elections

Yesterday was the big German parliamentary decision on aid for Cyprus, and the burning question was whether Chancellor Angela Merkel would hold her coalition together or, as in past Bundestag crisis-management moments, rely on opposition votes to pass the package....

The revolution begins in Valletta — that’s the European center-left’s rallying cry after a longtime conservative bastion, Malta, fell to the Labour Party over the weekend. Never mind that with growth last year of 1 percent and a jobless rate...

For once, Mario Monti had a sympathetic audience — dozens of European officials he mingled with and presided over during a 10-year European Commission career that, by the looks of it, he will remember more fondly than the 15 months...

The Italian elections were his to lose, and Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani did a really good job of almost doing just that. Bersani, a former communist who backed Prime Minister Mario Monti’s technical government, squandered a 15-point poll...

Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise resignation and the popular San Remo music festival may have clipped some of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s momentum in the campaign for Italy’s end-of-month election amid a blackout on opinion polls. Pope Benedict’s Feb. 11...

Spain’s socialist opposition leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba is trying to make the most of graft allegations against Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. His campaign to get Rajoy to quit brings back memories of when the Socialist Party was ejected from power...

Meeting budget-deficit targets isn’t France’s strong suit, but it’s looking increasingly likely that President Francois Hollande will be given some breathing space next week, when the European Commission puts out economic forecasts for the euro zone. The previous forecasts, in...

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has cut the lead of front-runner Pier Luigi Bersani to 5 percentage points in the countdown to Italian parliamentary elections Feb. 24-25. Berlusconi is tapping into public anger over a banking scandal at Banca Monte...

Revelations that Banca Monte Paschi hid details of structured finance deals that may produce hundreds of millions of euros in losses is embroiling everyone from Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, while providing fodder...