left wing

By all accounts, his new post will sorely test these talents.

Mr. Letta, who was sworn in on Sunday, must steer a government that has the bipartisan — if reluctant — support of the two largest opposing political forces in Parliament during an exceptionally difficult moment for Italy, which is buffered by economic and social unrest. At the same time, he must try to hold together the pieces of his center-left Democratic Party, which imploded after national elections in February that left Italy without a governing majority. Mr. Letta comes from the moderate wing of the party, but a significant left-wing faction is openly bridling at Mr. Letta’s compromise government.

Friends and colleagues say that if anyone can pull it off, Mr. Letta can.

“He’s the person Italy needs now,” said Massimo Bergami, a friend and dean of the business school at the University of Bologna, pointing to Mr. Letta’s institutional experience, background in international affairs and ability to “talk with people with different backgrounds, and understand different positions.”

Mr. Letta must also address the demands of the European Union to stay the course of fiscal responsibility in the face of the Italian public’s widespread animosity toward austerity measures. His European credentials are firm, both as a former member of the European Parliament and through a network of contacts and relationships cultivated over the years from his associations with various research groups.

The new prime minister “is a committed Europhile” who believes that “Italy has no future outside of the European Union,” said Lucio Caracciolo, the editor of the bimonthly Italian geopolitical magazine Limes, who has written two books with Mr. Letta. At the same time, Mr. Letta is not deaf to the country’s growing malaise. “I think he’s realized very clearly that we have to fight a battle inside the European Union against the austerity policies that have led to the deindustrialization of our country and those on the periphery,” Mr. Caracciolo said.

At 46, Mr. Letta is the third-youngest prime minister since World War II. His age works in his favor in a nation where demands for change and generational renewal are resonating as the battle cry of the disenfranchised, and largely unemployed, youth.

Born in Pisa, Mr. Letta studied political science at the city’s university and did graduate work in international law at the prestigious Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies there. The new education minister, Maria Chiara Carrozza, was dean of the university until this year.

His political roots lie in the once powerful Christian Democratic Party, felled by corruption scandals in the early 1990s. Even as the party was collapsing, Mr. Letta served as president of the European Young Christian Democrats for four years, strengthening connections with centrist parties throughout the Continent that are still in place today.

Mr. Letta stayed through various incarnations of what is now the Democratic Party, becoming its deputy secretary in 2009. He was first elected to Parliament in 2001 and to the European Parliament in 2004, serving two years, and he continues to sit on its ad hoc commissions.

But his political career has been defined by his association with Beniamino Andreatta, a Christian Democrat economist and the founder of Arel, a research group that Mr. Letta now serves as secretary general. When Mr. Andreatta became foreign minister in 1993, Mr. Letta was his chief of staff. He later headed a commission on the euro in the years before it became the common currency.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/world/europe/italian-prime-ministers-political-acrobatics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

President Nicos Anastasiades did not say what the central bank governor, Panicos O. Demetriades, had done to draw his ire. But he suggested that Mr. Demetriades’s actions had led to the resignations on Friday of three central bank board members.

Mr. Demetriades, an appointee of the previous left-wing administration, told the Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros that his cooperation with the government and Parliament was a given in order to deal with the country’s severe financial crisis, but that the central bank’s independence must be respected.

Lawmakers have criticized Mr. Demetriades over his role in talks with the country’s euro zone partners and the International Monetary Fund, which culminated in a 23 billion euro ($30 billion) rescue package.

The terms of the bailout require Cyprus to raise 13 billion euros of the overall amount by imposing losses on deposits over 100,000 euros in the country’s two largest banks, Bank of Cyprus and Laiki.

Laiki experienced heavier losses from bad Greek debt and loans than the larger Bank of Cyprus. Laiki will be broken up in to a “good” bank that will be folded into Bank of Cyprus and a “bad” bank that will be wound down.

As part of its bank restructuring, and to prevent a run on its banks, Cypriot authorities have imposed a series of capital controls — the first that any country has applied in the euro zone’s 14-year history — including a daily 300 euro limit on withdrawals.

Officials said the restrictions would be lifted gradually until trust in banks is restored. On Sunday, the authorities raised the monthly domestic bank-to-bank transfer limit for individuals to 50,000 euros from 10,000 euros. For businesses, the transfer limit rose to 300,000 euros from 50,000 euros, but documents justifying the transfer must be presented.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/business/global/president-of-cyprus-criticizes-bank-chief.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Man in the News | Enrico Letta: Italian Prime Minister’s Political Acrobatics

President of Cyprus Criticizes Bank Chief

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