The opposition in Georgia has been staging daily protests for over a month in an attempt to force President Mikhail Saakashvili to resign. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke with opposition leader Salome Zurabishvili about the state of democracy in Georgia and the country's path to the West.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ms. Zurabishvili, on Monday you and three other opposition politicians were invited to speak with President Mikhail Saakashvili about the crisis in Georgia and ongoing anti-government protests. Were you able to find common ground?

Opposition flags were flying outside the Georgian parliament on Wednesday. Salome Zurabishvili: We were expecting a real dialogue with the president. A genuine dialogue about how we were going to find a way out of this political crisis. Unfortunately he was not prepared for such a talk. He seems to have lost his grip on reality and imagines that 65 percent of the population support him. He says the only crisis in Georgia is the aftermath of the worldwide economic crisis.

In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Left Party Chairman Oskar Lafontaine speaks about his party's chances in the upcoming elections, its alleged drift to the left and why Angela Merkel needs to work through certain aspects of her communist past.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Lafontaine, is Germany embroiled in a class struggle?

 Oskar Lafontaine, the chairman of Germany's far-left Left Party. Oskar Lafontaine: The US billionaire Warren Buffett answered this question much better than the Left Party ever could. "It's class warfare; my class is winning," he said. To which I would add: The class that has been losing for years is starting to stir again.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: "Greed, avarice, selfishness and irresponsibility of the ruling class," the rich who "want to make even more money out of a lot of money" -- your party's draft platform for the upcoming German national elections sounds like Marx and Engels. Do you really believe that you can appeal to voters with such strong slogans?

Lafontaine: When the German president (Horst Köhler) talks about "monsters" and (Social Democratic Party leader) Franz Müntefering speaks of "locusts" and "losers," then we have actually made it into the center of society.

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - The French Senate on Wednesday (13 May) approved the government's `three strikes' bill, safe in the knowledge that the European Commission will not launch any legal action against Paris as a result of the legislation, which falls afoul of the wishes of the European Parliament.

Ms Reding says she is sympathetic to the European parliament's perspective

The law, which cuts off internet access to users found to be repeatedly downloading copyright content without the permission of the owner, was passed 189 to 14. Opposition Socialist deputies boycotted the vote.

On Tuesday, the French lower house also passed the bill, meaning the law has surmounted all hurdles and will likely be enacted some time in the autumn.

Under the legislation, a scofflaw web-surfer is first sent an email warning, then a letter through the post and, finally, as the third 'strike,' her internet access can be interrupted for up to a year - a series of actions also referred to as a `graduated response'.

The Spanish cabinet has agreed to liberalise the country's strict abortion laws, allowing abortion in most cases up to 14 weeks of pregnancy.

The proposals must go to parliament, where Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero lacks a majority.

His deputy, Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, said changes were necessary to preserve the "dignity of women".

Anti-abortion groups have condemned the proposals and the Roman Catholic church has started an anti-abortion campaign.

Gordon Brown today suspended ex-minister Elliot Morley from the Parliamentary Labour Party and an aide to Tory leader David Cameron quit his post, as the Westminster expenses scandal claimed its first scalps.

Mr Morley, MP for Scunthorpe, now faces expulsion from Labour ranks if charges that he wrongly claimed £16,000 in allowances for a mortgage already paid off are backed up by Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon.

The Prime Minister also suspended former fisheries minister Mr Morley from his post as the premier's climate change envoy.

Bracknell Conservative MP Andrew MacKay announced his resignation as a parliamentary aide to Mr Cameron after confessing he had made an "error of judgment" on his second homes claims.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus will not chair a high-profile meeting of EU leaders in June, his office has announced.

Mr Klaus "proposed that Prime Minister Jan Fischer should chair June's EU summit in Brussels on behalf of the Czech presidency," his office said in a statement.

"The president has full trust in the prime minister and has no doubt that he will handle this role easily and with success."

Vaclav Klaus - criticised in some parts of the EU, winning awards in others

The move is likely to be greeted with relief by EU diplomats who feared the president would use the gathering to air his strong opposition to the EU's Lisbon treaty, compounding what many view as a damaging past few months for the bloc under the gaffe-prone Czech presidency.

European Commission plans to create a new department for energy and climate change have been attacked by a group of influential MEPs.

"We are astonished and not a little alarmed at the suggestion that a new Commission directorate-general for climate change might be established," states a letter to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, signed by all the MEPs who negotiated for the Parliament on the EU's climate and energy package.

One of the options envisaged by the Commission is to bring climate change and energy together in a new directorate-general.

This would mean splitting energy from the current transport and energy department, and transferring some staff from the environment department - which currently leads climate change policy - to the new department.

The MEPs say that a single department responsible for both energy and climate risks interference from "short-term economic interest" in establishing effective and sustainable climate policy. The need to take account of policies ranging from agriculture to foreign affairs would not be adequately addressed, they say.

Luxembourgeois Green MEP Claude Turmes went further than his co-signatories. He told European Voice that the result would be to move climate policy away from "pro-environment people" in the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. He fears that laws drafted by a climate and energy department would go to industry ministers and the Parliament's industry committee, rather than to their environment counterparts, as happens now.

SOCHI, May 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia and Abkhazia will sign an agreement on the deployment of a Russian military base in the former Georgian republic within the next two weeks, the Abkhaz president said on Thursday.

"The land has been allocated, a location identified, and work has started there. We are awaiting an agreement between the republic and the Russian Defense Ministry," Sergei Bagapsh told journalists after a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

"It [the agreement] is almost ready. I think it will be signed in a week or two," he said.

The Abkhaz president earlier said Russia would have a total of 3,800 troops deployed in the republic for the next 49 years.

Bagapsh also said units of Russian border guards will be deployed on Abkhazia's state border by the beginning of June.

In the imaginary world of the Italians, the big boat full of African emigrants has substituted the "Ogre", the "Bogeyman". Hundreds of desperate people who are risking their lives at sea, often people with the right to have political asylum. While Maroni looks to the shores of Libya, he is forgetting that hundreds of thousands of people have come into Italy from the East. Documented citizens of the European Union, most of whom have Romanian passports. No one has stopped them, has asked if they have a job, a house, an income. We have exploited the honest ones and we have taken no notice of the dishonest ones.
From 2007, with the entry of Romania and Bulgaria into the European Union, the gates have opened. Most of the countries of Europe adopted the moratorium. From the East they poured into the only country with borders made of butter according to the law. Like water in a funnel. Everything arrived. The percentage of detainees from the East in Italian prisons is impressive. The black man in prison is a rare thing. The problem, at the level of big numbers, is not the delinquent from outside the European Union but the one from within.
Italy contributes 12 to 13 billion euro to the coffers of Europe every year, and of these about 8 billion return to us. The rest goes to the countries that have the greatest need of investments. Among these, Romania. So basically, our taxes are used to help the less developed countries of Europe. No objection up to this point. However, Italy is Romania's top commercial partner. 22 thousand of our companies have opened new activities there or have delocalized there, thanks to the European incentives. The Italian companies have disembarked in the East with the objective of making money. Reducing production costs, not having to be subject to controls on labour that exist in our country. And, if possible, making use of the label "Made in Italy". In exchange, Romania has been able to export low cost labour for construction, almost always undocumented, and to get rid of thousands of unwanted people. No moratorium. The Lega did not lift a finger. And to be truthful, neither did the others. Who has gained from this? Only one name springs to mind: the Confidustria. {General Confederation of Italian Industry}
In response to the question: "How many people have entered from Romania?" Prodi and Bonino did not have a response. Frattini who was then the vice president of the European Commission, and now the Minister of Foreign Affairs, said he was against methods of limiting entry to Romanian and Bulgarian workers into Italy, as happened in other countries of the EU. Those who have the right to claim political asylum, we abandon to their destiny, and we throw open the doors to people with kilometre-long criminal records just because they are from the European Community. In Italy we have the free circulation of delinquents, which is why they all want to come to us. To reject those who have the right to political asylum, is a crime against humanity. All the rest is business.

beppe exaggerates a bit here, i think, in saying they all want to come here for his stated reasons. it may be also the fact that italy has such a disproportionately long coastline, well known as porous, as well as its geographical proximity to both africa and eastern europe...

spain and malta have big problems too, but i get the feeling italy's in the x-hairs as choice port of entry.

the word among immigrants is that because you have to be processed in the country of entry, it's better to avoid italy, (because of its slow legal process and sketchy holding camps) and choose norway for example, but the trip is way harder, obviously.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty