Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Title	Europe
Area
Population	731,000,000 (2009, 3rd)
Density	70/km2 (181/sq mi)
Demonym	European
Countries	50
List countries	List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe|List of European countries
Languages	List of languages
Time	UTC to UTC+6
Internet	.eu (European Union)
Cities	List of metropolitan areas in Europe }}

Europe ( or ) is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting the Black and Aegean Seas. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean and other bodies of water to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Black Sea and connected waterways to the southeast. Yet the borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are somewhat arbitrary, as the primarily physiographic term "continent" can incorporate cultural and political elements.

Europe is the world's second-smallest continent by surface area, covering about or 2% of the Earth's surface and about 6.8% of its land area. Of Europe's approximately 50 states, Russia is the largest by both area and population (although the country has territory in both Europe and Asia), while the Vatican City is the smallest. Europe is the third-most populous continent after Asia and Africa, with a population of 733 million or about 11% of the world's population.

Europe, in particular Ancient Greece, is the birthplace of Western culture. It played a predominant role in global affairs from the 16th century onwards, especially after the beginning of colonialism. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European nations controlled at various times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania, and large portions of Asia. Both World Wars were largely focused upon Europe, greatly contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the United States and Soviet Union took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east. European integration led to the formation of the Council of Europe and the European Union in Western Europe, both of which have been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Definition

The use of the term "Europe" has developed gradually throughout history. In antiquity, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned that the world had been divided by unknown persons into the three continents of Europe, Asia, and Libya (Africa), with the Nile and the River Phasis forming their boundaries—though he also states that some considered the River Don, rather than the Phasis, as the boundary between Europe and Asia. Europe's eastern frontier was defined in the 1st century by geographer Strabo at the River Don Flavius and the ''Book of Jubilees'' described the continents as the lands given by Noah to his three sons; Europe was defined as stretching from the Pillars of Hercules at the Strait of Gibraltar, separating it from Africa, to the Don, separating it from Asia.

A cultural definition of Europe as the lands of Latin Christendom coalesced in the 8th century, signifying the new cultural condominium created through the confluence of Germanic traditions and Christian-Latin culture, defined partly in contrast with Byzantium and Islam, and limited to northern Iberia, the British Isles, France, Christianized western Germany, the Alpine regions and northern and central Italy. The concept is one of the lasting legacies of the Carolingian Renaissance: "Europa" often figures in the letters of Charlemagne's cultural minister, Alcuin. This division—as much cultural as geographical—was used until the Late Middle Ages, when it was challenged by the Age of Discovery. The problem of redefining Europe was finally resolved in 1730 when, instead of waterways, the Swedish geographer and cartographer von Strahlenberg proposed the Ural Mountains as the most significant eastern boundary, a suggestion that found favour in Russia and throughout Europe.

Europe is now generally defined by geographers as the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, with its boundaries marked by large bodies of water to the north, west and south; Europe's limits to the far east are usually taken to be the Urals, the Ural River, and the Caspian Sea; to the south-east, the Caucasus Mountains, the Black Sea and the waterways connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Because of sociopolitical and cultural differences, there are various descriptions of Europe's boundary. For example, Cyprus is approximate to Anatolia (or Asia Minor), but is often considered part of Europe and currently is a member state of the EU. In addition, Malta was considered an island of Africa for centuries, while Iceland, though nearer to Greenland (North America), is also generally included in Europe.

Sometimes, the word 'Europe' is used in a geopolitically limiting way to refer only to the European Union or, even more exclusively, a culturally defined core. On the other hand, the Council of Europe has 47 member countries, and only 27 member states are in the EU. In addition, people living in insular areas such as Ireland, the United Kingdom, the North Atlantic and Mediterranean islands and also in Scandinavia may routinely refer to "continental" or "mainland" Europe simply as Europe or "the Continent".

Key: blue: states which straddle the border between Europe and Asia; green: states not geographically in Europe, but closely associated politically

Etymology

In ancient Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess whom Zeus abducted after assuming the form of a dazzling white bull. He took her to the island of Crete where she gave birth to Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. For Homer, Europe (Greek: , ''''; see also List of Greek place names) was a mythological queen of Crete, not a geographical designation. Later, ''Europa'' stood for central-north Greece, and by 500 BC its meaning had been extended to the lands to the north.

The name of ''Europa'' is of uncertain etymology. One theory suggests that it is derived from the Greek roots meaning broad (εὐρ(υ)- ''eur(u)-'') and eye (ὤψ/ὠπ-/ὀπτ- ''ōps''/''ōp''-/''op(t)-''), hence '''', "wide-gazing", "broad of aspect" (compare with ''glaukōpis'' (γλαυκῶπις 'grey-eyed') Athena or ''boōpis'' (βοὠπις 'ox-eyed') Hera). ''Broad'' has been an epithet of Earth itself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion. Another theory suggests that it is actually based on a Semitic word such as the Akkadian ''erebu'' meaning "to go down, set" (cf. Occident), cognate to Phoenician '' 'ereb'' "evening; west" and Arabic Maghreb, Hebrew ''ma'ariv'' (see also ''Erebus'', PIE ''*h₁regʷos'', "darkness"). However, M. L. West states that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor".

Most major world languages use words derived from "Europa" to refer to the "continent" (peninsula). Chinese, for example, uses the word '''' (歐洲), which is an abbreviation of the transliterated name '''' (歐羅巴洲); this term is also used by the European Union in Japanese-language diplomatic relations, despite the katakana '''' being more commonly used. However, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name ''Frangistan'' (land of the Franks) is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as ''Avrupa'' or ''Evropa''.

History

Prehistory

''Homo georgicus'', which lived roughly 1.8 million years ago in Georgia, is the earliest hominid to have been discovered in Europe. Other hominid remains, dating back roughly 1 million years, have been discovered in Atapuerca, Spain. Neanderthal man (named for the Neandertal valley in Germany) appeared in Europe 150,000 years ago and disappeared from the fossil record about 28,000 BCE, with this extinction probably due to climate change, and their final refuge being present-day Portugal. The Neanderthals were supplanted by modern humans (Cro-Magnons), who appeared in Europe around 43 to 40 thousand years ago.

The European Neolithic period—marked by the cultivation of crops and the raising of livestock, increased numbers of settlements and the widespread use of pottery—began around 7000 BC in Greece and the Balkans, probably influenced by earlier farming practices in Anatolia and the Near East. It spread from South Eastern Europe along the valleys of the Danube and the Rhine (Linear Pottery culture) and along the Mediterranean coast (Cardial culture). Between 4500 and 3000 BC, these central European neolithic cultures developed further to the west and the north, transmitting newly acquired skills in producing copper artefacts. In Western Europe the Neolithic period was characterized not by large agricultural settlements but by field monuments, such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds and megalithic tombs. The Corded Ware cultural horizon flourished at the transition from the Neolithic to the Chalcolithic. During this period giant megalithic monuments, such as the Megalithic Temples of Malta and Stonehenge, were constructed throughout Western and Southern Europe. The European Bronze Age began in the late 3rd millennium BC with the Beaker culture.

The European Iron Age began around 800 BC, with the Hallstatt culture. Iron Age colonisation by the Phoenicians gave rise to early Mediterranean cities. Early Iron Age Italy and Greece from around the 8th century BC gradually gave rise to historical Classical antiquity.

Classical antiquity

Ancient Greece had a profound impact on Western civilisation. Western democratic and individualistic culture are often attributed to Ancient Greece. The Greeks invented the polis, or city-state, which played a fundamental role in their concept of identity. These Greek political ideals were rediscovered in the late 18th century by European philosophers and idealists. Greece also generated many cultural contributions: in philosophy, humanism and rationalism under Aristotle, Socrates and Plato; in history with Herodotus and Thucydides; in dramatic and narrative verse, starting with the epic poems of Homer; and in science with Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. Another major influence on Europe came from the Roman Empire which left its mark on law, language, engineering, architecture, and government. During the ''pax romana'', the Roman Empire expanded to encompass the entire Mediterranean Basin and much of Europe.

Stoicism influenced Roman emperors such as Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, who all spent time on the Empire's northern border fighting Germanic, Pictish and Scottish tribes. Christianity was eventually legitimised by Constantine I after three centuries of imperial persecution.

Early Middle Ages

During the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe entered a long period of change arising from what historians call the "Age of Migrations". There were numerous invasions and migrations amongst the Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Goths, Vandals, Huns, Franks, Angles, Saxons, Slavs, Avars, Bulgars and, later still, the Vikings and Magyars. Renaissance thinkers such as Petrarch would later refer to this as the "Dark Ages". Isolated monastic communities were the only places to safeguard and compile written knowledge accumulated previously; apart from this very few written records survive and much literature, philosophy, mathematics, and other thinking from the classical period disappeared from Europe.

During the Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire fell under the control of various tribes. The Germanic and Slav tribes established their domains over Western and Eastern Europe respectively. Eventually the Frankish tribes were united under Clovis I. Charlemagne, a Frankish king of the Carolingian dynasty who had conquered most of Western Europe, was anointed "Holy Roman Emperor" by the Pope in 800. This led to the founding of the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually became centred in the German principalities of central Europe.

The predominantly Greek speaking Eastern Roman Empire became known in the west as the Byzantine Empire. Its capital was Constantinople. Emperor Justinian I presided over Constantinople's first golden age: he established a legal code, funded the construction of the Hagia Sophia and brought the Christian church under state control. Fatally weakened by the sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, the Byzantines fell in 1453 when they were conquered by the Ottoman Empire.

Middle Ages

The economic growth of Europe around the year 1000, together with the lack of safety on the mainland trading routes, made possible the development of major commercial routes along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. In this context, the growing independence acquired by some coastal cities gave the Maritime Republics a leading role in the European scene.

The Middle Ages on the mainland were dominated by the two upper echelons of the social structure: the nobility and the clergy. Feudalism developed in France in the Early Middle Ages and soon spread throughout Europe. A struggle for influence between the nobility and the monarchy in England led to the writing of the Magna Carta and the establishment of a parliament. The primary source of culture in this period came from the Roman Catholic Church. Through monasteries and cathedral schools, the Church was responsible for education in much of Europe.

The Papacy reached the height of its power during the High Middle Ages. A East-West Schism in 1054 split the former Roman Empire religiously, with the Eastern Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire and the Roman Catholic Church in the former Western Roman Empire. In 1095 Pope Urban II called for a crusade against Muslims occupying Jerusalem and the Holy Land. In Europe itself, the Church organised the Inquisition against heretics. In Spain, the Reconquista concluded with the fall of Granada in 1492, ending over seven centuries of Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula. In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Pechenegs and the Kipchaks, caused a massive migration of Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north. Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongols. The invaders, later known as Tatars, formed the state of the Golden Horde, which ruled the southern and central expanses of Russia for over three centuries.

The Great Famine of 1315–1317 was the first crisis that would strike Europe in the late Middle Ages. The period between 1348 and 1420 witnessed the heaviest loss. The population of France was reduced by half. Medieval Britain was afflicted by 95 famines, and France suffered the effects of 75 or more in the same period. Europe was devastated in the mid-14th century by the Black Death, one of the most deadly pandemics in human history which killed an estimated 25 million people in Europe alone—a third of the European population at the time.

The plague had a devastating effect on Europe's social structure; it induced people to live for the moment as illustrated by Giovanni Boccaccio in ''The Decameron'' (1353). It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church and led to increased persecution of Jews, foreigners, beggars and lepers. The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 18th century. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.

Early modern period

The Renaissance was a period of cultural change originating in Florence and later spreading to the rest of Europe. in the 14th century. The rise of a new humanism was accompanied by the recovery of forgotten classical Greek and Arabic knowledge from monastic libraries, often re-translanted from Arabic into Latin. The Renaissance spread across Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries: it saw the flowering of art, philosophy, music, and the sciences, under the joint patronage of royalty, the nobility, the Roman Catholic Church, and an emerging merchant class. Patrons in Italy, including the Medici family of Florentine bankers and the Popes in Rome, funded prolific quattrocento and cinquecento artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Political intrigue within the Church in the mid-14th century caused the Great Schism. During this forty-year period, two popes—one in Avignon and one in Rome—claimed rulership over the Church. Although the schism was eventually healed in 1417, the papacy's spiritual authority had suffered greatly.

The Church's power was further weakened by the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648), initially sparked by the works of German theologian Martin Luther, a result of the lack of reform within the Church. The Reformation also damaged the Holy Roman Empire's power, as German princes became divided between Protestant and Roman Catholic faiths. This eventually led to the Thirty Years War (1618–1648), which crippled the Holy Roman Empire and devastated much of Germany, killing between 25 and 40 percent of its population. In the aftermath of the Peace of Westphalia, France rose to predominance within Europe. The 17th century in southern and eastern Europe was a period of general decline. Eastern Europe experienced more than 150 famines in a 200-year period between 1501 to 1700.

The Renaissance and the New Monarchs marked the start of an Age of Discovery, a period of exploration, invention, and scientific development. According to Peter Barrett, "It is widely accepted that 'modern science' arose in the Europe of the 17th century (towards the end of the Renaissance), introducing a new understanding of the natural world." In the 15th century, Portugal and Spain, two of the greatest naval powers of the time, took the lead in exploring the world. Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, and soon after the Spanish and Portuguese began establishing colonial empires in the Americas. France, the Netherlands and England soon followed in building large colonial empires with vast holdings in Africa, the Americas, and Asia.

18th and 19th centuries

The Age of Enlightenment was a powerful intellectual movement during the 18th century promoting scientific and reason-based thoughts. Discontent with the aristocracy and clergy's monopoly on political power in France resulted in the French Revolution and the establishment of the First Republic as a result of which the monarchy and many of the nobility perished during the initial reign of terror. Napoleon Bonaparte rose to power in the aftermath of the French Revolution and established the First French Empire that, during the Napoleonic Wars, grew to encompass large parts of Europe before collapsing in 1815 with the Battle of Waterloo.

Napoleonic rule resulted in the further dissemination of the ideals of the French Revolution, including that of the nation-state, as well as the widespread adoption of the French models of administration, law, and education. The Congress of Vienna, convened after Napoleon's downfall, established a new balance of power in Europe centred on the five "Great Powers": the United Kingdom, France, Prussia, Habsburg Austria, and Russia.

This balance would remain in place until the Revolutions of 1848, during which liberal uprisings affected all of Europe except for Russia and the United Kingdom. These revolutions were eventually put down by conservative elements and few reforms resulted. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian empire was formed; and 1871 saw the unifications of both Italy and Germany as nation-states from smaller principalities. Likewise, in 1878 the Congress of Berlin has conveyed formal recognition to the ''de facto'' independent principalities of Montenegro, Serbia and Romania.

The Industrial Revolution started in Great Britain in the last part of the 18th century and spread throughout Europe. The invention and implementation of new technologies resulted in rapid urban growth, mass employment, and the rise of a new working class. Reforms in social and economic spheres followed, including the first laws on child labour, the legalisation of trade unions, and the abolition of slavery. In Britain, the Public Health Act 1875 was passed, which significantly improved living conditions in many British cities. Europe’s population population increased from about 100 million in 1700 to 400 million by 1900. In the 19th century, 70 million people left Europe in migrations to various European colonies abroad and to the United States.

20th century to present

Two World Wars and an economic depression dominated the first half of the 20th century. World War I was fought between 1914 and 1918. It started when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated by the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip. Most European nations were drawn into the war, which was fought between the Entente Powers (France, Belgium, Serbia, Portugal, Russia, the United Kingdom, and later Italy, Greece, Romania, and the United States) and the Central Powers (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire). The War left more than 16 million civilians and military dead. Over 60 million European soldiers were mobilised from 1914–1918. Partly as a result of its defeat Russia was plunged into the Russian Revolution, which threw down the Tsarist monarchy and replaced it with the communist Soviet Union. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed and broke up into separate nations, and many other nations had their borders redrawn. The Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I in 1919, was harsh towards Germany, upon whom it placed full responsibility for the war and imposed heavy sanctions.

Economic instability, caused in part by debts incurred in the First World War and 'loans' to Germany played havoc in Europe in the late 1920s and 1930s. This and the Wall Street Crash of 1929 brought about the worldwide Great Depression. Helped by the economic crisis, social instability and the threat of communism, fascist movements developed throughout Europe placing Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, Francisco Franco of Spain and Benito Mussolini of Italy in power.

Up to eight million people may have died in the Soviet famine of 1932–33. Stalin's Great Terror began in December 1934. By the time the purges subsided in 1938, millions of Soviet citizens had been executed, imprisoned, or exiled. In 1933, Hitler became the leader of Germany and began to work towards his goal of building Greater Germany. Germany re-expanded and took back the Saarland and Rhineland in 1935 and 1936. In 1938, Austria became a part of Germany too, following the Anschluss. Later that year, following the Munich Agreement, Germany annexed the Sudetenland, which was a part of Czechoslovakia inhabited by ethnic Germans. At the time, Britain and France preferred a policy of appeasement.

Shortly afterwards, Poland and Hungary started to press for the annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia with Polish and Hungarian majorities. Hitler encouraged the Slovaks to do the same and in early 1939, the remainder of Czechoslovakia was split into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, controlled by Germany, and the Slovak Republic, while other smaller regions went to Poland and Hungary. With tensions mounting between Germany and Poland over the future of Danzig, the Germans turned to the Soviets, and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, prompting France and the United Kingdom to declare war on Germany on 3 September, opening the European theatre of World War II. The Soviet invasion of Poland started on 17 September and Poland fell soon thereafter.

On 24 September, the Soviet Union attacked the Baltic countries and later, Finland. The British hoped to land at Narvik and send troops to aid Finland, but their primary objective in the landing was to encircle Germany and cut the Germans off from Scandinavian resources. Nevertheless, the Germans knew of Britain's plans and got to Narvik first, repulsing the attack. Around the same time, Germany moved troops into Denmark, which left no room for a front except for where the last war had been fought or by landing at sea. The Phoney War continued.

In May 1940, Germany attacked France through the Low Countries. France capitulated in June 1940. However, the British refused to negotiate peace terms with the Germans and the war continued. By August Germany began a bombing offensive on Britain, but failed to convince the Britons to give up. In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the ultimately unsuccessful Operation Barbarossa. On 7 December 1941 Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into the conflict as allies of the British Empire and other allied forces. After the staggering Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the German offensive in the Soviet Union turned into a continual fallback. In 1944, British and American forces invaded France in the D-Day landings, opening a new front against Germany. Berlin finally fell in 1945, ending World War II in Europe. The war was the largest and most destructive in human history, with 60 million dead across the world. More than 40 million people in Europe had died as a result of the war by the time World War II ended, including between 11 and 17 million people who perished during the Holocaust. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. By the end of World War II, Europe had more than 40 million refugees. Several post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe displaced a total of about 20 million people.

World War I and especially World War II diminished the eminence of Western Europe in world affairs. After World War II the map of Europe was redrawn at the Yalta Conference and divided into two blocs, the Western countries and the communist Eastern bloc, separated by what was later called by Winston Churchill an "iron curtain". The United States and Western Europe established the NATO alliance and later the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe established the Warsaw Pact.

The two new superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, became locked in a fifty-year long Cold War, centred on nuclear proliferation. At the same time decolonisation, which had already started after World War I, gradually resulted in the independence of most of the European colonies in Asia and Africa. In the 1980s the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev and the Solidarity movement in Poland accelerated the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the end of the Cold War. Germany was reunited, after the symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the maps of Eastern Europe were redrawn once more.

European integration also grew after World War II. The Treaty of Rome in 1957 established the European Economic Community between six Western European states with the goal of a unified economic policy and common market. In 1967 the EEC, European Coal and Steel Community and Euratom formed the European Community, which in 1993 became the European Union. The EU established a parliament, court and central bank and introduced the euro as a unified currency. In 2004 and 2007, Eastern European countries began joining, expanding the EU to its current size of 27 European countries, and once more making Europe a major economical and political centre of power.

Geography

Europe makes up the western fifth of the Eurasian landmass. Land relief in Europe shows great variation within relatively small areas. The southern regions are more mountainous, while moving north the terrain descends from the high Alps, Pyrenees, and Carpathians, through hilly uplands, into broad, low northern plains, which are vast in the east. This extended lowland is known as the Great European Plain, and at its heart lies the North German Plain. An arc of uplands also exists along the north-western seaboard, which begins in the western parts of the islands of Britain and Ireland, and then continues along the mountainous, fjord-cut, spine of Norway.

This description is simplified. Sub-regions such as the Iberian Peninsula and the Italian Peninsula contain their own complex features, as does mainland Central Europe itself, where the relief contains many plateaus, river valleys and basins that complicate the general trend. Sub-regions like Iceland, Britain, and Ireland are special cases. The former is a land unto itself in the northern ocean which is counted as part of Europe, while the latter are upland areas that were once joined to the mainland until rising sea levels cut them off.

Climate

[[File:Vegetation Europe.png|frame|Biomes of Europe and surrounding regions: ]]

Europe lies mainly in the temperate climate zones, being subjected to prevailing westerlies.

The climate is milder in comparison to other areas of the same latitude around the globe due to the influence of the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is nicknamed "Europe's central heating", because it makes Europe's climate warmer and wetter than it would otherwise be. The Gulf Stream not only carries warm water to Europe's coast but also warms up the prevailing westerly winds that blow across the continent from the Atlantic Ocean.

Therefore the average temperature throughout the year of Naples is 16 °C (60.8 °F), while it is only 12 °C (53.6 °F) in New York City which is almost on the same latitude. Berlin, Germany; Calgary, Canada; and Irkutsk, in the Asian part of Russia, lie on around the same latitude; January temperatures in Berlin average around 8 °C (15 °F) higher than those in Calgary, and they are almost 22 °C (40 °F) higher than average temperatures in Irkutsk.

Geology

The Geology of Europe is hugely varied and complex, and gives rise to the wide variety of landscapes found across the continent, from the Scottish Highlands to the rolling plains of Hungary.

Europe's most significant feature is the dichotomy between highland and mountainous Southern Europe and a vast, partially underwater, northern plain ranging from Ireland in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. These two halves are separated by the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and Alps/Carpathians. The northern plains are delimited in the west by the Scandinavian Mountains and the mountainous parts of the British Isles. Major shallow water bodies submerging parts of the northern plains are the Celtic Sea, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea complex and Barents Sea.

The northern plain contains the old geological continent of Baltica, and so may be regarded geologically as the "main continent", while peripheral highlands and mountainous regions in the south and west constitute fragments from various other geological continents. Most of the older geology of Western Europe existed as part of the ancient microcontinent Avalonia.

Geological history

The geological history of Europe traces back to the formation of the Baltic Shield (Fennoscandia) and the Sarmatian craton, both around 2.25 billion years ago, followed by the Volgo-Uralia shield, the three together leading to the East European craton (≈ Baltica) which became a part of the supercontinent Columbia. Around 1.1 billion years ago, Baltica and Arctica (as part of the Laurentia block) became joined to Rodinia, later resplitting around 550 million years ago to reform as Baltica. Around 440 million years ago Euramerica was formed from Baltica and Laurentia; a further joining with Gondwana then leading to the formation of Pangea. Around 190 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split apart due to the widening of the Atlantic Ocean. Finally, and very soon afterwards, Laurasia itself split up again, into Laurentia (North America) and the Eurasian continent. The land connection between the two persisted for a considerable time, via Greenland, leading to interchange of animal species. From around 50 million years ago, rising and falling sea levels have determined the actual shape of Europe, and its connections with continents such as Asia. Europe's present shape dates to the late Tertiary period about five million years ago.

Biodiversity

Having lived side-by-side with agricultural peoples for millennia, Europe's animals and plants have been profoundly affected by the presence and activities of man. With the exception of Fennoscandia and northern Russia, few areas of untouched wilderness are currently found in Europe, except for various national parks.

The main natural vegetation cover in Europe is mixed forest. The conditions for growth are very favourable. In the north, the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift warm the continent. Southern Europe could be described as having a warm, but mild climate. There are frequent summer droughts in this region. Mountain ridges also affect the conditions. Some of these (Alps, Pyrenees) are oriented east-west and allow the wind to carry large masses of water from the ocean in the interior. Others are oriented south-north (Scandinavian Mountains, Dinarides, Carpathians, Apennines) and because the rain falls primarily on the side of mountains that is oriented towards the sea, forests grow well on this side, while on the other side, the conditions are much less favourable. Few corners of mainland Europe have not been grazed by livestock at some point in time, and the cutting down of the pre-agricultural forest habitat caused disruption to the original plant and animal ecosystems.

Probably 80 to 90 per cent of Europe was once covered by forest. It stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Arctic Ocean. Though over half of Europe's original forests disappeared through the centuries of deforestation, Europe still has over one quarter of its land area as forest, such as the taiga of Scandinavia and Russia, mixed rainforests of the Caucasus and the Cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean. During recent times, deforestation has been slowed and many trees have been planted. However, in many cases monoculture plantations of conifers have replaced the original mixed natural forest, because these grow quicker. The plantations now cover vast areas of land, but offer poorer habitats for many European forest dwelling species which require a mixture of tree species and diverse forest structure. The amount of natural forest in Western Europe is just 2–3% or less, in European Russia 5–10%. The country with the smallest percentage of forested area is Iceland (1%), while the most forested country is Finland (77%).

In temperate Europe, mixed forest with both broadleaf and coniferous trees dominate. The most important species in central and western Europe are beech and oak. In the north, the taiga is a mixed spruce–pine–birch forest; further north within Russia and extreme northern Scandinavia, the taiga gives way to tundra as the Arctic is approached. In the Mediterranean, many olive trees have been planted, which are very well adapted to its arid climate; Mediterranean Cypress is also widely planted in southern Europe. The semi-arid Mediterranean region hosts much scrub forest. A narrow east-west tongue of Eurasian grassland (the steppe) extends eastwards from Ukraine and southern Russia and ends in Hungary and traverses into taiga to the north.

Glaciation during the most recent ice age and the presence of man affected the distribution of European fauna. As for the animals, in many parts of Europe most large animals and top predator species have been hunted to extinction. The woolly mammoth was extinct before the end of the Neolithic period. Today wolves (carnivores) and bears (omnivores) are endangered. Once they were found in most parts of Europe. However, deforestation and hunting caused these animals to withdraw further and further. By the Middle Ages the bears' habitats were limited to more or less inaccessible mountains with sufficient forest cover. Today, the brown bear lives primarily in the Balkan peninsula, Scandinavia, and Russia; a small number also persist in other countries across Europe (Austria, Pyrenees etc.), but in these areas brown bear populations are fragmented and marginalised because of the destruction of their habitat. In addition, polar bears may be found on Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago far north of Scandinavia. The wolf, the second largest predator in Europe after the brown bear, can be found primarily in Eastern Europe and in the Balkans, with a handful of packs in pockets of Western Europe (Scandinavia, Spain, etc.).

European wild cat, foxes (especially the red fox), jackal and different species of martens, hedgehogs, different species of reptiles (like snakes such as vipers and grass snakes) and amphibians, different birds (owls, hawks and other birds of prey).

Important European herbivores are snails, larvae, fish, different birds, and mammals, like rodents, deer and roe deer, boars, and living in the mountains, marmots, steinbocks, chamois among others.

The extinction of the dwarf hippos and dwarf elephants has been linked to the earliest arrival of humans on the islands of the Mediterranean.

Sea creatures are also an important part of European flora and fauna. The sea flora is mainly phytoplankton. Important animals that live in European seas are zooplankton, molluscs, echinoderms, different crustaceans, squids and octopuses, fish, dolphins, and whales.

Biodiversity is protected in Europe through the Council of Europe's Bern Convention, which has also been signed by the European Community as well as non-European states.

Political geography

The list below includes all entities falling even partially under any of the various common definitions of Europe, geographic or political. The data displayed are per sources in cross-referenced articles. The 27 European Union member states are highly integrated, economically and politically; the European Union itself forms part of the political geography of Europe.

! Name of country, with flag	List of countries by area>Area(km²)	List of countries by population>Population	List of countries by population density>Population density(per km²)	Capital (political)>Capital
				Tirana
				Andorra la Vella
				Yerevan
				Vienna
				Baku
				Minsk
				Brussels
				Sarajevo
				Sofia
				Zagreb
				Nicosia
				Prague
				Copenhagen
				Tallinn
				Helsinki
				Paris
				Tbilisi
				Berlin
				Athens
				Budapest
				Reykjavík
				Dublin
				Rome
				Astana
				Riga
				Vaduz
				Vilnius
				Skopje
				Valletta
				Chişinău
				Monaco
				Podgorica
				Amsterdam
				Oslo
				Warsaw
				Lisbon
				Bucharest
				Moscow
				Belgrade
				Bratislava
				Ljubljana
				Madrid
				Stockholm
				Bern
				Ankara
				Kiev
				London
				Vatican City
Total

Within the above-mentioned states are several de facto independent countries with limited to no international recognition. None of them are members of the UN:

! Name of territory, with flag	List of countries by area>Area(km²)	List of countries by population>Population(1 July 2002 est.)	List of countries by population density>Population density(per km²)	Capital (political)>Capital
				Sukhumi
				Pristina
				Stepanakert
				Nicosia
				Tskhinvali
				Tiraspol

Several dependencies and similar territories with broad autonomy are also found in Europe:

! Name of territory, with flag	List of countries by area>Area(km²)	List of countries by population>Population(1 July 2002 est.)	List of countries by population density>Population density(per km²)	Capital (political)>Capital
(Finland)				Mariehamn
(Denmark)				Tórshavn
(Bosnia)				Banja Luka
(UK)				Gibraltar
(UK)				St. Peter Port
(UK)
(UK)				Saint Helier
				Longyearbyen

Integration

European integration is the process of political, legal, economic (and in some cases social and cultural) integration of states wholly or partially in Europe. In the present day, European integration has primarily come about through the Council of Europe and European Union in Western and Central Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States in Eastern Europe and most of former Soviet countries.

Economy

As a continent, the economy of Europe is currently the largest on Earth and it is the richest region as measured by assets under management with over $32.7 trillion compared to North America's $27.1 trillion in 2008. In 2009 Europe remained the wealthiest region. Its $37.1 trillion in assets under management represented one-third of the world’s wealth. It was one of several regions where wealth surpassed its precrisis year-end peak. As with other continents, Europe has a large variation of wealth among its countries. The richer states tend to be in the West; some of the Eastern economies are still emerging from the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

The European Union, an intergovernmental body composed of 27 European states, comprises the largest single economic area in the world. Currently, 16 EU countries share the euro as a common currency. Five European countries rank in the top ten of the worlds largest national economies in GDP (PPP). This includes (ranks according to the CIA): Germany (5), the UK (6), Russia (7), France (8), and Italy (10).

There is huge disparity between many European countries in terms of their income. The richest in terms of GDP per capita is Monaco with its US$172,676 per capita (2009) and the poorest is Moldova with its GDP per capita of US$1,631 (2010). Monaco is the richest country in terms of GDP per capita in the world according to the World Bank report.

Pre–1945: Industrial growth

Capitalism has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism. From Britain, it gradually spread throughout Europe. The Industrial Revolution started in Europe, specifically the United Kingdom in the late 18th century, and the 19th century saw Western Europe industrialise. Economies were disrupted by World War I but by the beginning of World War II they had recovered and were having to compete with the growing economic strength of the United States. World War II, again, damaged much of Europe's industries.

1945–1990: The Cold War

After World War II the economy of the UK was in a state of ruin, and continued to suffer relative economic decline in the following decades. Italy was also in a poor economic condition but regained a high level of growth by the 1950s. West Germany recovered quickly and had doubled production from pre-war levels by the 1950s. France also staged a remarkable comeback enjoying rapid growth and modernisation; later on Spain, under the leadership of Franco, also recovered, and the nation recorded huge unprecedented economic growth beginning in the 1960s in what is called the Spanish miracle. The majority of Eastern European states came under the control of the USSR and thus were members of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). The states which retained a free-market system were given a large amount of aid by the United States under the Marshall Plan. The western states moved to link their economies together, providing the basis for the EU and increasing cross border trade. This helped them to enjoy rapidly improving economies, while those states in COMECON were struggling in a large part due to the cost of the Cold War. Until 1990, the European Community was expanded from 6 founding members to 12. The emphasis placed on resurrecting the West German economy led to it overtaking the UK as Europe's largest economy.

1991–2007: Integration and reunification

With the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in 1991, the Eastern states had to adapt to a free market system. There were varying degrees of success with Central European countries such as Poland, Hungary, and Slovenia adapting reasonably quickly, while eastern states like Ukraine and Russia taking far longer.

After East and West Germany were reunited in 1990, the economy of West Germany struggled as it had to support and largely rebuild the infrastructure of East Germany. By the millennium change, the EU dominated the economy of Europe comprising the five largest European economies of the time namely Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain. In 1999 12 of the 15 members of the EU joined the Eurozone replacing their former national currencies by the common euro. The three who chose to remain outside the Eurozone were: the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden.

2008–2010: Recession

The Eurozone entered its first official recession in the third quarter of 2008, official figures confirmed in January 2009. While beginning in the United States the late-2000s recession spread to Europe rapidly and has affected much of the region. The official unemployment rate in the 16 countries that use the euro rose to 9.5% in May 2009. Europe's young workers have been especially hard hit. In the first quarter of 2009, the unemployment rate in the EU27 for those aged 15–24 was 18.3%.

In early 2010 fears of a sovereign debt crisis developed concerning some countries in Europe, especially Greece, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. As a result, measures were taken especially for Greece by the leading countries of the Eurozone.

Demographics

Since the Renaissance, Europe has had a major influence in culture, economics and social movements in the world. The most significant inventions had their origins in the Western world, primarily Europe and the United States. In 1900, Europe's share of the world's population was 25%. Approximately 70 million Europeans died through war, violence and famine between 1914 and 1945. Some current and past issues in European demographics have included religious emigration, race relations, economic immigration, a declining birth rate and an aging population.

In some countries, such as Ireland and Poland, access to abortion is currently limited; in the past, such restrictions and also restrictions on artificial birth control were commonplace throughout Europe. Abortion remains illegal on the island of Malta where Catholicism is the state religion. Furthermore, three European countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland) and the Autonomous Community of Andalusia (Spain) have allowed a limited form of voluntary euthanasia for some terminally ill people.

In 2005, the population of Europe was estimated to be 731 million according to the United Nations, which is slightly more than one-ninth of the world's population. A century ago, Europe had nearly a quarter of the world's population. Among the continents, Europe has a relatively high population density, second only to Asia. The most densely populated country in Europe is the Netherlands, ranking third in the world after Bangladesh and South Korea. Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities. According to UN population projection, Europe's population may fall to about 7% of world population by 2050, or 653 million people (medium variant, 556 to 777 million in low and high variants, respectively). Within this context, significant disparities exist between regions in relation to fertility rates. The average number of children per female of child bearing age is 1.52. According to some sources, this rate is higher among Muslims in Europe. The UN predicts the steady population decline of vast areas of Eastern Europe. Russia's population is declining by at least 700,000 people each year. The country now has 13,000 uninhabited villages.

Europe is home to the highest number of migrants of all global regions at 70.6 million people, the IOM's report said. In 2005, the EU had an overall net gain from immigration of 1.8 million people, despite having one of the highest population densities in the world. This accounted for almost 85% of Europe's total population growth. The European Union plans to open the job centres for legal migrant workers from Africa. In 2008, 696,000 persons were given citizenship of an EU27 member state, a decrease from 707,000 the previous year. The largest groups that acquired citizenship of an EU member state were citizens of Morocco, Turkey, Ecuador, Algeria and Iraq.

Emigration from Europe began with Spanish settlers in the 16th century, and French and English settlers in the 17th century. But numbers remained relatively small until waves of mass emigration in the 19th century, when millions of poor families left Europe.

Today, large populations of European descent are found on every continent. European ancestry predominates in North America, and to a lesser degree in South America (particularly in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, while most of the other Latin American countries also have a considerable population of European origins). Australia and New Zealand have large European derived populations. Africa has no countries with European-derived majorities (or with the exception of Cabo Verde and probably São Tomé and Príncipe, depending on the context), but there are significant minorities, such as the White South Africans. In Asia, European-derived populations predominate in Northern Asia (specifically Russians), some parts of Northern Kazakhstan and Israel. Additionally, transcontinental and geographically Asian countries such as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Turkey have populations historically closely related to Europeans, with considerable genetic and cultural affinity.

Language

European languages mostly fall within three Indo-European language groups: the Romance languages, derived from the Latin of the Roman Empire; the Germanic languages, whose ancestor language came from southern Scandinavia; and the Slavic languages;

Romance languages are spoken primarily in south-western Europe as well as in Romania and Moldova, in Central or Eastern Europe. Germanic languages are spoken in north-western Europe and some parts of Central Europe. Slavic languages are spoken in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.

Many other languages outside the three main groups exist in Europe. Other Indo-European languages include the Baltic group (that is, Latvian and Lithuanian), the Celtic group (that is, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh, Cornish, and Breton), Greek, Armenian, and Albanian. In addition, a distinct group of Uralic languages (Estonian, Finnish, and Hungarian) is spoken mainly in Estonia, Finland, and Hungary, while Kartvelian languages (Georgian, Mingrelian, and Svan), are spoken primarily in Georgia. Maltese is the only Semitic language that is official within the EU, while Basque is the only European language isolate. Turkic languages include Azerbaijani and Turkish, in addition to the languages of minority nations in Russia.

Multilingualism and the protection of regional and minority languages are recognized political goals in Europe today. The Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the Council of Europe's European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages set up a legal framework for language rights in Europe.

Religion

Historically, religion in Europe has been a major influence on European art, culture, philosophy and law. The largest religion in Europe is Christianity as practiced by Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant Churches. Following these is Islam concentrated mainly in the south east (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan, North Cyprus, Turkey and Azerbaijan), and Tibetan Buddhism, found in Kalmykia. Other religions including Judaism and Hinduism are minority religions. Europe is a relatively secular continent and has an increasing number and proportion of irreligious, agnostic and atheistic people, actually the largest in the Western world, with a particularly high number of self-described non-religious people in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Sweden, Germany (East), and France.

Culture

The culture of Europe can be described as a series of overlapping cultures; cultural mixes exist across the continent. There are cultural innovations and movements, sometimes at odds with each other. Thus the question of "common culture" or "common values" is complex.

The foundation of European culture was laid by the Greeks, strengthened by the Romans, stabilised by Christianity, reformed by the 15th-century Renaissance and Reformation, modernised by the 18th century Age of Enlightenment and globalised by successive European empires between the 16th and 20th centuries.

See also

Communications in Europe

Continental Europe

Europa Nostra

Europe as a potential superpower

List of European television stations

;Politics

Eurodistrict

Euroregion

Euroscepticism

Flags of Europe

List of sovereign states by date of formation

Names of European cities in different languages

OSCE countries statistics

;Demographics

Area and population of European countries

Demographics of Europe

European American

European Union statistics

Largest cities of the EU

Largest urban areas of the European Union

List of cities in Europe

List of villages in Europe

List of metropolitan areas in Europe

;Economics

Economy of the European Union

Financial and social rankings of European countries

List of European countries by GDP (nominal)

The European Miracle

Notes

, Council on Foreign Relations , United States European Command , Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and www.worldatlas.com. The population and area figures include Georgian estimates for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two regions that have declared and ''de facto'' achieved independence. International recognition, however, is limited.}}

References

National Geographic (2005). ''National Geographic Visual History of the World''. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society. ISBN 0-7922-3695-5.

External links

Council of Europe

European Union

Europe travel guide from Wikitravel

The Columbia Gazetteer of the World Online Columbia University Press

"Introducing Europe" from Lonely Planet Travel Guides and Information

Category:Continents Category:Cultural concepts

ace:Iërupa kbd:Еуропэ af:Europa ak:Yurop als:Europa am:አውሮፓ ang:Europe ab:Европа ar:أوروبا an:Europa arc:ܐܘܪܘܦܐ (ܝܒܫܬܐ) roa-rup:Europa frp:Eropa as:ইউৰোপ ast:Europa gn:Europa ay:Iwrupa az:Avropa bm:Eropa bn:ইউরোপ bjn:Irupa zh-min-nan:Europa map-bms:Eropah ba:Европа be:Еўропа be-x-old:Эўропа bcl:Europa bi:Yurop bg:Европа bar:Eiropa bo:ཡོ་རོབ་གླིང་། bs:Evropa br:Europa (kevandir) ca:Europa cv:Европа ceb:Uropa cs:Evropa cbk-zam:Europa sn:Europe tum:Europe co:Europa cy:Ewrop da:Europa pdc:Eiropaa de:Europa nv:Béésh Bichʼahníí Bikéyah dsb:Europa et:Euroopa el:Ευρώπη es:Europa eo:Eŭropo ext:Uropa eu:Europa ee:Europa fa:اروپا hif:Europe fo:Evropa fr:Europe fy:Jeropa ff:Yuroopu fur:Europe ga:An Eoraip gv:Yn Oarpey gag:Evropa gd:An Roinn-Eòrpa gl:Europa glk:اوروپپا gu:યુરોપ got:𐌰𐌹𐍅𐍂𐍉𐍀𐌰 hak:Êu-chû xal:Европ ko:유럽 ha:Tūrai haw:‘Eulopa hy:Եվրոպա hi:यूरोप hsb:Europa hr:Europa io:Europa ig:Obodo Békè ilo:Europa id:Eropa ia:Europa ie:Europa iu:ᐃᐆᕌᑉ os:Европæ zu:IYurobhu is:Evrópa it:Europa he:אירופה jv:Éropah kl:Europa kn:ಯುರೋಪ್ pam:Europa krc:Европа ka:ევროპა csb:Eùropa kk:Еуропа kw:Europa rw:Burayi sw:Ulaya kv:Европа kg:Mputu ht:Ewòp ku:Ewropa ky:Европа lad:Evropa lbe:Европа lo:ເອີລົບ ltg:Europa la:Europa lv:Eiropa lb:Europa (Kontinent) lt:Europa lij:Euròpa li:Europa ln:Erópa jbo:rontu'a lg:Bulaaya lmo:Europa hu:Európa mk:Европа mg:Eoropa ml:യൂറോപ്പ് mt:Ewropa mi:Ūropi mr:युरोप xmf:ევროპა arz:اوروبا mzn:اوروپا قاره ms:Eropah cdo:Ĕu-ciŭ mwl:Ouropa mn:Европ my:ဥရောပ nah:Europan na:Iurop nl:Europa (werelddeel) nds-nl:Europa (continent) cr:ᐲᑖᑐᐁᐧ ne:युरोप new:युरोप ja:ヨーロッパ nap:Europa frr:Euroopa pih:Urup no:Europa nn:Europa nrm:Ûrope nov:Europa oc:Euròpa mhr:Европо om:Europe uz:Yevropa pa:ਯੂਰਪ pfl:Europa pnb:یوروپ pap:Oropa ps:اروپا koi:Европа km:អឺរ៉ុប pcd:Urope pms:Euròpa tpi:Yurop nds:Europa pl:Europa pnt:Ευρώπην pt:Europa kaa:Evropa crh:Avropa ksh:Europa ro:Europa rmy:Europa rm:Europa qu:Iwrupa rue:Европа ru:Европа sah:Европа se:Eurohpá sm:Europa sa:यूरोप् sg:Aêropa sc:Europa sco:Europe stq:Europa st:Uropa nso:Europa sq:Evropa scn:Europa si:යුරෝපය simple:Europe sd:يُورَپ ss:IYurophu sk:Európa sl:Evropa cu:Єѵрѡпа szl:Ojropa so:Yurub ckb:ئەوروپا srn:Ropa sr:Европа sh:Evropa su:Éropa fi:Eurooppa sv:Europa tl:Europa ta:ஐரோப்பா kab:Turuft roa-tara:Europe tt:Аурупа te:ఐరోపా tet:Europa th:ทวีปยุโรป ti:ኣውሮጳ tg:Аврупо to:ʻEulope chr:ᏳᎳᏛ tr:Avrupa tk:Ýewropa udm:Европа uk:Європа ur:یورپ ug:ياۋروپا vec:Eoropa vi:Châu Âu vo:Yurop fiu-vro:Õuruupa wa:Urope zh-classical:歐羅巴洲 vls:Europa war:Europa wo:Tugal wuu:欧洲 ts:Yuropa yi:אייראפע yo:Europe zh-yue:歐洲 diq:Ewropa zea:Europa bat-smg:Euruopa zh:欧洲

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Honorific-prefix	The Right Honourable
Name	Vince Cable
Honorific-suffix	MP
Office	Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
Primeminister	David Cameron
Term start	12 May 2010
Predecessor	Lord Mandelson
Office2	Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats
Leader2	Menzies CampbellNick Clegg
Term start2	2 March 2006
Term end2	26 May 2010
Predecessor2	Menzies Campbell
Successor2	Simon Hughes
Office3	Liberal Democrats Treasury Spokesman
Leader3	Charles KennedyMenzies CampbellNick Clegg
Term start3	12 June 2003
Term end3	11 May 2010
Predecessor3	Matthew Taylor
Office4	Member of Parliament for Twickenham
Term start4	1 May 1997
Predecessor4	Toby Jessel
Majority4	12,140 (20.3%)
Birth date	May 09, 1943
Birth place	York, Yorkshire, England
Party	Liberal Party (1963–65)Labour (1966–82)SDP (1982–88)Liberal Democrats (1988–)
Spouse	Olympia Rebelo (m. 1968-2001, her death)Rachel Smith (m. 2004–present)
Children	3
Alma mater	Fitzwilliam College, CambridgeUniversity of Glasgow
Profession	Economist }}

John Vincent "Vince" Cable (born 9 May 1943) is a British Liberal Democrat politician and economist who is currently the Business Secretary in the coalition cabinet of David Cameron. He has been Member of Parliament for Twickenham since 1997.

Cable studied economics at university and became an economic advisor to the Kenyan government in 1966. He was an advisor to the British government and to the Commonwealth Secretary-General in the 1970s and 1980s. Later, he served as Chief Economist for the oil company Shell from 1995 to 1997. In 1970s, Cable was active in the Labour Party and became a Glasgow councillor. However in 1982, he joined the Social Democratic Party which would go on to form the Liberal Democrats, and he unsuccessfully contested seats in the elections of 1983, 1987 and 1992 until being elected as the MP for the London constituency of Twickenham in the 1997 general election.

Cable was the Liberal Democrats' main economic spokesperson from 2003 to May 2010. He was elected Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons in March 2006, and following Sir Menzies Campbell's resignation, he was acting leader for two months—from October 2007 until the election of Nick Clegg. He resigned from his position as Deputy Leader in May 2010.

Cable has had a high profile since the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and has written several books on economics and trade.

Early life and education

Cable was born in York and attended Nunthorpe Grammar School. He went on to study Natural Sciences and Economics at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, and was President of the Cambridge Union in 1965. He was also a committee member of, and later president-elect of, the Cambridge University Liberal Club, but resigned from the Liberals before taking up the office of president.

He later received a PhD in Economics from the University of Glasgow. After Cambridge, he was an Overseas Development Institute Fellow (ODI Nuffield Fellow) and worked in Kenya where he met his first wife.

Economics career

Cable lectured for a time at the University of Glasgow and the London School of Economics. From 1966 to 1968, he was a Treasury Finance Officer to the Kenyan Government.

In the 1970s, he was special advisor to John Smith when the latter was Industry Secretary. He was an advisor to the British government and then to the Commonwealth Secretary-General in the 1970s and 1980s.

Later, he served as Chief Economist for the oil company Royal Dutch Shell from 1995 to 1997. Questions have been asked in a left-leaning magazine about his role at Shell during a period when the company came under fierce criticism for its claimed role in a turbulent era of Nigerian politics.

Political career

Early years

At university, Cable was a member of the Liberal Party but joined the Labour Party after graduation. In 1970, he unsuccessfully fought Glasgow Hillhead for Labour, and later became a Glasgow councillor. In 1979, he sought the Labour nomination for Hampstead, losing to Ken Livingstone, who was unsuccessful in taking the seat.

In February 1982, he joined the recently created Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was the SDP-Liberal Alliance parliamentary candidate for his home city of York in both the 1983 and 1987 general elections. Following the 1988 merger of the alliance, he lost his 1992 general election bid as a Liberal Democrat to unseat Conservative MP Toby Jessel in the Twickenham constituency, but successfully defeated Jessel at the 1997 general election.

Member of Parliament (1997 - present)

Cable entered the House of Commons after unseating Conservative MP Toby Jessel in the Twickenham constituency at the second attempt, in the 1997 general election. He subsequently increased his majority in the elections of 2001, 2005 and increased still further in 2010.

In 2004, Cable contributed to the ''Orange Book'' and is identified with the economic liberal wing of the party. He believes that the Liberal Democrats should stand for "fairer taxes, not higher taxes". However, Cable describes himself as being a social democrat.

Prior to the 2005 Liberal Democrat party conference, Cable did not rule out the possibility that the Lib Dems might form a coalition government with the Conservative Party in the event of a hung parliament at the next general election. Then party leader Charles Kennedy said that the party would remain an "independent political force".

In late 2005 or early 2006, Cable presented Charles Kennedy a letter signed by eleven out of the twenty-three frontbenchers, including himself, expressing a lack of confidence in Kennedy's leadership of the Liberal Democrats. On 5 January 2006, because of pressure from his frontbench team and an ITN News report documenting his alcoholism, Charles Kennedy announced a leadership election in which he pledged to stand for re-election. However, he resigned on 7 January. Cable passed on the opportunity to run for the party leadership himself, instead supporting Sir Menzies Campbell's bid.

Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats (2006 - 2010)

Since being elected deputy leader in March 2006, Cable continued to rise in status within the party until doubts were first raised about his judgement after his idea for a much mocked "mansion tax" when he appeared unable to understand the likely practical difficulties with such a tax. The idea was quickly buried following the 2010 election.

He won plaudits for his repeated warnings and campaigns on the high level of personal debt in Britain. His was a significant voice of criticism during the Northern Rock crisis, calling for the nationalisation of the bank, capitalising on the claimed indecisiveness of both the Labour government and Conservative opposition on the issue.

In May 2010, Cable declared his resignation as deputy leader to dedicate more time to his Cabinet role as Business Secretary. His responsibilities and authority were somewhat reduced when it was revealed in December 2010 that he had boasted to Daily Telegraph reporters posing as constituents of his "nuclear option" to bring the government down by his resignation. Still worse he claimed to the reporters that he had "declared war" on Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation despite having the responsibility to impartially arbitrate on the News Corporation bid to acquire the remaining 60.9% of BSkyB it did not already own. Amid cries for his resignation or sacking, all his responsibilities concerning the bid were removed. Cable did not resign. Some have pointed to how important he must be to the coalition to have not been sacked over the issue, bearing in mind that Murdoch and News Corp are powerful allies of the Conservative Party.

Following the earlier example of Ann Widdecombe, Cable was then a contestant in the BBC's Christmas 2010 "Strictly Come Dancing" contest but failed to win. The Guardian ran the headline:"From Saint Vince to Mr Bean"

Acting leader of the Liberal Democrats (2007)

With the resignation of Menzies Campbell as party leader on 15 October 2007, Vincent Cable as Deputy Leader automatically succeeded him as party leader pending a leadership election. Asked on ''Channel 4 News'' that day by Jon Snow whether he would be a candidate for the leadership, he refused to rule himself in or out at such an early stage, but a few days later did rule himself out. Cable received significant acclaim during his tenure as acting party leader, with particular praise for his strong performances at Prime Minister's Questions. He was popular in the party and media for his attacks on the government's record over Northern Rock, HMRC's loss of 25 million individuals' child benefit data and the party funding scandal surrounding David Abrahams' secret donations to the Labour Party. The latter attracted for Cable positive media attention for a joke at PMQs describing Gordon Brown's "remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos", called by ''The Economist'', "the single best line of Gordon Brown's premiership".

Global financial crisis

Cable is credited by some with prescience of the global financial crisis of 2007–2010. In November 2003, Cable asked Gordon Brown, then Chancellor, "Is not the brutal truth that ... the growth of the British economy is sustained by consumer spending pinned against record levels of personal debt, which is secured, if at all, against house prices that the Bank of England describes as well above equilibrium level?" Brown replied, "As the Bank of England said yesterday, consumer spending is returning to trend. The Governor said, 'there is no indication that the scale of debt problems have ... risen markedly in the last five years.' He also said that the fraction of household income used up in debt service is lower than it was then."

In his book ''The Storm'', Cable writes, "The trigger for the current global financial crisis was the US mortgage market and, indeed, the scale of improvident and unscrupulous lending on that side of the Atlantic dwarfs into insignificance the escapades of our own banks." In an interview about the book, Cable was asked whether he had warned about this. Cable replied, "No, I didn’t. That’s quite true." He continued, "But you’re quite right, and one of the problems of being a British MP is that you do tend to get rather parochial and I haven’t been to the States for years and years, so I wouldn’t claim to have any feel for what’s been going on there."

Cable has also been vocal over the bonus culture in the banking system. He has called for bonuses to all bank employees to be frozen.

However, Cable has been criticised by some, Conservatives particularly, for 'flip-flopping' on issues in connection with the crisis. For example, he is accused of criticising the Government's policy of 'quantitative easing', when in January 2009 he used the phrase "the Robert Mugabe school of economics", while in March 2009 he said, "directly increasing the amount of money flowing into the economy is now the only clear option". He has responded to deny this claim, saying that he had been warning of the dangers if QE was not managed properly, and the Liberal Democrats also have responded that he was making the point that QE "needed to be managed with a great deal of care".

On the issue of fiscal stimulus, Cable told the BBC in October 2008, "it is entirely wrong for the government to assume the economy should be stimulated by yet more public spending rather than tax cuts". In February 2009, however, he said, "we believe — and the Government say that they believe — in the need for a fiscal stimulus. Despite the severe financial constraints on the public sector, we believe that such a stimulus is right and necessary".

On the principle of the independence of the Bank of England, Cable said at the 2008 Liberal Democrat party conference, "The Government must not compromise the independence of the Bank of England by telling it to slash interest rates." The following month, though, he called on the Chancellor to urge the Governor of the Bank to make "a large cut in interest rates". The Liberal Democrats have responded that this in no way changes their policy on Bank of England independence.

Expenses

A Twickenham resident, Vince Cable commutes by train into central London daily and so claims the 'London Supplement' instead of the Additional Costs Allowance. However, the ''Daily Telegraph'' reported in May 2009 that he had been unaware that he was entitled to the London Supplement and so in 2004 wrote to the Fees Office to ask if he could receive retrospective payments for 2002–03 and 2003–04. The Fees Office refused the request, informing Cable that these accounts were already closed.

When overall MP allowances are ranked, Cable came in 568th for 2007–08 (out of 645 MPs). The ''Daily Telegraph'' also noted that he did not take a recent 2.33% salary rise.

Coalition government minister (2010 - present)

At the 2010 General Election Cable was again returned as MP for Twickenham. With the election resulting in a hung parliament, Cable was a key figure in coalition talks, particularly the unsuccessful negotiations with the Labour Party. The Liberal Democrats entered a coalition agreement with the Conservative Party on 11 May 2010, and Cable was appointed Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on 12 May. The Queen approved his appointment as a Privy Counsellor, and he formally joined the Council on 13 May.

In May 2010, Cable insisted the coalition government was not split over planned increases to non-business capital gains tax, which some thought would raise taxes on sales of second homes by 40% or 50%. Senior Tory MPs attacked the rise as a tax on the middle classes and a betrayal of Conservative values. Cable told BBC News it was a "key" part of the coalition deal and there was no disagreement over it between the coalition partners. Cable said the changes to capital gains tax would help to fulfil the Lib Dem aim of bringing more "fairness" to the tax system: "It's very important that we have wealth taxed in the same way as income." He continued,

He insisted there was no real disagreement at the top of government over the changes: "It's not actually an argument between the coalition partners, as I understand it, It's an argument between a few Conservative backbenchers and others."

In July 2010, Cable dismissed claims that there "isn't a problem" with credit lines. He demanded that banks curb bonus payments and use the cash to boost lending instead. A green paper on bank lending that Cable launched on 26 July 2010 specifically urged banks to limit bonus and dividend payments to "pre-crisis and 2009 levels respectively". The green paper states that the move would enable banks to retain £10bn of additional capital in 2010 could in turn sustain £50bn of new lending. Cable's demands came as the Forum of Private Business said that small firms were finding it harder to secure loans. The trade body said its latest Economy Watch survey found that there was a "significant demand" not being met by banks with conditions worsening in recent weeks. The FPB said that 1pc of respondents said access to finance has improved, compared to 3pc in May, and 15pc said it has worsened. In addition, 67pc said they had seen no changes in their ability to secure loans.

The British left wing press was often critical of his role in the coalition, from ''The Guardian'' to the low-circulation communist daily ''The Morning Star'' describing him as "the man who started off a Lib Dem and now looks more convincingly Tory than most of the Tory frontbench" for his role in supporting public spending cuts.

In September 2010, during a speech to the Lib Dem conference, Cable said that bankers present more of a threat to Britain than trade unions. Cable said that "The Government's agenda is not one of laissez-faire. Markets are often irrational or rigged. So I am shining a harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour. Why should good companies be destroyed by short-term investors looking for a speculative killing, while their accomplices in the City make fat fees? Why do directors forget their duties when a fat cheque is waved before them? Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can."

After the interim report on banking by Sir John Vickers was published in April 2011, Cable said: "I read it over the weekend and I was very impressed with the quality of the analysis. "It does address head on the issue of banks that are too big to fail, the dependency on the government guarantee. It makes the case for separation," he added.

In June 2011 Cable said "rewards for failure" were unforgivable at a time when real wages were being squeezed across the country. Speaking yesterday at the Association of British Insurer's biennial conference, the Liberal Democrat cabinet minister warned he planned to bring "excessive and unjustified" pay under control by launching a fresh consultation into the subject next month. "Britain does have some world-class executives and one of the real privileges of my job is dealing with them," he said. "But let's not forget that, using the FTSE 100 as a benchmark, investors have barely seen a return since the turn of the century. For most of that time, they would have been better off investing in government bonds. "And yet, in 2010, average total pay for FTSE 100 chief executives was 120 times that of the average UK employee. Back in 1998, the multiple was 45."

Tuition fees

During the autumn of 2010 Cable hit the headlines over his indecisive stance on university tuition fees. Before the 2010 general election he and other Liberal Democrat MPs signed a pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. However, as government Minister for Business, Innovation and Skills, he is now responsible for the British government's proposed policy to raise tuition fees to between £6,000 and £9,000. Cable stated he might abstain from the vote but subsequently voted for the policy.

December 2010 undercover sting comments

In late December 2010, undercover reporters from ''The Daily Telegraph'', posing as constituents, set up a meeting with Cable, who expressed frustration with being in the coalition and compared it to "fighting a war"; he stated he had "a nuclear option... if they push me too far then I can walk out and bring the government down and they know that", and had to "pick" his fights carefully. He also claimed the Liberal Democrats had pressed for a "very tough approach" to the UK's banks, which had been opposed by the Conservatives. He described the coalition's attempt at fast, widespread reforms (including the health service and local governments) as being a "kind of Maoist revolution", and thought "we [the government] are trying to do too many things... a lot of it is Tory inspired. The problem is not that they are Tory inspired, but that they haven’t thought them through. We should be putting a brake on them." When his comments appeared in the press, Cable stated, "Naturally I am embarrassed by these comments and I regret them", before reaffirming his commitment to the coalition government, stating that "I am proud of what it is achieving".

In an undisclosed part of the ''Telegraph'' transcript given to the BBC's Robert Peston by a whistleblower unhappy that the ''Telegraph'' had not published Cable's comments in full, Cable stated in reference to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation takeover bid for BSkyB, "I have declared war on Mr Murdoch and I think we are going to win." Following this revelation Cable had his responsibility for media affairs – including ruling on Murdoch's takeover plans – withdrawn from his role as business secretary. In May 2011 the Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint regarding the ''Telegraph'''s use of subterfuge: "On this occasion, the commission was not convinced that the public interest was such as to justify proportionately this level of subterfuge." After the News of the World phone hacking scandal caused the News Corp. bid for BSkyB to collapse, Cable claimed that his views about Murdoch had been vindicated.

Personal life

Cable's first wife was Olympia Rebelo, a Goan Roman Catholic whom he met "in the unromantic setting of a York mental hospital where we happened to be working as nurses during a summer vacation." He courted her while working in Kenya as a treasury finance officer and despite the concerns of both their fathers, they married in Nairobi's Catholic Cathedral in 1968. They had three children together and she completed her PhD at Glasgow University in 1976. Olympia Cable was diagnosed with breast cancer shortly after the 1987 general election. After apparently successful treatment the disease returned in the mid 1990s and by the 1997 election Cable was juggling his senior post at Shell with being his wife's carer. Olympia Cable died shortly after the 2001 election.

In 2004, he married Rachel Wenban Smith. When appearing on BBC Radio 4's ''Desert Island Discs'' programme in January 2009, Cable revealed that he wears the wedding rings from both of his marriages.

A keen ballroom dancer, Cable long expressed his desire to appear on the BBC's hit TV show ''Strictly Come Dancing''; he appeared on the Christmas 2010 edition of the show, partnered by Erin Boag and dancing the Foxtrot. Cable was the second politician to appear on the show, after Ann Widdecombe.

Cable is also a patron of the Polycystic Kidney Disease Charity (PKD).

Styles

Mr John Vincent Cable (9 May 1943-1973)

Dr John Vincent Cable (1973-1 May 1997)

Dr John Vincent Cable MP (1 May 1997-13 May 2010)

The Right Honourable Dr John Vincent Cable MP (13 May 2010—)

See also

Liberal Democrat Frontbench Team

Bibliography

''The Storm: The World Economic Crisis and What it Means'' Vincent Cable (Atlantic Books, 2009) ISBN 1-84887-057-4

''The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism'' edited by David Laws and Paul Marshall; contributions by Vincent Cable and others (Profile Books, 2004) ISBN 1-86197-797-2

''Regulating Modern Capitalism (Centre for Reform Papers)'' Vincent Cable (Centre for Reform, 2002) ISBN 1-902622-36-7

''Commerce (Liberal Democrat Consultation Papers)'' Vincent Cable (Liberal Democrat Publications, 2002) ISBN 1-85187-688-X

''Globalization: Rules and Standards for the World Economy (Chatham House Papers)'' Vincent Cable, Albert Bressand (Thomson Learning, 2000) ISBN 1-85567-350-9

''Globalisation & Global Governance'' Vincent Cable (Thomson Learning, 1999) ISBN 0-8264-6169-7

''Preparing for EMU: A Liberal Democrat Response (Centre for Reform Papers)'' Vincent Cable (Centre for Reform, 1999) ISBN 1-902622-06-5

''China and India: Economic Reform and Global Integration'' Vincent Cable (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995) ISBN 1-899658-00-9

''Global Superhighways: The Future of International Telecommunications Policy (International Economics Programme Special Paper)'' Vincent Cable, Catherine Distler (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995) ISBN 0-905031-97-0

''The World's New Fissures'' Vincent Cable (Demos, 1995) ISBN 1-898309-35-3

''Trade Blocs: The Future of Regional Integration'' edited by Vincent Cable and David Henderson (The Brookings Institution, 1994) ISBN 0-905031-81-4

''Commerce of Culture: Experience of Indian Handicrafts'', Vincent Cable (Lancer International, 1990) ISBN 81-7062-004-X

''Developing with Foreign Investment'' edited by Vincent Cable and Bishnodat Persaud (Routledge, 1987) ISBN 0-7099-4825-5

''Economics and the Politics of Protection: Some Case Studies of Industries (World Bank Staff Working Papers Number 569)'' Vincent Cable (World Bank, 1984) ISBN 0-8213-0199-3

''Education and Social Action Programming for Cable: Conference Report'' edited by Vincent Thompson (Council for Educ. Technology, 1984) ISBN 0-86184-131-X

''World Textile Trade and Production Trends'' Vincent Cable, Betsy Baker (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1983) ISBN 0-86218-084-8

''Case Studies in Development Economics'' Vincent Cable (Heinemann Educ., 1982) ISBN 0-435-33937-0

''The Role of Handicrafts Exports: Problems and Prospects Based on Indian Experience (ODI Working Paper)'' Vincent Cable (Overseas Development Institute, 1982) ISBN 0-85003-086-2

''British Electronics and Competition with Newly Industrialising Countries'' Vincent Cable, Jeremy Clarke (Overseas Development Institute, 1981) ISBN 0-85003-076-5

''Evaluation of the Multifibre Arrangement and Negotiating Options'' Vincent Cable (Commonwealth Secretariat, 1981) ISBN 0-85092-204-6

''British Interests and Third World Development'' Vincent Cable (Overseas Development Institute, 1980) ISBN 0-85003-070-6

''Britain's Pattern of Specialization in Manufactured Goods With Developing Countries and Trade Protection (World Bank Staff Working Paper No 425/8 Oct)'' Vincent Cable, Ivonia Rebelo (World Bank, 1980) ISBN 0-686-36204-7

''World Textile Trade and Production'' Vincent Cable (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1979) ISBN 0-900351-85-3

''South Asia's Exports to the EEC: Obstacles and Opportunities'' Vincent Cable, Ann Weston (Overseas Development Institute, 1979) ISBN 0-85003-068-4

''World Textile Trade and Production'' Vincent Cable (Economist Intelligence Unit, 1979) ISBN B0000EGG8M

''Import Controls: The Case Against'' Vincent Cable (Fabian Society, 1977) ISBN 0-7163-1335-9

''Glasgow: Area of Need'' Vincent Cable. Essay in 'The Red Paper on Scotland' ed. Gordon Brown. Edinburgh 1975. ISBN 0-9501890 73

''Glasgow's Motorways: a Technocratic Blight'' (New Society, 2 September. 1974)

''Whither Kenyan Emigrants?'' Vincent Cable (Fabian Society, 1969) ISBN 0-7163-2018-5

References

External links

Dr Vincent Cable MP official site

Vincent Cable MP official Liberal Democrats profile

Twickenham Liberal Democrats

Tracking Vince Cable (universities & research only) at Research Fortnight

;News articles

''Gold standard?''. ''Third Way Magazine'', 11 May 2009

Vince Cable: Beneath the halo ''The New Statesman'', September 2009

profile of Cable (2009) by Fran Monks; How to Make a Difference

|- |- |- |- |- |- ! colspan="3" style="background:#cfc;" | Order of precedence in Northern Ireland

Category:1943 births Category:Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow Category:Councillors in Scotland Category:Liberal Democrat (UK) MPs Category:Living people Category:Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:People from York Category:Presidents of the Cambridge Union Society Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:UK MPs 2010–

da:Vincent Cable de:Vince Cable fr:Vince Cable la:Vincentius Cable pl:Vince Cable ru:Кейбл, Винс sco:Vincent Cable simple:Vince Cable fi:Vince Cable sv:Vince Cable

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
name	Amália Rodrigues
background	solo_singer
birth name	Amália da Piedade Rodrigues
alias	Queen of fado
born	July 23, 1920
died	October 06, 1999
origin	Lisbon, Portugal
instrument	Vocals
genre	Fado
occupation	Singer, Actress
label	Valentim de Carvalho
website	http://www.amalia.com/ }}

Amália da Piedade Rodrigues, GCSE, GCIH, (July 23, 1920October 6, 1999), also known as Amália Rodrigues () was a Portuguese singer and actress. She was known as the "Rainha do Fado" ("Queen of Fado") and was most influential in popularizing the fado worldwide. She was one of the most important figures in the genre's development, and enjoyed a 40-year recording and stage career. Amália' performances and choice of repertoire pushed fado's boundaries and helped redefine it and reconfigure it for her and subsequent generations. In effect, Amália wrote the rulebook on what fado could be and on how a female ''fadista'' — or fado singer — should perform it, to the extent that she remains an unsurpassable model and an unending source of repertoire for all those who came afterwards. Amália enjoyed an extensive international career between the 1950s and the 1970s, although in an era where such efforts were not as easily quantified as today. She was the main inspiration to other well-known international fado and popular music artists such as Madredeus, Dulce Pontes and Mariza.

The early years

Amália Rodrigues remains today as Portugal's most famous artist and singer, a woman who was born into an almost destitute family and who grew to become not only Portugal's major star but also an internationally acclaimed artist and singer, whose career spanned 55 years of activity, recording songs in several languages (specially Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Italian), versions of her own songs, most famously 'Coimbra' (April In Portugal), and performing all over the world, achieving tremendous success in countries like France, Italy, Spain, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, Romania, Japan and The Netherlands, among many others.

Her personality and charisma, the beauty of her face and her extraordinary timbre of voice, gave depth and intense life to her chant: the impression she made on the public, her immediacy and the natural way she empathized with her public were tremendous and attracted more and more admirers throughout the world.

As of her death in 1999 Amália had received more than 40 decorations and honors from all over the world (mostly France, including the Légion d'Honneur, Lebanon, Portugal, Spain, Israel and Japan).

Most importantly Amália put fado as a musical genre on the map of world music, in dictionaries, libraries and musical essays. She paved the way for the generations that would follow, and that continue her legacy.

Despite official documents which give her date of birth as July 23, Amália always said her birthday was July 1, 1920. She was born in Lisbon, in the rua Martim Vaz ''(Martim Vaz Street)'', neighborhood of Pena. Her father was a trumpet player and cobbler from Fundão who returned there when Amália was just over a year old, leaving her to live in Lisbon with her maternal grandmother in a deeply Catholic environment until she was 14, when her parents returned to the capital and she moved back in with them.

She sang from the early age of 4 or 5, in the streets of Lisbon, playfully and naturally, and started singing as an amateur as early as 1935.

Her miserable childhood in Lisbon, almost destitute and having to do odd jobs (one of which included selling fruit in Lisbon's quays), gave her a very important outlook on life, which would always be present in soulfulness of her chant.

After a few years of amateur performances, Amália's first professional engagement in a fado venue took place in 1939, and she quickly became a regular guest star in stage revues. There she met Frederico Valério, a classically-trained composer who, recognizing the potential in such a voice, wrote expansive melodies custom-designed for Amália’s voice, breaking the rules of fado by adding orchestral accompaniment. Among those fados were 'Fado do Ciúme', 'Ai Mouraria', 'Que Deus Me Perdoe', and 'Não Sei Porque Te Foste Embora.'

In the meantime Amália became Portugal's most renowned singer, and she became first the toast of Lisbon and then the toast of Portugal, attracting friends and admirers both from the people, then from the aristocracy. Artists, poets, politicians, former Kings and bankers were attracted by her personality and charisma.

At the same time Amália began an interesting career in the movies: her box office power was a major asset, and she debuted in the movies in 1946 with 'Capas Negras', followed by a major success, which is still Amália's most known movie, 'Fado' (1946).

Her Portuguese popularity began to extend abroad with trips to Spain, a lengthy stay in Brazil (where, in 1945, she made her first recordings on Brazilian label Continental) and Paris (1949). In 1950, while performing at the Marshall Plan international benefit shows, she introduced 'April in Portugal' to international audiences, under its original title "Coimbra".

In the early fifties, the patronage of acclaimed Portuguese poet David Mourão-Ferreira marked the beginning of a new phase: Amália sang with many of the country's greatest poets, and some wrote lyrics specifically for her. Though Amália came from an extremely poor family, she had an intuitive intelligence which made her admire the arts and made her choose with increasing criteria and taste her own songs and their words. Her relationship with poetry would once again contribute to major changes in traditional fado: not only popular poets produced words for the songs, but the so-called great poets started contributing and writing specifically for her. The 'grand poetry' crossed its paths with those of fado.

The middle years

Amália had indeed taken a few steps outside of Portugal, the above mentioned appearances in Spain (1943), Brasil, (1945) with her first recordings, and Berlin (1950). Her success wherever she went paved the way for further appearances abroad: she was the first Portuguese artist to ever appear on American television on ABC in 1953, and later to appear in Hollywood singing at the Mocambo, among others, in 1954. She also appeared on Mexican television. Wherever she went, a new group of admirers followed her.

She refused a proposal to appear in the movies in 1954, partly because of her shy nature and partly because allegedly she missed home.

But Amália would become a truly international name in 1954.

In 1954, Amália's international career skyrocketed through her presence in Henri Verneuil’s film ''The Lovers of Lisbon (Les Amants du Tage)'', where she had a supporting role. By the late 1950s the USA, Britain, and France had become her major international markets; Japan and Italy followed suit in the 1970s. In France especially, her popularity rivaled her Portuguese success, and she graduated to headliner at the prestigious Olympia theatre within a matter of months. This led to the release of the album ''Portugal's Great Amália Rodrigues Live at the Olympia Theatre in Paris,'' in 1957, on Monitor Records (now under Smithsonian Folkways). Over the years, she performed nearly all over the world — going as far as the Soviet Union and Israel.

In France she performed on television and became a well-known figure and artist and a much admired singer. Charles Aznavour even wrote a fado in French especially for her 'Aie Mourir Pour Toi' and she created versions of her own songs (Coimbra became Avril au Portugal, among others). She would perform at the prestigious Olympia for 10 seasons between 1956 and 1992, a feat almost unequaled by any other artist. From France she became a truly international star. Her voice, however, demanded more of the music and the words she sang.

At the end of the 1950s, Amália took a year off. Amália had been briefly married (1940–43) to a guitarist, whom she would later divorce, and fell in love with the son of a Portuguese immigrant in Brazil, an engineer, César Seabra (1922–1997) and they married in 1961. She then said she would sing only once in a while, but after a year's absence, she was no longer able to resist the appeal of the music she loved. She returned in 1962 with a richer voice, concentrating on recording and performing live at a slower pace. Her comeback album, 1962's ''Amália Rodrigues'', was her first collaboration with French composer Alain Oulman, her main songwriter and musical producer throughout the decade. As Frederico Valério, before him, Oulman wrote melodies for her that transcended the conventions of fado.

In fact Alain Oulman (1929–1990), created in that album, also known as 'Busto' (Bust), a different kind of fado, with more extensions and which introduced aspects attributed traditionally to opera: the legatos, the extension of the voice, which adapted and fitted perfectly Amália's voice. She sang with renewed power, and became a true enchantress of the song. Also in that record she sang her own poems ('Estranha Forma de Vida') and poems written by great Portuguese poets, like Pedro Homem de Mello, David Mourão-Ferreira and others. She created longlife successes, which became classics and immortal songs in Portugal, like 'Povo Que Lavas no Rio', 'Maria Lisboa' and 'Abandono'.

She resumed her stage career singing all over the world, including Israel, the UK, France, and returning to the USA for Promenade Concerts in Hollywood at the Hollywood Bowl, and New York City, accompanied by Andre Kostelanetz, both in 1966 and 1968, achieving an extraordinary success. She also sang in Russia and Rumania, among other countries.

She continued her acting career, in films like 'Sangue Toureiro' (1958), and 'Fado Corrido' (1964).

Amália did not shy away from controversy: her performance in Carlos Vilardebó’s 1964 arthouse film ''The Enchanted Islands'' was better received than the film, based on a short story by Herman Melville, and her 1965 recording of poems by 16th century poet Luís de Camões generated acres of newspaper polemics. Yet her popularity remained untouched. Her 1968 single ''Vou dar de beber à dor'' broke all sales records and her 1970 album ''Com que voz'' won a number of international awards.

Having been given Portugal's Film Award for Best Actress for 'Fado' in 1947, once again she was awarded as Portugal's Best Film Actress in 1965, in a movie where she didn't sing.

In between she extended her talents to other kinds of songs: she recorded some of her old songs with an orchestra, recorded an extraordinary album with jazz saxophonist Don Byas 'Encontro' (1968), and recorded an album of American songs with Norrie Paramor's orchestra, 'Amália On Broadway' which includes a sensitive and powerful rendition of 'Summertime', 'The Nearness of You' among others.

Meanwhile, Alain Oulman, who was by heart a left-wing intellectual, was arrested by Portugal's political police in 1966, and forced into exile, but he continued to contribute with his music to Amália's voice, leaving behind many compositions which would enable her to record his music.

But her most important album in the 60s was indeed 'Com Que Voz', (1969), reprising many of her successes and adding a few more, all poems by great Portuguese-speaking poets, and music by Alain Oulman. Amália was at the height of her vocal and performing powers during the 60s. But the 70s would bring more countries, more success and an array of awards all over the world.

The later years

During the 1970s, Amália concentrated on live work, and embarked upon a heavy schedule of worldwide concert performances. During the frenetic post-April 25, 1974 period she was falsely accused of being a covert agent of the PIDE, causing some trauma to her public life and career. In fact, during the Salazar years, Amália had been an occasional financial supporter of some communists in need. At the same time she had occasionally expressed some admiration for Salazar himself. But as a singer she always remained above politics, before or after the Revolution. The democratic regime would in fact decorate her far more than the dictatorship. During the 70s Amália had a tremendous success and following in two countries: Italy and Japan. Wherever she went there she was the toast of town. She would record an album of Italian traditional songs 'A Una Terra Che Amo' (1973) and again created versions of her own songs in Italian. And would record her live performances in an album called 'Amália In Italia' (1978). Her return to the recording studio in 1977 with ''Cantigas numa Língua Antiga'' was received as a triumph. Soon after, however, Amália suffered her first health troubles which caused her to be away from the stage for a short period again, and forced her to concentrate on performing especially in Portugal, though she still traveled abroad. Those problems were followed by a period of depression, and an introspection which led to the recording of two very personal albums: 'Gostava de Ser Quem Era' (1980) (literally 'I Wish I Were whom I Was')and 'Lágrima' (1983): all these songs were written by her own hand, since she used the poems she herself wrote. They were both successes, and in between she sang Frederico Valerio's songs again, in an album called 'Fado' (1982). The 1980s and 1990s brought her enthronement as a living legend. Her last all-new studio recording, ''Lágrima'', was released in 1983. It was followed by a series of previously lost or unreleased recordings, and the smash success of two greatest hits collections that sold over 200,000 copies combined.

In fact, increasingly away from the stage on a regular basis, Amália found herself ill again in 1984, and went to New York in order to attempt suicide, but she couldn't go through with it and instead sought and got medical care. Upon her return home, and after a year of interruption, she was invited by a French journalist and admirer, Jean-Jacques Lafaye, back on stage. She then returned to the Olympia in Paris in 1985, for a series of concerts, and again from Paris she retook the world. The years 1985-1994 were of great and renewed international success, especially up until 1991. She again sang all over the world, being paid tributes and being celebrated as one of the world's major voices and singers: she sang all over France, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Israel, and major concerts in Portugal in 1985 and 1987, and so many others, being decorated and paid regular tributes.

In her home country she was an icon and a symbol of Portugal. In 1990 the celebrations of her 50th career anniversary started with a major concert in Lisbon's Coliseu dos Recreios, appearing at the age of 69, to an overwhelmed public. She was decorated by the President of the Republic on stage, and started a series of concerts all over the world, including a comeback to New York in late 1990, as described below. Her voice had changed: it was lower but intense, and her on stage presence overwhelmed everybody, her beauty and charisma untouched.

Despite a series of illnesses involving her voice, Amália continued recording as late as 1990. She eventually retreated from public performance, although her career gained in stature with an official biography by historian and journalist Vítor Pavão dos Santos, and a five-hour TV series documenting her fifty-year career featuring rare archival footage (later distilled into the 90-minute film documentary, ''The Art of Amália''). Its director, Bruno de Almeida, has also produced ''Amália, Live in New York City'', a concert film of her 1990 performance at The Town Hall.

Amália launched a final album of originals in 1990, 'Obssessão', and from 1991 to 1994 it was felt that she was saying good-bye to her public, who still attended her performances. However, new health problems and difficulties took their toll: in December 1994 she gave her last concert, within the Lisbon European Capital of Culture concerts: she was 74, and was operated on a lung soon after in 1995. She would never again return to the stage. She was however much celebrated in the country and abroad. Television specials, interviews and tributes were held. She released a new album with original recordings from the 60s and 70s, 'Medo' (1997), and a book of her poems, including the ones she had sang: 'Amália: Versos' (1997).

In 1998 Amália was paid a national tribute at Lisbon's Universal Exhibition (Expo '98), and in February 1999 was considered one of Portugal's 25 more important personalities of the democratic period. Soon after she recorded what would become her last interview for television and the Cinématheque in Paris paid her a tribute in April 1999, with a showing of some of her movies.

On October 6, 1999, Amália Rodrigues died at the age of 79 in her home in Lisbon. Portugal's government promptly declared three days of national mourning. Her house, in Rua de São Bento, is now a museum. She is buried at the National Pantheon alongside other Portuguese notable

In fact she was given a State Funeral, attended by thousands, and was later transferred to the Pantheon in 2001, the only woman to be so, after the Parliament decided to honor her with that dignity.

Upon her death and by will, she created the Foundation Amália Rodrigues, which manages her legacy and assets, except her copyright, willed to two of her nephews. Amália's estate was never exactly valued, but she left two houses, (one mansion in Lisbon), antiques, works of art, a collection of jewels and other important items, decorations, and an amount of money.

In 2007, she came in 14th in Portugal's election of Os Grandes Portugueses (The Greatest Portuguese). One year later, in 2008, a film about her life Amália was released, with Sandra Barata portraying her.

Amália, who was once considered by Variety one of the voices of the century, remains to this day as the most international of Portuguese artists and singers, and in Portugal, a national icon.

Her cultural relevance is shown by the fact that she put fado on the world map as a form of chant and music, and her steps were followed by an array of performers and singers, whom, in their own right, achieved success and worldwide fame, following in her path and many of whom sing her repertoire, under it's classic form or under a new look. Amália's repertoire continues to be a major one, allowing for new performer's renewed success and international breakthough.

Family

Amália's parents had nine children: Vicente and Filipe, José and António (who both died in childhood), Amália, Celeste, Aninhas (who died at sixteen), Maria da Glória (who died shortly after birth), and Maria Odete. In 1940, she married Francisco Cruz, a lathe worker and amateur guitar player from whom she separated in 1943 and whom she divorced in 1946. In 1961, in Rio de Janeiro, she married César Seabra, a Brazilian engineer; they remained married until his death in 1997. She had no children.

Discography

Singles

EP's

LP's and CD's

References

External links

Amália: uma estranha forma de vida

Category:1920 births Category:1999 deaths Category:People from Lisbon Category:Portuguese female singers Category:Portuguese fado singers Category:Portuguese-language singers Category:Portuguese Roman Catholics

an:Amália Rodrigues br:Amália Rodrigues bg:Амалия Родригеш ca:Amália Rodrigues cs:Amália Rodrigues cbk-zam:Amália Rodrigues da:Amália Rodrigues de:Amália Rodrigues es:Amália Rodrigues eo:Amália Rodrigues eu:Amália Rodrigues fr:Amália Rodrigues gl:Amália Rodrigues hr:Amália Rodrigues id:Amália Rodrigues it:Amália Rodrigues he:עמליה רודריגז la:Amalia Rodrigues hu:Amália Rodrigues ms:Amalia Rodrigues nl:Amália Rodrigues ja:アマリア・ロドリゲス no:Amália Rodrigues oc:Amália Rodrigues pl:Amália Rodrigues pt:Amália Rodrigues ru:Родригиш, Амалия simple:Amália Rodrigues fi:Amália Rodrigues sv:Amália Rodrigues tr:Amália Rodrigues uk:Амалія Родрігеш war:Amália Rodrigues

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Nigel Farage
Honorific-suffix	MEP
Office	Europe of Freedom and Democracy President
Term start	1 July 2009 (de facto)
Predecessor	(post established)
Office	Leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party
Term start	5 November 2010
Predecessor	Jeffrey Titford
Term start1	27 September 2006
Term end1	27 November 2009
Predecessor1	Roger Knapman
Successor1	Lord Pearson of Rannoch
Constituency mp2	South East England
Parliament2	European
Term start2	15 July 1999
Birth date	April 03, 1964
Birth place	Kent, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Party	UK Independence Party
Spouse	Gráinne Hayes (1988-?, divorced)Kirsten Mehr (1999-present)
Children	4
Alma mater	Dulwich College
Website	Nigel Farage MEP
Footnotes	}}

Nigel Paul Farage (; ; born 3 April 1964) is a British politician and is the Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), a position he previously held from September 2006 to November 2009. He is a current Member of the European Parliament for South East England and co-chairs the Eurosceptic Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

Farage was a founding member of the UKIP, having left the Conservative Party in 1992 after they signed the Maastricht Treaty. Having unsuccessfully campaigned in European and Westminster parliamentary elections for UKIP since 1994, he gained a seat as an MEP for South East England in the 1999 European Parliament Election — the first year the regional list system was used — and was re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage describes himself as a libertarian and rejects the notion that he is a conservative.

In September 2006, Farage became the UKIP Leader and led the party through the 2009 European Parliament Election in which it received the second highest share of the popular vote, defeating Labour and the Liberal Democrats with over two million votes. However he stepped down in November 2009 to concentrate on contesting the Speaker John Bercow's seat of Buckingham in the 2010 general election.

At the 2010 General Election, Farage failed to unseat John Bercow and received only the third highest share of the vote in the constituency. Shortly after the polls opened on 6 May 2010, Nigel Farage was injured in an aircraft crash in Northamptonshire. The two-seated PZL-104 Wilga 35A had been towing a pro-UKIP banner when it flipped over and crashed shortly after takeoff. Both Farage and the pilot were hospitalised with non-life-threatening injuries.

In November 2010, Farage successfully stood in the 2010 UKIP leadership contest, following the resignation of its leader, Lord Pearson of Rannoch. Farage was also ranked 41st (out of 100) in ''The Daily Telegraph'''s Top 100 most influential right-wingers poll in October 2009, citing his media savvy and his success with UKIP in the European Elections. Farage was ranked 58th in the 2010 list compiled by Iain Dale and Brian Brivati for the Daily Telegraph.

Background

Farage was educated at Dulwich College before joining a commodity brokerage firm in London. He ran his own brokerage business from the early 1990s until 2002. In his early 20s Farage was diagnosed with testicular cancer but made a full recovery.

Farage has been married twice. He married Gráinne Hayes in 1988, with whom he had two children: Samuel (1989) and Thomas (1991). In 1999 he married Kirsten Mehr, a German national, by whom he has two more children, Victoria (born 2000) and Isabelle (born 2005).

Farage has also penned his own memoirs, entitled "Fighting Bull." It outlines the founding of UKIP and his personal and political life so far.

Political career

Conservative Party

Active in the Conservative Party from his school days, Farage left the party in 1992 when John Major's government signed the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht.

UKIP and the European Parliament

Farage became a founding member of UKIP in 1993.

He was elected to the European Parliament in 1999 and re-elected in 2004 and 2009. Farage is presently the leader of the thirteen-member UKIP contingent in the European Parliament, and co-leader of the multinational eurosceptic group, Europe of Freedom and Democracy.

UKIP party leadership

On 12 September 2006, Farage was elected leader of UKIP with 45% of the vote, 20% ahead of his nearest rival. He pledged to bring discipline to the party and to maximise UKIP's representation in local, parliamentary and other elections. In a PM programme interview on BBC Radio 4 that day he pledged to end the public perception of UKIP as a single-issue party and to work with allied politicians in the Better Off Out campaign, committing himself not to stand against the MPs who have signed up to that campaign (ten in all at this moment).

At his maiden speech to the UKIP conference on 8 October 2006, he told delegates that the party was "at the centre-ground of British public opinion" and the "real voice of opposition". Farage said: "We've got three social democratic parties in Britain — Labour, Lib Dem and Conservative are virtually indistinguishable from each other on nearly all the main issues" and "you can't put a cigarette paper between them and that is why there are nine million people who don't vote now in general elections that did back in 1992."

At 10pm on 19 October 2006, Farage took part in a three-hour live interview and phone-in with James Whale on national radio station talkSPORT. Four days later, Whale announced on his show his intention to stand as UKIP's candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral Election. Farage said that Whale "not only has guts, but an understanding of what real people think". However Whale later decided not to stand and UKIP was represented by Gerard Batten. He stood again for UKIP leadership in 2010 after his successor Lord Pearson stood down. On the 5th November 2010 it was announced Farage had won the leadership contest.

Westminster elections

Farage had unsuccessfully contested UK parliamentary elections for UKIP five times, both before and after his election as an MEP in 1999. Under the 2002 European Union decision to forbid MEPs from holding a dual mandate, if he was ever elected to the House of Commons, he would have to resign his seat as an MEP.

When he contested the Bromley & Chislehurst constituency in a May 2006 by-election, organised after the sitting MP representing it, eurosceptic Conservative Eric Forth, died, Farage came third, winning 8% of the vote, beating the Labour Party candidate. This was the second-best by-election result recorded by UKIP out of 25 results, and the first time since the Liverpool Walton by-election in 1991 that a party in government had been pushed into fourth place in a parliamentary by-election on mainland Britain.

2010 UK General election

On 4 September 2009 Farage resigned as leader of UKIP to concentrate on his campaign to become Member of Parliament for Buckingham at Westminster in the 2010 general election. He later told Times journalist Camilla Long that UKIP internal fights took up too much time.

He stood against Buckingham MP John Bercow, the newly elected Speaker of the House of Commons, despite a convention that the speaker, as a political neutral, is not normally challenged in his or her bid for re-election by any of the major parties.

On 6 May, on the morning the polls opened in the election, just before eight o'clock Farage was involved in a light aircraft crash, suffering injuries described as non-life-threatening. A spokesperson told the BBC that "it was unlikely Mr Farage would be discharged from hospital today [6 May] Although his injuries were originally described as minor, his sternum and ribs were broken, and his lung punctured. The Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) report said that the aeroplane was towing a banner, which caught in the tailplane, forcing the nose down.

Farage came third with 8,401 votes. Bercow was re-elected, and John Stevens, a former Conservative MEP (Defected to Lib-Dems), who campaigned with "Flipper the Dolphin" (a reference to MPs flipping second homes) came second with 10,331.

On 1 December 2010, the pilot of the aircraft involved in the accident was charged with threatening to kill Farage. He was also charged with threatening to kill an AAIB official involved in the investigation into the accident. In April 2011, Justin Adams was found guilty of making death threats. The judge said the defendant was "clearly extremely disturbed" at the time the offences happened adding "He is a man who does need help. If I can find a way of giving him help I will."

Alternative Vote referendum, May 2011

Farage declared himself personally in favour of the Alternative Vote system of May 2011, saying first-past-the-post is a "nightmare" for UKIP. However, the party's stance has to be decided by its central policy making committee.

Controversies and whistleblowing

Copyright infringement

In 1999 the BBC spent four months filming a documentary about his European elections campaign but didn't show it. Farage, then head of UKIP's South East office, asked for a video and got friends to make illegal copies which were sold for £5 through the UKIP magazine. Surrey Trading Standards investigated and Farage has admitted the offence.

Expenses disclosure

In May 2009, ''The Guardian'' reported that Farage had said in a speech to the Foreign Press Association that over ten years as a member of the European Parliament he received and spent nearly £2 million of taxpayers' money in expenses and allowances, on top of his £64,000 a year salary.

The former Europe Minister, Denis MacShane, said that this showed that Farage was "happy to line his pockets with gold". Farage called this a "misrepresentation", pointing out that the money had been used to promote UKIP's message, not salary, but he welcomed the focus on the issue of MEP expenses, claiming that "[o]ver a five year term each and every one of Britain's 78 MEPs gets about £1 million. It is used to employ administrative staff, run their offices and to travel back and forth between their home, Brussels and Strasbourg." He also pointed out the money spent on the YES campaign in Ireland by the European Commission was "something around 440 million", making the NO campaign's figure insignificant in comparison.

Jacques Barrot

On 18 November 2004, Farage announced in the European Parliament that Jacques Barrot, the French Commissioner designate, had been barred from elected office in France for 2 years, after being convicted in 2000 of embezzling £2 million from government funds and diverting it into the coffers of his party. He claimed that French President Jacques Chirac had granted Barrot amnesty. Although initial BBC reports claimed that, under French law, it was illegal even to mention the conviction, the prohibition in question only applies to French officials in the course of their duties. The president of the Parliament, Josep Borrell, enjoined him to retract his comments under threat of "legal consequences".However, the following day it was confirmed that Barrot had received an 8 month suspended jail sentence in the case, and that this had been quickly expunged by the amnesty decided by Chirac and his parliamentary majority. The Commission's president, Jose Manuel Barroso admitted that he had not known of Barrot's criminal record when appointing him as a Commission vice-president. The Socialist and Liberal groups in the European Parliament then joined UKIP in demanding the sacking of Barrot for failing to disclose the conviction during his confirmation hearings.

José Manuel Barroso

During the spring of 2005, Farage requested that the European Commission disclose where the individual Commissioners had spent their holidays. The Commission did not provide the information requested, on the basis that the Commissioners had a right of privacy. The German newspaper ''Die Welt'' reported that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso had spent a week on the yacht of the Greek shipping billionaire Spiro Latsis. It emerged soon afterwards that this had occurred a month before the Commission under Barroso's predecessor Romano Prodi approved 10.3 million euro of Greek state aid for Latsis' shipping company. It also became known that Peter Mandelson, then a member of the Commission, had accepted a trip to Jamaica from an unrevealed source.

Farage persuaded around 75 MEPs from across the political divide to back a motion of no confidence in Barroso, which would be sufficient to compel Barroso to appear before the European Parliament to be questioned on the issue. The motion was successfully tabled on 12 May 2005, and Barroso appeared before Parliament at a debate on 26 May 2005. The motion was heavily defeated. A Conservative MEP, Roger Helmer, was expelled from his group, the European People's Party - European Democrats (EPP-ED) in the middle of the debate by that group's leader Hans-Gert Poettering as a result of his support for Farage's motion.

Joseph Daul

In January 2007, the French farmers' leader Joseph Daul was elected the new leader of the European People's Party–European Democrats (EPP-ED), the European Parliamentary grouping which then included the British Conservatives. The UK Independence Party almost immediately revealed that Daul had been under judicial investigation in France since 2004 as part of an inquiry into the alleged misuse of public funds worth €16 million (£10.6 million) by French farming unions." It was not suggested that Daul had personally benefited, but was accused of "complicity and concealment of the abuse of public funds." Daul accused Farage of publicising the investigation for political reasons and threatened to sue Farage, but did not do so though the court dropped all charges against him.

Prince Charles

Prince Charles gave a speech to the European Parliament on 14 February 2008, in which he called for EU leadership in the war against climate change. During the standing ovation that followed, Farage was the only MEP to remain seated and went on to describe the Prince's advisers as "naïve and foolish at best." Farage continued: "How can somebody like Prince Charles be allowed to come to the European Parliament at this time to announce he thinks it should have more powers? It would have been better for the country he wants to rule one day if he had stayed home and tried to persuade Gordon Brown to give the people the promised referendum [on the Treaty of Lisbon]." The leader of the UK Labour Party's MEPs, Gary Titley, accused Farage of anti-Royalism. Titley said: "I was embarrassed and disgusted when the Leader of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage, remained firmly seated during the lengthy standing ovation Prince Charles received. I had not realised Mr Farage's blind adherence to right wing politics involved disloyalty and discourtesy to the Royal Family. He should be thoroughly ashamed of himself and should apologise to the British people he represents."

Herman Van Rompuy

After the speech of Herman Van Rompuy on 24 February 2010 in the European parliament, Farage—to protests from other MEPs—addressed the first long-term President of the European Council saying that he has the "charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of low grade bank clerk", also asserting that Van Rompuy's "intention is to be the quiet assassin of European democracy and of European nation states." He also referred to Belgium as a "non-country", and that "nobody in Europe" knows who Van Rompuy is, nor how he was elected. Van Rompuy commented afterwards, "There was one contribution that I can only hold in contempt, but I'm not going to comment further." After refusing to apologise for behaviour that was, in the words of the President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, "inappropriate, unparliamentary and insulting to the dignity of the House", Farage was reprimanded and had his right to ten days' allowance (expenses) rescinded. The President of the European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, said after his meeting with Farage:- 'I defend absolutely Mr Farage's right to disagree about the policy or institutions of the Union, but not to personally insult our guests in the European Parliament or the country from which they may come. [. . .] I myself fought for free speech as the absolute cornerstone of a democratic society. But with freedom comes responsibility - in this case, to respect the dignity of others and of our institutions. I am disappointed by Mr Farage's behaviour, which sits ill with the great parliamentary tradition of his own country. I cannot accept this sort of behaviour in the European Parliament. I invited him to apologise, but he declined to do so. I have therefore - as an expression of the seriousness of the matter - rescinded his right to ten days' daily allowance as a Member'. Questioned by Camilla Long in the article entitled "brimming over with bile and booze" in which she appeared to make light over his fight against cancer, Farage declared it wasn't abusive, it was right.

Views on the Euro

From taking office as a UKIP MEP in 1999 Farage has often voiced opposition to the "Euro project". His argument is that "a one size fits all interest rate" can not work for countries with structually different economies, often using the example of Greece and Germany to emphasise contrast. He predicted the need for 'bail outs' before European Commission and European Central Bank officials admit that these are necessary. Farage predicted that Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain would all require such assistance. To date Spain is the only predicted country that have not asked for a 'bail out' but Farage warns: "You can ignore the markets if you want to but in time the markets will not ignore you". Farage also reinforces Germany's argument that Italy "should never have joined the Euro" but has not explicitly predicted the need for similar assistance. Farage predicts that if the situation continues it will lead to violence due to the peoples inability to "determine their own futures through the ballot box" as it will become the only "logical" tool to enable them to escape from their "economic prison" i.e. The Eurozone. He proclaims "I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens." Farage strongly opposes the use of 'bail outs' and claims "buying your own debt with tax payers money" will not solve the problem and that "if we do the next debt crisis won't be a country" "it will be the European Central Bank its self".

Electoral performance

Nigel Farage has contested several elections under the United Kingdom Independence Party banner:

Itchen, Test and Avon, European Parliament Election 1994 - 12,423 votes, representing 5.2% of total votes cast

Eastleigh by-election, 1994 - 952, 1.4%

Salisbury, 1997 general election - 3,332, 5.7%

European Parliament election, 1999 - elected member for South East England from party list

Bexhill and Battle, 2001 general election - 3,474, 7.8%

European Parliament election, 2004 - elected member for South East England from party list

South Thanet, 2005 general election - 2,079, 5.0%

Bromley and Chislehurst by-election, 2006 - 2,307, 8.0%

European Parliament election, 2009 - elected member for South East England from party list.

Buckingham, 2010 general election - 8,410, 17.4%

Footnotes

References

2002 Amnesty law

Penal Code, articles L133-9, L133-10, L133-11

External links

UKIP profile

Profile at European Parliament website

Official website of the UK Independence Party in the European Parliament

Political group in the European Parliament

Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:United Kingdom Independence Party politicians Category:Members of the European Parliament for English constituencies Category:Critics of the European Union Category:People from Farnborough, London Category:Old Alleynians Category:Leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party Category:British libertarians Category:UK Independence Party MEPs Category:MEPs for the United Kingdom 1999–2004 Category:MEPs for the United Kingdom 2004–2009 Category:MEPs for the United Kingdom 2009–2014

br:Nigel Farage cs:Nigel Farage cy:Nigel Farage de:Nigel Farage et:Nigel Farage es:Nigel Farage fr:Nigel Farage it:Nigel Farage nl:Nigel Farage pl:Nigel Farage ro:Nigel Farage simple:Nigel Farage fi:Nigel Farage sv:Nigel Farage

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Gerald Celente
Birth date	November 29, 1946
Birth place	The Bronx, New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Trend forecaster
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	White
Parents	}}

Gerald Celente (born November 29, 1946) is an American trend forecaster, publisher of the ''Trends Journal'', business consultant and author who makes predictions about the global financial markets and other events of historical importance. Celente has described himself as a "political atheist" and "citizen of the world". He has appeared as a guest on television news shows such as ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', ''The Today Show'', ''Good Morning America'', ''CBS Morning News'', ''The Glenn Beck Show'', ''NBC Nightly News'', ''The Alex Jones Show'', ''The Jeff Rense Show'' and ''Russia Today''.''

Background

Celente was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York. He had early political experience running a mayoral campaign in Yonkers, New York and served as executive assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate, which Celente called the worst job he ever had. From 1973 to 1979 Celente traveled between Chicago and Washington D.C. as a government affairs specialist. In 1980 Celente founded The Trends Research Institute (at first called the Socio-Economic Research Institute of America), now located in Kingston, New York, publisher of the ''Trends Journal'' which forecasts and analyzes business, socioeconomic, political, and other trends.

Forecasting

His forecasts since 1993 have included predictions about terrorism, economic collapses and war. More recent forecasts involve fascism in the United States, food riots and tax revolts. Celente has long predicted global anti-Americanism, a failing economy and immigration woes in the U.S. In December 2007 Celente wrote, "Failing banks, busted brokerages, toppled corporate giants, bankrupt cities, states in default, foreign creditors cashing out of US securities ... whatever the spark, the stage is set for panic in the streets" and "Just as the Twin Towers collapsed from the top down, so too will the U.S. economy ... when the giant firms fall, they’ll crush the man on the street." He has also predicted tax revolts. In November 2008 Celente appeared on Fox Business Network and predicted economic depression, tax rebellions and food riots in the United States by 2012. Celente also predicted an "economic 9/11" and a "panic of 2008."

In 2009 Celente predicted turmoil which he described as "Obamageddon" and he was a popular guest on conservative cable-TV shows such as ''Fox News Sunday'' and Glenn Beck's television program. In April 2009 Celente wrote, "Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation." He appeared on the ''Glenn Beck'' show and criticized the U.S. stimulus plan of 2009, calling government controlled capitalism "fascism" and saying shopping malls in the U.S. would become "ghost malls." Celente has said, "smaller communities, the smaller groups, the smaller states, the more self-sustaining communities, will 'weather the crisis in style' as big cities and hypertrophic suburbias descend into misery and conflict," and forecasts "a downsizing of America."

Revolution in the USA

On Russia Today, he predicted that the USA would face a revolution.

Neosurvivalism

Celente's website has stated that:

Predictions

2009

"The Crash of '09 was as dramatic as the crash of '29. The New Depression had begun." (Trends Journal, Summer 2008, pg. 12)

2010

Some areas of the U.S. are experiencing resurgences in real estate values due to highly localized factors, and some investors profit from this. However, the rises will almost all stop and reverse with time, and the overall national trend in real estate values is downward. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 8)

Ghost malls have become a common sight across America. Especially hard-hit are big chain stores (Sears, Home Depot, etc.). (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 8)

2012

The economic policies of the U.S. government over the past few years have failed to fix America's fundamental problems and have merely papered over them and in fact made them worse. By 2012, the "American Empire" is collapsing. In the U.S., basic staple goods like quality food and water are too expensive for most people to afford,(T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1) and "food riots" happen across the country (T.J. Summer 09, pg.1). Major American cities look like disaster zones, and mass homelessness exists across the country. Crime is rampant, with much of it being directed at the rich. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1) Kidnappings and ransomings of rich people are on the rise. Average people fed up with big government, high taxes and out-of-control spending join tax revolts. (T.J. Summer 09, pg. 1) The world is also experiencing major environmental problems and "the blackest of plagues." The global financial system has also "melted down" and the situation is very bad outside the U.S.(T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1) The advanced industrial economies collapse first, and their sagging consumer spending drags down the export-based economies of emerging economies next.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 2) The economy is as bad as it was during the Great Depression in many ways. In spite of all this, the U.S. government, power elites, and mainstream media continue to insist that the fundamentals of the world economy are sound, and that official policies can lead to a recovery. A growing number of average people, however, doubt this. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 1)

While the Mayan and Hopi prophecies of global destruction do not come to pass, 2012 is indeed a watershed year that sees the death of an ailing and unsustainable global economic system and lifestyle and its replacement with something better. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 2)

By 2012, Obama is viewed by most as a stale president who sold himself as a fresh, visionary candidate in 2008 and instead proved to be a servant of the big corporations and the military-industrial complex like his predecessors.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 5) His economic policies only delayed disaster and in fact have made the situation worse: Expansionary monetary policy and the various government bailouts and stimulus programs create a "Bailout Bubble" that invariably bursts in a cataclysm for the U.S. and world economy.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 11) Obama blames other factors for this and might have even tried to start a war by 2012 to distract attention from the domestic misery.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 12) Obama's foreign policy has also failed to accomplish anything significant on the world stage, and Pakistan is a mess and the Afghan war continues to drag on without hope of conclusion.(T.J. Summer 09, pg. 12)

In the 2012 U.S. elections, online news sites, bloggers and independent journalists wield as much influence on voters as mainstream media outlets (TV, cable, magazines, newspapers) for the first time. This breaks the corporate and moneyed stranglehold on American politics and allows a third party to attain nation-level recognition. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 5)

Broad future trends

Americans will adapt to lower standards of living and will travel less, both on a daily basis and for vacations. Higher fuel costs, advances in telecommuting and an aging American population will push many more people to work from home or close to home. Walking-distance communities will be constructed and will become popular. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 7)

Geographically isolated resort destinations like Las Vegas will wither due to higher fuel costs, lower American incomes and increased overseas competition while vacation spots closer to population centers will revive. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 9)

Government-run lotteries, on the other hand, will thrive. (T.J. Summer 08, pg. 9)

In America and to a lesser extent overseas, consumer spending habits will be motivated out of fear and escapism. Businesses that capitalize upon this will succeed. (T.J. Summer 09, pg. 24)

Publications

''Trend Tracking: The System to Profit from Today's Trends'' (1991), ISBN 978-0446392877

''Trends 2000: How to Prepare for and Profit from the Changes of the 21st Century'' (1997), ISBN 978-0446519014 (This book was a national best seller)

''What Zizi Gave Honeyboy: A True Story about Love, Wisdom, and the Soul of America'' (2002), ISBN 978-0066212661

References

External links

trendsresearch.com

geraldcelente.com

Category:1946 births Category:Living people Category:American economics writers Category:Futurologists Category:People from the Bronx Category:People from New York City

de:Gerald Celente fr:Gerald Celente pl:Gerald Celente sv:Gerald Celente