Europe Tries to Bend It Like Beckham in Charity Match

In a charity match celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome and Manchester United's half century of play in European soccer, England's most storied team beat a squad of European all-stars 4-3. This game was filled with all kinds of symbolism. David Beckham, the world's most popular athlete, played his last game in England against his former team as a member of the Europe XI squad. That the most famous British soccer club defeated a team representing the Europe Union can also be seen as symbolic of Britain's tortured relationship with the EU. In the end, Europe got to celebrate its "birthday" with a good game, but Manchester's victory certainly won't do anything to promote a European identity in one of the most euroskeptic member states.

Riots in the "Happiest Place on Earth"

Just last summer, Denmark was being called the "happiest place on earth." That isn't much solace to the citizens of Copenhagen who are witnessing the worst violence in a decade:

As the smoke and tear gas cleared Saturday morning, the police said 188 people were arrested overnight, while more than 200 were arrested the day before …

“In the last 10 years we haven’t had riots like we’ve seen in the past two days,” a police spokesman, Flemming Steen Munch, said.

The violence started Thursday after a police antiterror squad evicted squatters from a downtown building that for years had been a popular cultural center for anarchists, punk rockers and left-wing groups.

The eruption of violent riots in Denmark is a very troubling to me, although its full meaning eludes me. Perhaps it suggests that the serious social issues behind the far more violent riots in France last year are not as isolated as Europeans like to think. The willingness of disaffected youth in Scandinavia, of all places, to resort to violence to challenge state authority does not seem like a good omen for Europe's future.

Dutch Voters Turn to the Internets

If you thought voting was hard here, try voting in Netherlands where voters have to chose between 24 different parties. Dutch voters seem to be understandably confused and a large number are turning to the Internet and sites that match voter and party:

At one site, called Vote Matcher, users answer multiple-choice questions. Based on the results, the site then suggests which party best represents the user's views. Another site, Voting Compass, offers a variant: after offering choices on a range of political topics, it shows where the user fits in the political landscape.


Each of the sites, which opened a month ago, has reported almost three million visitors, a significant number in a country with 12 million eligible voters. Those figures do not count the results from 13 other similar sites.

The sudden popularity of the voting guides in this democratic nation of outspoken citizens not known as wallflowers in politics, has baffled even seasoned analysts. Could this be just another set of computer games, or is this serious soul-searching?

"I think it's both," said Andre Krouwel, a professor of political science at the Free University in Amsterdam, who designed the Voting Compass site. "We are taken aback by the large numbers. It seems that people seem unsure, that they are trying to get a handle on a panorama that has become more complex with the boom in new small parties."

National opinion polls appear to confirm the wavering of many voters.
In the latest polls, released Monday, almost one-third of the people questioned said they had not decided whom to vote for.

The big question in my mind is: Do these sites work? This is scarily related to my dissertation which included an entire chapter on the accuracy of Dutch voters' vote choice. They did pretty good, scoring much higher than British or American voters.