubbed by police, and Associated Press photographer Alvaro Barrientos was slightly injured by a blow to the face from a police rifle butt.
At Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium, a soccer match between Spain's most popular teams was halted for seven minutes when two protesters with anti-capitalist, anti-European slogans on their T-shirts ran onto the field handcuffed themselves to the goalposts.
Protesters belonged to diverse organizations, some created at the spur of the moment, but they aimed their wrath at globalization and the European Union's plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
Speakers at the rally said European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
The demonstration began four hours after the EU summit ended.
Banging drums, blowing whistles and carrying banners with slogans such as ``Terror USA'' and ``Against A Capitalist Europe,'' the crowd made its way through the city as police helicopters hovered overhead and riot units manned vans at intersections to keep demonstrators on the protest route.
Protest leaders said authorities had busloads of would-be demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain from entering Barcelona, and Efe reported that more than 1,000 people had been barred from crossing the border from France.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-1590730,00.html -------------------------------------------------------
More than 300,000 protest at EU summit,9 taken to hospital
BARCELONA, Spain, March 16 AFP|Published: Sunday March 17, 10:16 AM
More than 300,000 people marched through the streets of downtown Barcelona today in one of the biggest demonstrations ever to coincide with a summit of European Union leaders.
Some 50 people were seen being detained as riot police fired tear gas at the end of the protest to disperse small gangs of anarchists who smashed bank windows with metal bars along the route of the early-evening march.
Several dozen people were slightly injured in the melee, including at least three press photographers. Nine people were taken to hospital with light injuries, medical sources said.
But the bulk of the protest was orderly, in sharp contrast to the violence that has rocked past EU summits - particularly in Gothenburg, Sweden, last June when the city centre was ravaged and a demonstrator shot and wounded.
Marching behind a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital - another world is possible," the boisterous demonstrators trooped for almost three hours from Placa de Catalunya to the Mediterranean harbourfront.
They represented a host of causes - many of them opponents of free-market globalisation, but also large numbers of Catalan and Basque nationalists - as they moved forth under a forest of banners and flags.
Organisers estimated the crowd at 300,000 to 500,000 while municipal police said at least 150,000 had massed in the streets.
Shops along the 2km route drew their shutters though some department stores and cafes opted to stay open, their doors guarded by police.
Two police helicopters hovered noisily overhead.
Organisers, cheered by a week of largely trouble-free protests, had been hoping for 100,000 participants, even with a big soccer match between Barcelona and Real Madrid elsewhere in the city.
That match was interrupted by three protesters, two of whom managed to scramble onto the pitch and chain themselves to one of the goals.
Fans threw objects at them during the seven-minute delay, and all three were arrested.
About 100,000 people turned out Thursday for a boisterous but disciplined march along much the same route, organised by the mainstream European Trade Union Confederation.
Yesterday, as the two-day summit of EU heads of state and government got under way at a heavily guarded convention centre, 24 people were detained in skirmishes with baton-wielding police in various parts of the city.
"In terms of participation and reach of our message, the activities of the day by far exceeded our targets," said the Campaign Against the Europe of Capital, a coalition of 150-odd groups that has been coordinating protests.
Jose Bove, the mustachioed French activist best known for leading an assault on a McDonald's fast-food outlet in south-west France in August 1999, was in the city for the march.
"Europe's leaders are implementing policies and directives that only serve the interests of liberalisation and attack the rights of workers," Bove told AFP earlier in the day.
Security was tight throughout the summit with 8,500 police officers - many bused in from other parts of Spain - in the bustling Catalan capital to guard against the double threat of street riots and Basque terrorist attacks.
Several hundred people also demonstrated today in the streets of the French town of Perpignan, close to the Spanish border, and planned to join the protesters in Barcelona.
But for a third straight day, Spanish police at the border with France turned back cars and buses with people whom they suspected were planning to join today's march.
"Some people think that they can do things that do not meet the approval of the vast majority of the population," said Spanish Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy. "Action had to be taken."
The EU leaders met at a convention centre on the suburban north-west side of the city, surrounded by police armoured cars and chain-link fences. Most if not all were expected to have left the city before today's late-day march.
The last big anti-globalisation protest in Barcelona, in June last year during a World Bank meeting, led to violent clashes on the streets and a political debate in Spain over police brutality at demonstrations.
By Robert MacPherson
http://www.theage.com.au/breaking/2002/03/17/FFXIVZAQVYC.html ------------------------------------------------
EU nears summit deal, Spanish police fear protests
Friday March 15, 7:08 PM EST
By Alastair Macdonald
BARCELONA, Spain, March 16 (Reuters) - European Union leaders hope to thrash out a compromise with France on Saturday in a test case for free-market reforms as thousands of Spanish police brace for mass protests on the streets of Barcelona.
Scattered clashes between anti-capitalist activists and baton-wielding riot police on the first of two days of an EU summit in the city on Friday fell far short of the feared repeat of bloody riots at an international meeting in Genoa last July.
Police said 24 people had been detained so far. But they fear greater trouble when thousands of young people gather for, among other events, a free concert organised by anti-globalisation groups on Saturday afternoon.
Cocooned behind a massive security shield several km (miles) from the downtown port area which saw most of the trouble on Friday evening, EU ministers expect a deal to end a French state monopoly on electricity supply in what has become a litmus test of the EU's will to open up some of its protected markets.
Though the details will seem arcane to most Europeans, creating competition in the power sector is part of a grand plan to pare back trade barriers and regulations in many areas, such as transport and welfare provision, that their leaders hope can help them match the dynamism of the freewheeling U.S. economy.
French voters and trade unions representing power workers remain attached to the familiar certainties of monopoly supplier Electricite de France.
President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin have therefore had little incentive to agree to EU demands that they change things -- especially since they face off against each other in a presidential election next month.
FRENCH CONCESSION
Nonetheless, Jospin told his EU colleagues in Barcelona on Friday that Paris was prepared to accept that business users in France, though not households, should be allowed to buy power from private competitors eventually -- under certain conditions.
While disappointing to more ardent free marketeers in the Union, other EU leaders said that this would probably form the basis of a deal on Saturday, breaking a long deadlock.
"Naturally it would be better if we said yes to a liberalisation of everything, even for households," said Italy's business tycoon prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
"But there are national interests one has to face up to."
The pain of even limited economic coordination among the 15 states, a dozen of whom completed the launch of the euro single currency in January, has raised concerns about the viability of the bloc, especially as it plans to take in a dozen or so new members, mostly from eastern Europe, in the next few years.
The scale of the task has been brought home with the presence for the first time of leaders of the 13 membership candidates as part of the full summit.
Among other items likely to be included in statements issued on Saturday, EU leaders will reaffirm their support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, Spanish Foreign Minister Josep Pique said.
The EU was also expected to make clear its disapproval of Zimbabwe's controversial election, EU diplomats said.
http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_ge.jsp?section=news&news_id=reu-l15440117&feed=reu&date=20020315&cat=USMARKET ------------------------------------------------------
Violence erupts at Barcelona
anti-globalisation protest
Last updated: 16-03-02, 21:21
Spanish riot police charge anti-globalization protesters in central Barcelona Photo: Reuters
Spanish police have fired rubber bullets at demonstrators taking part in a massive anti-capitalism protest march in Barcelona after the European Union summit.
Some demonstrators had set fires in the streets after the march by around quarter of a million people and one appeared to fire a flare at a government building.
Baton-wielding police moved in to disperse the crowds, lashing out with sticks and boots. Some fired rubber bullets.
A sea of demonstrators from a wide range of different groups had marched through city streets to reject the free-market agenda approved by the EU leaders in the city hours earlier.
The march began good humouredly but turned sour after darkness fell, leaving a trail of damage in its wake.
One Reuters correspondent in Barcelona's historic old town saw smashed plate glass windows at branches of two banks on the route of the march.
"Eat the rich" had been daubed in red paint in Spanish on one of the bank windows.
Officers at the scene, gazing at office chairs and smashed computer monitors strewn on the pavement outside, said protesters had caused the damage but it was not clear whether anyone had been detained.
Witnesses reported other clashes between police and protesters.
Municipal police estimated some 250,000 people took part in the protest. Organisers estimated that as many as half a million people had joined the march and said they believed it was the biggest demonstration in Barcelona's often turbulent history.
Some 8,500 police officers had been drafted in to the Catalan capital for the summit amid fears of a repetition of protests against globalisation that culminated in the death of a young protester at the hands of Italian police at Genoa last July.
Anti-globalisation activists from across Europe had descended on Barcelona for today's march, held under the title Against the Europe of Capital, to reject the liberal, free-market economic agenda espoused by Europe's leaders.
Some 1,200 protesters from Belgium and France who had hoped to go to Barcelona were barred at the Franco-Spanish border.
Several small demonstrations in Barcelona yesterday ended in clashes with police and 29 people were arrested for disorder and damaging property. Police struck out with batons on two occasions to break up crowds of demonstrators.
Organisers said they had expected the march to be peaceful and said they had commitments from the most hardline groups not to cause trouble.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2002/0316/breaking46.htm ------------------------------------------------------
Protesters, police clash after EU summit
March 16, 2002 Posted: 5:41 PM EST (2241 GMT)
The protest was held after the end of the summit
BARCELONA, Spain -- Pockets of anti-globalisation protesters broke windows and clashed with police in Barcelona late Saturday after European Union leaders ended a two-day economic summit.
A largely peaceful march by 250,000 anti-globalisation demonstrators turned violent late Saturday, when groups of protesters threw Molotov cocktails and fired small incendiary devices at police and broke windows of banks and other businesses in downtown Barcelona.
The clashes broke out near the national police headquarters when "small, violent groups tried to provoke" police, and it quickly spread to other locations downtown, a police spokeswoman told CNN. Seven police officers were injured and 38 demonstrators were arrested, she said.
Earlier, demostrators carried banners with slogans such as "Terror U.S.A." and "Against A Capitalist Europe" as they made their way from Plaza de Catalunya down Via Laietana to the city's port area two kilometers (1 mile) away.
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EU summit: Issue of Iraq dodged
VIDEO
European Union leaders are discussing ways to make the group's economy more competitive. Robin Oakley reports from Barcelona.
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In-depth: Changing Face of Europe
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• Analysis: Poor progress report for EU
• French rivals pledge unity
The march followed efforts by leaders of the 15-member bloc to inject some momentum into ambitious economic reform plans first broached two years ago in Lisbon.
They announced they had clinched a deal on the issue of France's state electricity monopoly and made progress on other matters.
Behind the intense security the main business of the EU summit had been to revive a plan to open up European markets and strip away regulation in areas ranging from transport and energy to job security.
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said after the summit that the issue of the liberalisation of electricity and gas markets for industrial and other business users had been resolved.
"We have taken a fundamental step today," Aznar said.
France agreed to a partial opening of its energy market that will by 2004 let French businesses, but not domestic consumers, buy their power from private competitors to state-owned Electricite de France.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the deal a "limited but solid achievement."
"There is no doubt this is a change of gear for Europe. Momentum for economic
change has been secured," he said.
"I said before this was a `make or break' summit. It was important, that having stalled in Stockholm, that we moved forward and we have moved forward."
French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had told their EU partners on Friday they could not go any further on energy liberalisation.
"It is progress, but not quite the progress some member states would have liked," an EU diplomat told Reuters.
Among other items, Aznar said EU leaders reaffirmed their support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and condemned "terrorism."
Blair said the EU summit also agreed that the re-election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe had not been free and fair.
The EU leaders met amid tight security
Earlier, the heads of government issued a draft communique expressing support for collective action against U.S. steel tariffs through the World Trade Organization (WTO).
EU officials made clear on Friday the bloc would seek compensation for U.S. President George W. Bush's tariffs.
For the first time, 13 mainly ex-communist states who hope to eventually join the EU have also taken full part in talks at the Barcelona summit.
The EU has to reform its economic practice if it is to compete with the U.S. Sweden, for example, has complained that it costs four times as much for a business to set up in Europe than it does in the United States.
The EU must also open up labour and trade markets to competition but CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said the gap that existed between free-marketeers and social welfare protectionists remains wide.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/16/barcelona.summit/index.html ------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, March 17, 2002 Nisan 4, 5762 Israel Time: 17:25 (GMT+2)
Last update - 12:29 16/03/2002
Thousands pour into Barcelona ahead of anti-globalization rally
By The Associated Press
BARCELONA, Spain - Thousands of demonstrators Saturday poured into Barcelona ahead of a planned mass anti-globalization rally as European leaders wrapped up a summit on economic reforms.
Police said 29 people had been detained so far during the two-day meeting, including five in clashes with police overnight. Among the detainees were five foreigners from Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Slovenia and Britain, a police spokesman said.
Protest leaders said authorities were refusing entry into Barcelona of busloads of demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain.
Newspapers reported clashes on the border, about 130 kilometers (75 miles) north of Barcelona, as police tried to prevent entry to demonstrators. Spain has reinstated border controls previously scrapped under European Union treaties. Authorities have said they would turn back anyone suspected of
planning to instigate violence.
On Friday, police fired rubber bullets and clubbed several dozen protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans and rampaged through downtown Barcelona as leaders of 28 nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city. No major injuries were reported.
Organizers estimated between 20,000 to 50,000 demonstrators are swarming into Barcelona to protest EU leaders' plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
A major demonstration has been called for Saturday evening by the umbrella organization of protest groups, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Friday night, hundreds of young people gathered for a candlelight memorial for Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester shot and killed by police at a summit last summer in Genoa, Italy. On a wall, a demonstrator spray painted: "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth."
At the Palacio de Congresos, EU leaders are expected to sign off on new pledges to cut red tape and boost Europe's floundering economies Saturday, including opening up energy markets.
Security measures around the city include the deployment of 8,500 officers, as well as combat jets and ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast. NATO has also sent a surveillance jet to provide early alert against a possible terrorist attack from the air.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=142004&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y ----------------------------------------------------
Protesters, police clash after EU summit
March 16, 2002 Posted: 2241 GMT
The protest was held after the end of the summit
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BARCELONA, Spain -- Pockets of anti-globalisation protesters broke windows and clashed with police in Barcelona late Saturday after European Union leaders ended a two-day economic summit.
A largely peaceful march by 250,000 anti-globalisation demonstrators turned violent late Saturday, when groups of protesters threw Molotov cocktails and fired small incendiary devices at police and broke windows of banks and other businesses in downtown Barcelona.
The clashes broke out near the national police headquarters when "small, violent groups tried to provoke" police, and it quickly spread to other locations downtown, a police spokeswoman told CNN. Seven police officers were injured and 38 demonstrators were arrested, she said.
Earlier, demostrators carried banners with slogans such as "Terror U.S.A." and "Against A Capitalist Europe" as they made their way from Plaza de Catalunya down Via Laietana to the city's port area two kilometers (1 mile) away.
MORE STORIES
EU summit: Issue of Iraq dodged
VIDEO
European Union leaders are discussing ways to make the group's economy more competitive. Robin Oakley reports from Barcelona.
Play video
(QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)
EXTRA INFORMATION
In-depth: Changing Face of Europe
MORE STORIES
• Analysis: Poor progress report for EU
• French rivals pledge unity
The march followed efforts by leaders of the 15-member bloc to inject some momentum into ambitious economic reform plans first broached two years ago in Lisbon.
They announced they had clinched a deal on the issue of France's state electricity monopoly and made progress on other matters.
Behind the intense security the main business of the EU summit had been to revive a plan to open up European markets and strip away regulation in areas ranging from transport and energy to job security.
Spain's Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said after the summit that the issue of the liberalisation of electricity and gas markets for industrial and other business users had been resolved.
"We have taken a fundamental step today," Aznar said.
France agreed to a partial opening of its energy market that will by 2004 let French businesses, but not domestic consumers, buy their power from private competitors to state-owned Electricite de France.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair called the deal a "limited but solid achievement."
"There is no doubt this is a change of gear for Europe. Momentum for economic
change has been secured," he said.
"I said before this was a `make or break' summit. It was important, that having stalled in Stockholm, that we moved forward and we have moved forward."
French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin had told their EU partners on Friday they could not go any further on energy liberalisation.
"It is progress, but not quite the progress some member states would have liked," an EU diplomat told Reuters.
Among other items, Aznar said EU leaders reaffirmed their support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and condemned "terrorism."
Blair said the EU summit also agreed that the re-election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe had not been free and fair.
The EU leaders met amid tight security
Earlier, the heads of government issued a draft communique expressing support for collective action against U.S. steel tariffs through the World Trade Organization (WTO).
EU officials made clear on Friday the bloc would seek compensation for U.S. President George W. Bush's tariffs.
For the first time, 13 mainly ex-communist states who hope to eventually join the EU have also taken full part in talks at the Barcelona summit.
The EU has to reform its economic practice if it is to compete with the U.S. Sweden, for example, has complained that it costs four times as much for a business to set up in Europe than it does in the United States.
The EU must also open up labour and trade markets to competition but CNN's European Political Editor Robin Oakley said the gap that existed between free-marketeers and social welfare protectionists remains wide.
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/16/barcelona.summit/index.html ---------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail Print
Riot police fire teargas as protests mar summit
Two plainclothes policemen detain a demonstrator in Barcelona yesterday after 2,000 anti-globalisation activists protested during the EU leaders' summit in the city
SPANISH riot police lashed out at protesters near the EU summit in Barcelona yesterday as European Union leaders struggled to overcome divisions on free-market economic reforms.
Central Barcelona was turned briefly into a battle-zone as Spanish police baton-charged hundreds of anti-globalisation activists.
After refusing to disperse from the city's main thoroughfare, Las Ramblas, the police dragged away protesters and fired teargas into the crowd.
Setting fire to rubbish bins as they fled down side streets of the historic heart of the port city, a number of British and French protesters were arrested.
An eyewitnesses said police had tried to move on a crowd of people gathering around Barcelona's Liceu opera house. Scuffles followed by a hail of chairs greeted the police when they moved in. Restaurants and shops swiftly brought down their shutters, trapping customers inside.
"I suddenly found myself trapped just as I was finishing my lunch, but it created a sort of war-time atmosphere and we just had another bottle of wine," said one tourist.
The incident was the most violent among a spate of minor clashes that took place far away from the heavily secured conference centre where the 15 heads of state were gathered.
However, despite fears voiced by Spanish police of a possible attack by the ETA Basque separatist terrorist group, there were no indications of any breach to the cordon they enforced with 10,000 officers drafted in from all over the country.
Yesterday's trouble contrasted with the peaceful atmosphere of a 100,000-strong march by trade union activists a day earlier. They were protesting the liberalisation agenda. Unions fear liberalisation will be used as a cover word by employers to make it easier to sack staff.
Conor Sweeney and Chris Glennon
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=9&si=713907&issue_id=7069 --------------------------------------------------------
Barcelona hit by anti-capitalist riots
Riot police used truncheons to beat back rock-throwing protesters yesterday in Barcelona, while EU leaders including Tony Blair held a summit in the Spanish city.
Police said protesters were arrested but gave no figures. No major injuries were reported.
Thousands of demonstrators had swarmed into the city to protest against EU plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
"It is an illusion that liberalisation will give consumers more freedom of choice," said 18-year-old political science student Julien Peine. "It will only give a few big companies more power."
The clashes showed that anti-globalisation violence may once again be returning to international political meetings following a lull after September 11.
As marchers moved down Las Ramblas, a boulevard lined with outdoor cafes, a group of hooded demonstrators strode towards a police line.
Police charged the group twice and snatched several people as the demonstrators hurled stones and swung wooden poles.
"The police started it," said protester Ruben Bayona. "I'm not saying they were not provoked, but it takes very little to provoke them."
Police chief Juan Cotino said around 100 protesters had been detained earlier this week at the French border after they tried to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other crude weapons to start riots.
http://yorkshirepost.co.uk/scripts/editorial2.cgi?cid=3&aid=446587 ---------------------------------------------------
EU meeting undisturbed despite anti-globalisation protests
Riot police have broken up anti-globalisation protests in Barcelona, where European leaders have gathered for discussions on economic policies.
Riot police with batons broke up the anti-globalisation protests, charging the demonstrators and at one point firing shots into the air.
But inside a heavy security cordon, discussions between the European Union leaders continued undisturbed.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has once described the event as a "make or break" meeting.
He and other leaders like Italy's Silvio Berlusconi are pushing for a liberalisation of labour laws, much to the annoyance of European unions.
However, it is unlikely in this German and French election year there will be any controversial decisions
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2002/03/item20020316072237_1.htm -------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, March 17, 2002 Nisan 4, 5762 Israel Time: 17:29 (GMT+2)
Last update - 19:41 15/03/2002
Police clash with anti-globalization demonstrators at EU summit
By The Associated Press
BARCELONA, Spain - Riot police used truncheons to beat back rock-throwing protesters mounting an anti-globalization demonstration on Barcelona's famous flower and bird market Friday during a summit of leaders from 28 European nations.
Police said protesters were arrested for public disorder and resisting authority, but gave no figures. No major injuries were reported.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators have swarmed into Barcelona from around Europe and Spain - especially the violence-scarred Basque region - to protest European Union leaders' plans liberalize energy and financial markets.
"It's an illusion that liberalization will give consumers more freedom of choice," said 18-year-old political science student Julien Peine. "It will only give a few big companies more power."
Friday's clashes indicated that anti-globalization violence may once again be returning to international political meetings following a lull in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed as police vans and a chopper followed crowds of protesters marching through Barcelona's central shopping district as the summit got underway at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos on the city's outskirts.
As marchers moved down Las Ramblas, a boulevard lined with outdoor cafes, vendors hawking colorful displays of tulips, roses and carnations, and stalls with birds chirping inside stacked cages, a group of hooded demonstrators strode toward a police line. Police charged the group twice and snatched several people as the demonstrators hurled stones and beverage cans and swung wooden poles torn from circular fences around sidewalk saplings.
"The police started it," said protester Ruben Bayona. "I'm not saying they weren't provoked, but it takes very little to provoke them."
Earlier, police arrested five people at a demonstration outside the Sacred Family Church, a Barcelona landmark designed by architect Antonio Gaudi, Spanish media reported.
Authorities are seeking to prevent running street battles of the sort that erupted during previous international summits, as well as the possibility of a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists or Basque separatists.
Security measures include the deployment of 8,500 officers around the city, as well as combat jets and ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast. NATO has sent an AWACS jet to provide early warning against a potential attack from the air.
Police chief Juan Cotino said in a television interview that around 100 protesters had been detained earlier this week at the French border after they tried to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other crude weapons to instigate riots. However, Peine said that when his group crossed the border police confiscated poles they had intended to use to hold up protest banners.
Spain has temporarily resumed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
Twenty rallies and other events have been officially scheduled for this weekend, including a candlelight memorial for Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester shot and killed by police at a summit last summer of the world's richest nations in Genoa, Italy.
A mass demonstration sponsored by an array of social and political movements is expected to draw up to 50,000 people on Saturday.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=141960&contrassID=1&subContrassID=8&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y ------------------------------------------------------
Anti-globalisation protest broken up by police
Riot police have broken up a crowd of protesters at the opening of the European Summit in Barcelona.
Several hundred anti-globalisation campaigners had gathered for the start of talks.
They were reportedly beaten with batons as police moved in.
© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=11705649&method=full --------------------------------------------------------
Thousands in Barcelona EU summit protest
(Filed: 14/03/2002)
AROUND 60,000 union members took to the streets of Barcelona today as part of a protest ahead of this weekend's EU summit there.
Demonstrators marched behind a banner demanding full employment and social rights in an expanding European Union.
Thousands also joined a demonstration called by the Barcelona Social Forum which groups together 50 political parties, unions and protest groups.
Some 8,500 police had been sent to the city to keep a watchful eye on anti-globalisation and trade union protests.
Madrid reinstated passport controls at the border with France and in Spain's airports last weekend in a an attempt to bar known militants from entering Barcelona
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/03/14/ubarca.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/03/14/ixport.html --------------------------------------------------
Military guard for Spanish summit
March 14, 2002 Posted: 1950 GMT
Warships in Barcelona port are part of the extensive security arrangements
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BARCELONA, Spain (CNN) -- Security is tight in Barcelona ahead of a European summit starting on Friday, with police, army and navy on alert for violence.
While a peaceful trade unionist protest of about 100,000 caused no problems in the city on Thursday, the 8,000 police on summit duty are prepared for violence from other groups.
Police are on alert for any terrorist threat or mass demonstration.
"I am very confident everything will go well," says Julia Garcia Valdecasas, one of the government officials playing a key role in protecting leaders of the 28 European nations due in Barcelona.
EXTRA INFORMATION
In-depth: Changing Face of Europe
MORE STORIES
Analysis: Poor progress report for EU
"Barcelona will be able to host the European summit and also the protesters who oppose its policies."
Spanish media reported extensive security arrangements were in place, including F-18 fighters on alert to intercept intruding aircraft and a NATO airborne warning and control system plane patrolling the skies, Reuters news agency said.
Ground-to-air missiles have been brought in to the military section of Barcelona airport and naval patrol ships are watching the Catalan coast, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo said.
Organisers say they don't want any violence this time but concede they can't be sure it won't happen.
"You will see how the politicians are going to meet locked inside their own castle," says Marcelo Exposito of the Movement for Global Resistance.
Police inspect the sewer tunnels below the Barcelona hotel where officials are to stay while attending the summit
"And what we usually say is, 'Today the city is blocked -- actually it's an act of violence against people -- and we're going to unblock the city."
But not if the police have their way. They have been training for months in riot control. It's the tightest security Barcelona has seen since the Olympics a decade ago.
While police have sealed off the conference site with barricades, officials admit that violence across town could jeopardize the summit.
Officials consider ETA the biggest threat. Police have arrested 50 suspected ETA members or collaborators this year, putting a dent in the group's plans to attack the summit.
Authorities also have not ruled out Islamic terrorist attacks.
"The less said about security the better. We're not going to reveal our exact plans," says Valdecasas.
http://europe.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/03/13/barcelona.security/index.html -------------------------------------------------------
Thousands march against capitalism
Peaceful protest ends European Union gathering
Thousands of anti-globalization demonstrators march through central Barcelona, Spain, on Saturday.
BARCELONA, Spain, March 16 — Tens of thousands of anti-capitalist protesters marched through Barcelona on Saturday after a European Union summit in the city aimed at driving forward free-market economic reforms.
AS A SEA OF PEOPLE rolled forward from a central square towards the harbor, one Reuters correspondent watched the column of marchers pass steadily down a wide avenue for an hour. No police estimate of crowd numbers was available.
The crowd of mainly young people held up banners with slogans such as “Europe with peace and justice” and the 1960s mantra “Make love not war.”
Anti-globalization activists from across Europe have descended on the Spanish city for a march under the title “Against the Europe of Capital” to reject the liberal economic agenda espoused by Europe’s leaders.
Ada Colau, a spokeswoman for a coalition of more than 100 groups staging the event, said there were “many, many thousands” of people taking part.
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“It’s a massive participation even though they (the authorities) tried to stop us with a fear campaign and stopped many buses at the (French) border,” she said.
A French trade union said several hundred French and Italian anti-globalization activists heading for Barcelona were turned back at the Spanish border on Friday.
Several small demonstrations in Barcelona on Friday ended in clashes with police and 29 people were arrested for disorder and damaging property. Police struck out with batons on two occasions to break up crowds of demonstrators.
Some 8,500 police officers were drafted in to Barcelona to guard the summit amid fears of a repetition of the protests against international meetings that culminated in the death of a young protester at the hands of Italian police at Genoa in July.
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Police helicopters hovered over the demonstrators on Saturday but police kept a low profile on the ground. The march began in a jovial atmosphere with bongo drums and whistles.
French activist Jose Bove, a hero in the anti-globalization movement, warned Spain on Saturday against cracking down on protesters, saying a heavy hand would only fuel greater demonstrations in the future.
Organizers said they had expected the march to be peaceful and said they had commitments from the most hardline groups not to cause trouble.
Complicating matters for police, one of the biggest Spanish soccer matches of the season, between bitter rivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, takes place in the city on Saturday evening.
© 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/725172.asp?cp1=1 -------------------------------------------------------
Anti-globalism demonstrators halt Barcelona v Real Madrid match
Two anti-globalist demonstrators halted a major Spanish league football match between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid for seven minutes.
Demonstrators ran onto the field and handcuffed themselves to the goalposts behind Barcelona goalkeeper Roberto Bonano just after the start of the game at the Nou Camp.
They were wearing T-shirts with "Let's stop capitalist Europe" printed in Catalan.
© Copyright Ananova Ltd 2002, all rights reserved.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=11709180&method=full -------------------------------------------------------
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Demonstrators riot in Spain
16th March 2002
housands of demonstrators Saturday poured into Barcelona ahead of a planned mass anti-globalization rally as European leaders wrapped a summit on economic reforms.
Police said 29 people had been detained so far during the two-day meeting, including five in clashes with police overnight.
Among the detainees were five foreigners from Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Slovenia and Britain, a police spokesman said.
Protest leaders said authorities were refusing entry into Barcelona of busloads of demonstrators from around Europe and the Basque region of northern Spain.
Newspapers reported clashes on the border, about 130 kilometers (75 miles) north of Barcelona, as police tried to prevent entry to demonstrators.
Spain has reinstated border controls previously scrapped under European Union treaties.
Authorities have said they would turn back anyone suspected of planning to instigate violence.
On Friday, police fired rubber bullets and clubbed several dozen protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans and rampaged through downtown Barcelona as leaders of 28 nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city. No major injuries were reported.
Organizers estimated between 20,000 to 50,000 demonstrators are swarming into Barcelona to protest EU leaders' plans to liberalize energy and financial markets.
A major demonstration has been called for Saturday evening by the umbrella organization of protest groups, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Friday night, hundreds of young people gathered for a candlelight memorial for Carlo Giuliani, a 23-year-old protester shot and killed by police at a summit last summer in Genoa, Italy. On a wall, a demonstrator spray painted: "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth."
At the Palacio de Congresos, EU leaders are expected to sign off on new pledges to cut red tape and boost Europe's floundering economies Saturday, including opening up energy markets.
Security measures around the city include the deployment of 8,500 officers, as well as combat jets and ground-to-air missiles and warships off the coast.
Nato has also sent a surveillance jet to provide early alert against a possible terrorist attack from the air.
http://www.femail.co.uk/pages/standard/article.html?in_article_id=105333&in_page_id=2 --------------------------------------------------------
March 16, 2002
Tourists caught up in protest mayhem
From Stephen Burgen in Barcelona
FRIGHTENED tourists fled yesterday as riot police baton-charged protesters on La Rambla, Barcelona’s most popular thoroughfare.
The trouble started outside the Liceu opera house in the early afternoon after a stand-off between police and up to 500 supporters of the anti-globalisation group Marc-Attac, who were staging a protest.
The police needed little prompting before they charged the protesters, batons flailing, at the start of two hours of running battles.
Two young women from London, a little the worse for sangria, ran as the retreating crowd sent their table flying. The police were pelted with bricks, bottles and pot plants from flower stalls as they drove the crowd back. There were ten arrests.
Carol and Peter Perry, a retired couple from Newbury, who were in the city to celebrate their wedding anniversary, were baffled by the scenes. “Are they students?” Mrs Perry asked as a group of riot police lined up a few yards away, teargas guns at the ready. “It’s not for us, this sort of thing,” her husband said.
More disturbances were expected last night as antiglobalisation websites called for actions across the city.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-237379,00.html -------------------------------------------------------
Postcards from Barcelona: The leaders joke, the activists protest
By Stephen Castle
16 March 2002
European summit
Inside the Palace of Pedralbes, leaders of 30 countries sat down to a lavish lunch to mark a milestone in the reunification of Europe.
On the streets of Barcelona, riot police beat back hundreds of anti-globalisation demonstrators and arrested dozens more as the tide of protest made itself felt, once again, at an international summit.
Facing a twin threat from protesters and Basque separatists, the Spanish authorities took no chances yesterday, deploying 8,500 police, warships, anti-aircraft missiles and aerial surveillance planes.
As it turned out, the threat was more low-tech. Clashes occurred in the Ramblas avenue near the Liceu theatre when up to 500 protesters tried to break a police cordon. Police, who outnumbered demonstrators by about three to one, charged with their batons.
Europe's great and good were not disturbed, however. The summit and the lunch, hosted by King Juan Carlos, were attended by leaders, foreign and finance ministers from the 15 EU nations, and from the 13 which are applying to join, plus the presidents of Yugoslavia and Montenegro. Top of the agenda was a plan designed to make the EU the most competitive economic bloc in the world by 2010.
The Spanish Defence Minister, Federico Trillo, rejected criticisms of the security operation. "This is not a besieged city," he said. "It is a safe city."
Also from the Europe section.
EU withholds backing for action against Iraq
Blair praises EU's 'change of gear' on economic reforms
French politics is for oldies, mon vieux
EU imposes mild sanctions against Zimbabwe
Blair attacks unions' cry of 'betrayal'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/europe/story.jsp?story=274987 --------------------------------------------------------
Police Battle With Anti-globalisation Protestors
Ananova
Sunday March 17, 2002 4:42 AM
Riot police have fought back anti-globalisation protestors in Barcelona following a peaceful march and rally by thousands of demonstrators.
Hours earlier European leaders wrapped up their summit on economic reforms.
Police say seven officers were injured, while at least three journalists, including a photographer, were hurt. One was struck by a rubber bullet.
Dozens of people were arrested. Witnesses say some 200 protestors began smashing windows and throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police.
A police spokesman said: "We will have a full report later, but officers are authorised to use the force necessary to stop people from throwing molotov cocktails at them."
In one confrontation, rioters set a dustbin on fire and turned over a car. Police detained 20 of them.
Amid fears of rioting and possible terrorist attacks, leaders of 28 EU countries met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city for the two-day summit.
City officials estimate 250,000 people participated in Saturday's march, while the organisers put the figure at half a million.
The demonstrations were called by the umbrella organisation of protest groups: the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. Marchers belonged to diverse organisations but aimed much of their wrath at globalisation and EUs plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Speakers told the crowd that European leaders put business interests ahead of concern for the millions of the world's poor who die of starvation each year.
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Police subdue Barcelona rioters
From AP
The Associated Press
16mar02
BARCELONA: Police have fired rubber bullets and clubbed protesters who threw rocks and garbage cans in downtown Barcelona as leaders of 28 European nations met in a heavily guarded compound outside the city.
Police said 24 people were arrested in clashes throughout the day. These included six Basque nationalists who overturned a car.
No serious injuries were reported.
Protesters accused the authorities of provoking the violence.
"We are seeing here a state of siege. This is clearly police provocation," said a spokesman for the organising committee, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War. He identified himself only as Arnau.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from around Europe are in Barcelona to protest against European Union plans to liberalise energy and financial markets.
Montse Arias of the French anti-globalization group Attac said eight busloads of protesters, lawyers and journalists had been forced to turn back today at the French border with Spain.
Spain has temporarily re-imposed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
Police spokesman Federico Cabrero said travellers were being detained at the border for trying to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other crude weapons. He said he was unaware of buses being refused entry.
Today's clashes indicated that anti-globalisation violence may once again be returning to international political meetings, following a lull in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed and police vans and a helicopter followed protesters through central Barcelona as the two-day summit got under way at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos.
Authorities are seeking to prevent running street battles of the sort that erupted during previous international summits, as well as the possibility of a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists or Basque separatists.
"It's an illusion that liberalisation will give consumers more freedom of choice," said political science student Julien Peine, 18. "It will only give a few big companies more power."
Marijuana smoke filled the air as people in their teens and early 20s listened to music and sat in circles drinking beer and chatting while circus artists performed on a high wire.
"We're radical and violent. Violence makes things change," said a young Spaniard who gave his name as Randy Elf from New Kids on the Black Block, a self-described anti-capitalism group.
www.news.com.au
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EU Summit Wraps Up as Protestors March Against Integration
Roger Wilkison
Barcelona
16 Mar 2002 19:25 UTC
Listen to Roger Wilkison's Report from Barcelona (RealAudio)
Wilkison Report - Download 320k (RealAudio)
Leaders of the 15-member European Union have ended a two-day summit in Barcelona with a hard-fought agreement to partially open up their domestic energy markets. Although the leaders have now gone home, a big protest march against their plans for closer European integration is scheduled to take place in the Spanish city later on Saturday.
EU leaders agreed two years ago that they would make their bloc the most dynamic economy in the world. But every piecemeal step toward greater integration and more competition has been the result of tough bargaining.
That was the case Saturday with a deal that will allow competition in the supply of gas and electricity to industrial and commercial users by the year 2004. France blocked any extension of the deal to household consumers, but said it could reconsider in a year's time.
French politicians of every stripe are worried about offending powerful labor unions five weeks ahead of a presidential election. And they are also determined to defend the monopoly of the state-owned power company EDF.
Jose Maria Aznar
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who chaired the summit, said the compromise should still be seen as a shot in the arm for the economic reform process. He says the march toward open markets in such areas as energy and financial services is irreversible.
Romano Prodi, the head of the Brussels-based European Commission, the EU's executive arm, has been a driving force for opening up the European market.
He said the deal obtained Saturday is the best that could be hoped for, given the present circumstances.
The EU leaders also gave the green light to a network of navigation satellites called Galileo that will compete with the U.S. military global positioning system, or GPS. The idea has drawn fire from Washington, which sees the EU project as unnecessary duplication. But the EU is uncomfortable with being technologically dependent on the United States.
In foreign affairs, the leaders condemned the conduct of last week's elections in Zimbabwe, saying the vote could be judged neither free nor fair. They also demanded that Israel lift all travel restrictions against Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Barcelona is bracing for a protest march by a coalition of groups that fear closer European integration aids large multinational companies. The demonstrators are also concerned about any attempt by EU leaders to ditch the generous social safety nets that shield Europeans from the harsher aspects of no-holds-barred capitalism of the type the protesters say holds sway in the United States.
Demonstrators Clash With Spanish Police Near EU Summit
Roger Wilkison
Barcelona
15 Mar 2002 16:14 UTC
Listen to Roger Wilkison's Report from Barcelona (RealAudio)
Wilkison Report - Download 302k (RealAudio)
Spanish riot police clashed with anti-globalization demonstrators in downtown Barcelona, as European Union leaders meeting in the city were wrestling with ways to revitalize the 15-nation bloc's economy and make it more competitive. The EU leaders and their counterparts from 13 countries that want to join the EU are also discussing such international issues as the Middle East and Zimbabwe.
Police wielding truncheons waded into a crowd of rock-throwing youths along Barcelona's main downtown artery and arrested at least 10 people for disrupting public order.
Demonstrators staged sporadic confrontations with police to protest what they see as the EU's pro-free market tendencies, just as the EU leaders were debating how fast they should open up national energy markets and make labor laws less stringent.
Leaders attending EU summit in Barcelona, Spain
The violence came a day after 100,000 trade unionists marched through Barcelona to protest against undoing Europe's generous labor and social welfare legislation to enable EU countries to compete effectively with the more dynamic American economy.
Despite host Spain's push for a revitalization of ambitious economic reforms, especially in the energy sector, there is no chance that France will go along with the plan. President Jacques Chirac and his main rival in next month's presidential elections, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, are both reluctant to offend powerful labor unions by allowing private firms to compete with the government-owned electric power monopoly.
The EU leaders are also expected to urge Israel to immediately pull all of its forces out of Palestinian areas. But Britain's top official for European affairs, Peter Hain, would only say that a statement on the Middle East is still being prepared.
"We're expecting an agreement that both sides be urged to take immediate and effective action to stop the bloodshed, and that the European Council will warmly welcome the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1397, which, for the first time, called for the recognition of a state of Palestine coexisting in peace and with security alongside the state of Israel, (which would also be) guaranteed its security," Mr. Hain said.
Mr. Hain said the leaders will also issue a tough statement condemning as invalid the recent election in Zimbabwe. He said they will ask their foreign ministers to consider hardening sanctions against Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe when they meet next month
VOA.com
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Riots erupt on Spanish streets
By JEROME SOCOLOVSKY
17mar02
BARCELONA: Anarchy erupted on the streets of Barcelona as protesters staged running battles with police last night.
The fighting broke out as anti-globalisation campaigners gathered outside a compound housing the leaders of the 28 nations attending the European Union summit in the city.
Police fired rubber bullets and clubbed protesters who threw rocks and rubbish bins.
Police said 24 people were arrested, including six Basque nationalists.
No serious injuries were reported.
Protesters accused the authorities of provoking the violence.
"We are seeing here a state of siege. This is clearly police provocation," said a spokesman for the organising committee, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from across Europe are in Barcelona to protest against the EU's financial policy.
Montse Arias, of the French anti-globalisation group Attac, said eight busloads of protesters, lawyers and journalists had been forced to turn back at the French border with Spain.
Spain has temporarily re-imposed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of an EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
A police spokesman said travellers were being detained at the border for trying to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other weapons.
Yesterday's clashes were the first signs that anti-globalisation violence may be returning to international political meetings, following a lull in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed and police vans and a helicopter followed protesters through the city as the two-day summit started at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos.
AP
the sunday times
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Riots erupt on Spanish streets
By JEROME SOCOLOVSKY
Sunday Herald Sun
17mar02
BARCELONA: Anarchy erupted on the streets of Barcelona as protesters staged running battles with police last night.
The fighting broke out as anti-globalisation campaigners gathered outside a compound housing the leaders of the 28 nations attending the European Union summit in the city.
Police fired rubber bullets and clubbed protesters who threw rocks and rubbish bins.
Police said 24 people were arrested, including six Basque nationalists.
No serious injuries were reported.
Protesters accused the authorities of provoking the violence.
"We are seeing here a state of siege. This is clearly police provocation," said a spokesman for the organising committee, the Campaign Against a Europe of Capitalism and War.
Tens of thousands of demonstrators from across Europe are in Barcelona to protest against the EU's financial policy.
Montse Arias, of the French anti-globalisation group Attac, said eight busloads of protesters, lawyers and journalists had been forced to turn back at the French border with Spain.
Spain has temporarily re-imposed border controls scrapped several years ago as part of an EU treaty on free movement of people and goods.
A police spokesman said travellers were being detained at the border for trying to smuggle in axes, baseball bats and other weapons.
Yesterday's clashes were the first signs that anti-globalisation violence may be returning to international political meetings, following a lull in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Sirens wailed and police vans and a helicopter followed protesters through the city as the two-day summit started at the heavily guarded Palacio de Congresos.
AP
www.news.com.au
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Sunday March 17, 2:41 PM
EU summit ends with energy deal, 300,000 join Barcelona protest
Leaders of the 15-nation European Union took key steps towards freeing up Europe's markets, but 300,000 demonstrators beg to differ in one of the biggest protests ever to coincide with an EU summit.
Some 50 people were seen being detained as riot police fired tear gas at the end of the twilight demonstration, dispersing anarchists who smashed bank windows with metal bars along the route of the 2-1/2 hour march.
Several dozen people were slightly injured in the melee, including at least three press photographers. Nine people were taken to hospital with light injuries, medical sources said.
But the bulk of the protest was orderly, in sharp contrast to the violence that rocked past EU summits -- particularly in Gothenburg, Sweden last June when the city center was ravaged and a demonstrator shot and wounded.
Blowing whistles and marching behind a forest of banners, the Barcelona protesters represented a wide range of causes -- including Catalan and Basque nationalists, and opposition to free-market globalization.
At the summit in a heavily secured convention center, the EU heads of state and government agreed in principle to open Europe's gas and electricity market for industrial and business users in 2004.
France, which is in the midst of a general election campaign, had held up the deal, but finally agreed with its EU partners to press ahead on free-market reform in return for concessions on rail freight reform.
"This is a fundamental step" that will open 60 to 70 percent of Europe's energy market, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar told reporters. Spain currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
The EU's commitment to ambitious free-market reforms -- agreed two years ago in Lisbon, with the goal of overtaking the United States in the new economy by 2010 -- was at stake in Barcelona.
France's reluctance before the summit to expose state-owned electricity group EDF to competition ahead of the election showed how national politics can cast shadows over broader EU undertakings.
Neither conservative incumbent Jacques Chirac nor socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, campaigning hard to succeed him, wanted to be seen caving in on the issue with French jobs possibly at stake.
Security was tight throughout the two-day summit with 8,500 police officers -- many bused in from other parts of Spain -- in the bustling Catalan capital to guard against the double threat of street riots and Basque terrorist attacks.
On Friday baton-wielding riot police skirmished with small bands of youths in the bustling city center, where the coalition of protest groups staged 25 different "happenings" in various neighborhoods.
Other reforms pledged at Lisbon in March 2000, but delayed in the EU policy-making pipeline, include measures to facilitate cross-border corporate takeovers, greater job mobility, more integrated financial markets, and a common EU patent law.
The leaders in Barcelona found it easier to agree on international issues.
They voiced strong support for this week's UN resolution that spoke for the first time of a Palestinian state, and offered to send observers to facilitate a renewed Middle East peace process. The EU has been playing an ever-bigger role in the region.
With prodding from Britain, the EU leaders added their voice to the international outcry against the re-election of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in violence-marred polls that his opponents and foreign observers are calling unfair
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020317/1/2lhc5.html --------------------------------------------------------
EU SUMMIT More than 100,000 join final Barcelona protest, say organisers
BARCELONA (AFX) - More than 100,000 people joined a final protest march against the EU economic summit here, according to first estimates by organizers.
Led by a banner that declared: "Against a Europe of capital -- another world is possible," the overwhelmingly young demonstrators headed from Placa de Catalunya to the harborfront.
They did so amid a large deployment of riot police, and two surveillance helicopters overhead, amid fears of a repeat of the street violence that has marred top-level EU gatherings in the past.
http://www.afxpress.com/afxpress2/afx/bn97700.xml.html -----------------------------------------------------
Running battles conclude EU summit
Police moved in after missiles were thrown
Police in Barcelona have fired tear gas and rubber bullets during running skirmishes with protesters marching in response to the EU economic summit, which ended on Saturday.
The trouble - which left 18 injured, including seven policemen - came towards the end of a march which for the most part was noisy but peaceful.
We're here to say 'no' to the European Union
Protester Ada Colau
The BBC's Malcolm Brabant says it is not clear how the clashes began, but the vast majority of the marchers, from anti-globalisation campaigners to Basque nationalists, were not involved.
The EU leaders had earlier agreed a number of moves designed to push forward free-market reforms.
The centre-piece was a compromise deal to allow competition in supplies of gas and electricity to businesses from 2004.
But a bid to extend this to supplies for homes was blocked by France.
Various grievances
The demonstrators - who had been marching from Placa de Catalunya to the harbour front - were protesting against everything from the Euro and free-market globalisation to Israeli violence.
The press were also caught in the violence
Along with communists, Greens, and the opponents of globalisation are Catalan and Basque nationalists.
There was also a group of anti-Americans masquerading as Afghan prisoners detained at Camp X-ray in Cuba.
Police moved in as young militants, some hooded or wearing masks, set fire to rubbish cans and threw stones bottles and flares.
Police said some banks and storefronts were wrecked and there were 38 arrests.
The game at the Nou Camp was delayed
"We're here to say 'no' to the European Union, which... is becoming a model for globalisation and is more like the US in favour of arms and war," said Ada Colau, a spokeswoman for the march organisers.
The protest even encroached on one of the biggest Spanish football matches of the season, between Barcelona and Real Madrid, in Barcelona on Saturday evening.
The game had to be stopped briefly as two demonstrators who had handcuffed themselves to the goal posts were removed.
Elections condemned
Ending their two-day summit, European leaders agreed to open up electricity and gas markets, to raise the retirement age and to increase job mobility.
They also condemned last weekend's elections in Zimbabwe, called on Israel to withdraw its forces from all Palestinian areas, and hailed Serbia and Montenegro's decision to form a loose federation.
Aznar: "Fundamental step"
The summit's key decision is to allow industries and businesses to shop around between different countries' electricity and gas suppliers from 2004 onwards.
But in a concession to France, where the issue is sensitive ahead of next month's presidential election, non-business consumers will not be included.
According to one report, France agreed to the deal after Spain dropped a proposal for rapid liberalisation of the rail freight market.
Though some leaders expressed disappointment at the compromise, Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, said business consumers made up 70% of the market.
"We have taken a fundamental step today," he said.
Tax cuts
In an attempt to encourage workers to look for jobs abroad, the summit agreed on the creation of an EU-wide health insurance card, guaranteeing the holder treatment in any country.
They also agreed by 2010 to:
boost funding for research and development to 3% of GDP
provide daycare for 90% of children of working mothers
raise the average retirement age from 58 to 65
There were also pledges to increase vocational training and education standards, boost internet usage by young Europeans, and cut taxes for low earners.
The leaders agreed that they were behind schedule with the changes planned at the Lisbon summit two years ago, to make the EU the world's most dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010 and to create 20 million new jobs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1876000/1876889.stm -------------------------------------------------------
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Barcelona blues
Mar 15th 2002
From The Economist Global Agenda
As European Union heads of government gather in Barcelona for a special summit, their ambitious aim of making Europe the world’s most competitive region by 2010 looks doomed to fail. The best they can hope for is to break the deadlock on electricity deregulation—and French resistance will make even that difficult
Reuters
The smiles are fixed
In Depth: Changes at the European Central Bank
WHAT could be more pleasant than Barcelona in the spring, with a stroll down the Ramblas or tapas by the port? Sadly, the EU leaders in Barcelona for their special summit are going to spend much of their time there engaged in a lengthy discussion of electricity liberalisation in an airless conference room. And if that is not bad enough, there is worse: the ten-year rolling programme of economic reforms that they unveiled with great fanfare in Lisbon two years ago is in deep trouble.
The “Lisbon process” was launched in large part because the EU countries recognised they were falling behind the United States economically. In 1991 America's GDP per person was 42% greater than the EU average; by the end of 2001 the gap had widened to 54%. At Lisbon, Europeans were promised a programme of economic reforms that would make the EU the “most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” by 2010. Yet recently Frits Bolkestein, the EU's commissioner for the internal market, declared that “most of the key reforms announced at Lisbon are still on paper, waiting to be approved and implemented. The credibility of all community institutions is at stake. We can't keep on saying the cheque is in the mail.” And on March 13th, Jose Maria Aznar, the Spanish prime minister and the man who will chair the summit, said Barcelona would be an important landmark: it was, he said, vital to show the world that Europe is serious about reform. By now, Mr Aznar must have his fingers firmly crossed, hoping the summit is not the wrong kind of landmark.
100,000 march against EU summit
(ninemsn) Sun 15:12 GMT
EU: Finland, Bucking Energy Trends, Calls For More Nuclear Power
(Radio Free Europe) Sun 14:52 GMT
EU calls for full Israel withdrawal from PA areas
(Jerusalem Post) Sun 14:41 GMT
EU leaders tiptoe around Iraq at Barcelona summit
(Jordan Times) Sun 14:41 GMT
EU increases power competition
(CNN Europe) Sun 14:08 GMT
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European competitiveness: Lisbon's lost legacy
Dec 14th 2001
The EU's stalled liberalisation efforts
Nov 1st 2001
The European Union posts the agenda for the Barcelona summit, and publishes the lengthy Lisbon meeting conclusions from the previous summit at Laeken. The EU details its policies on energy, takeovers and patents. The Centre for European Reform, a British think-tank, provides research and analysis on the EU's economic policies, and other EU policy issues.
Chinese politics Mar 15th 2002
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Mobile phones Mar 15th 2002
World population growth Mar 13th 2002
About Global Agenda
As the frustrated Mr Bolkestein points out, there is still “more poetry than motion”. He highlights two reforms that were meant to have been wrapped up by the end of last year but which remain stuck. Efforts to create an EU-wide system of patent law, called a “community patent”, have foundered on arguments about which languages patents can be filed in. This issue is so sensitive and so bound up with national pride that the Barcelona summiteers do not plan even to try to solve it. And plans to simplify EU rules on public procurement, which accounts for some 15% of the countries' aggregate GDP, have stalled. These were meant to have been approved last year. Efforts to create a pan-European code for corporate takeovers likewise came to grief last year, after 12 years, when they ran into opposition in Germany and in the European Parliament. The European Commission has appointed some “wise men” to try to find a way forward—to little effect so far.
But the outlook is not entirely bleak. A bundle of measures to liberalise telecoms markets was pushed through last year; limited liberalisation of Europe's postal services has been agreed on; and a financial-services “action plan” is making progress, raising hopes that European companies will soon have better access to more capital. Meanwhile the commission remains pretty strict in upholding the existing laws of the EU's internal market. It has started investigations of possible illegal state aid from Greece to Olympic Airways. A thumbs-down from the commission could bankrupt the Greek national carrier.
Yet even genuine advances for economic liberalisation threaten to be offset by a new wave of labour-market regulation which runs counter to Lisbon's professed desire to cut unemployment. The EU is working on a new directive to ensure that temporary workers hired through agencies receive the same pay and conditions as equivalent full-time workers.
If the Barcelona summit fails to give liberalisation a boost, then it is likely that the outside world will stop listening to the high-sounding promises made in Lisbon two years ago. For that reason, if no other, European leaders want to come up with something they can point to as an achievement.
Hence their concentration on electricity liberalisation. This issue has assumed a totemic significance because of France's stubborn refusal to free its markets and expose EDF, its state-owned electricity supplier, to competition. Just ten days before the summit, France blocked a draft deal on electricity that was acceptable to all the other 14 EU countries. A compromise may yet be possible in Barcelona, whereby France would agree to open its market for business users of electricity, while allowing EDF to continue to overcharge householders. Even that limited success cannot be guaranteed. French sources talk about this “managed opening” of energy markets without wanting to spell out a date by which it would be completed: and even for this concession the French are looking for an implicit linkage with progress on “social Europe”—code for labour-market regulation.
With the presidential campaign under way in France, both the left and the right are talking tough in public. On March 14th, on the eve of the summit, public sector workers demonstrated in Paris against further deregulation, and President Jacques Chirac, wanting to sound tough, publicly ruled out full privatisation of EDF. Not to be outdone, the French finance minister, Laurent Fabius, a socialist, made it clear on March 13th that deregulation for domestic customers is not on the agenda. And some, at least, of France's European partners are trying hard to show their understanding ahead of the elections. The German finance minister, Hans Eichel, has made it clear that though his country favours liberalisation the Germans do not want to pick a fight with the French at Barcelona. None of this sounds like a victory for ordinary Europeans but liberalisers, desperate for any good news, will doubtless talk up any deal Europe’s leaders can come up with.
Meanwhile, events many miles from Barcelona may deepen the gloom at the summit. Europeans have long been urged to look to the United States for lessons in the benefits of liberalisation. America's decision to impose tariffs on steel imports, including those from Europe, will encourage Europe's powerful anti-globalisation movement to believe that the tide of the argument is now turning its way.
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1043718
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