Austria/EU

A freshly surfaced fitness trail follows the Vardar River on its course through Macedonia’s capital, hugging riverbanks dotted with new office buildings, swanky shops and bustling cafes.

The Austrian Catholic Church has fallen on hard times, facing a declining membership that mirrors a similar phenomenon around the world. In September 2007, Austrian Catholic leaders were hopeful that Pope Benedict XIV’s visit to the Alpine republic would inspire the membership and bring in new energy.

However, according to the Catholic press agency Kathpress, the exact opposite occurred: some 53,200 registered Catholics have left the Church, decreasing the country’s Catholics to 66% of the population from nearly 90%, fifty years ago.

Did you find a job? Great. Do you have all the necessary papers to apply? Wonderful. Are you an Austrian? No? Oh, see now you went a step too far, sorry. The remnants of the former Iron Curtain seem to linger in central Europe. While the rest of the European Union has eliminated its labor restrictions, Austria, one of only two remaining nations, has chosen instead to extend them.

This is a story that continues to be told by those coming from the former Eastern Bloc. The search for a job has been greatly hindered by the extension of labor restrictions in Austria, which require eastern EU nationals to apply for work permits.

For Viennese parents, one dream has finally come true. In September 2009, the city implemented a revolutionary program offering a free kindergarten year for all children in their last year before elementary school. The project aims to relieve Viennese families financially and to boost integration in the Austrian capital. The free kindergarten applies only for the final pre-school year and has been introduced in the whole country. Still, Vienna is the only place where the model has been implemented to the fullest.

In the course of WWII, Austrian nationals of Jewish faith saw themselves forced to leave Austria for racist and political reasons. They became citizens of another country, and had to give up their Austrian citizenship.

Those who returned have in most cases regained this right. Current Austrian law foresees that people who had to flee Austria prior to May 9, 1945, because they were persecuted or feared to be persecuted by the NSDAP or the authorities of the Third Reich, may regain Austrian citizenship by declaration, provided that they were Austrian citizens at the time when they were forced to leave.

But what about their children? Do they retain a right to Austrian citizenship?

The trams have been stopped. The electricity, gas and water supplies have been cut off. Government troops march into the public housing complexes in Ottakring, Heiligenstadt and Simmering with artillery, while the resistance fighters inside desperately try to hold out.

It appears that 2010 will be a decisive year for the war in Afghanistan. After an auspicious beginning in 2001, the Afghan War stagnated as the U.S. focused its efforts and resources on the war in Iraq. Now, it seems that the U.S.

With Ireland’s recent ratification of the Lisbon Treaty via referendum, and the Czech Republic’s subsequent approval, the document designed to reorder some of the core structures of the European Union comes into effect on Dec. 1.

History has made the fall of communism in Europe over the autumn and winter of 1989 seem inevitable. But that’s not how it felt to the courageous Czechoslovak students, who, just days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, took advantage of an officially-sanctioned International Student Day to push for democratic reform in the capital Prague. The march of the Nov. 17 was met on the central thoroughfare Narodni by truncheon-wielding state security officers who injured 600 of the protestors.

It was a day that the visionary Vaclav Havel would say “set history in motion.”

The occupation of the Audimax at the University of Vienna is now entering its fifth week at this writing, triggering similar protests at universities across Europe and effectively forcing the Austrian government to act on a range of issues that have increasingly crippled the country’s academic life at all levels.