In the 50’s Milton Friedman launched the idea of public financing systems that enabled everyone –and not only the wealthy– to choose school. Among the different systems, the best known is the one of the vouchers or school vouchers that gives families the corresponding part of the government funding so they can choose their children’s school. Nowadays, one of the few countries that adopted consistently and comprehensively this kind of system is Sweden.

It is true that the elections for the European Parliament of next May 25th are special. Because the juncture the European Union is going through is special and also the response to the crisis that marked the last five years is special. Do we have to maintain an exceptional policy –austerity and budgetary stability– that allowed the survival of the euro and the stabilization and consolidation of the European Union? Do we have to strength and legalize –we can say, return to normality– this exceptional policy?

The outcome of the presidential elections of 4 May in Panama is not overly surprising. The truth is that the Panamanian electoral behaviour is characterised by a constant alternation between the major parties (the Panamanian Party and the Democratic Revolutionary Party) ever since the military regime ended twenty-five years ago. No party has managed to win two consecutive presidencies, which shows there is a lively electoral competition, which was joined in 2009 by the Democratic Change of President Ricardo Martinelli. So much so, that the three main candidates continued having their aspirations late in Sunday, according to all polls. 

The Carnation Revolution put an end to one of the longest dictatorships in the recent European history, and one of the most deceptive dictatorships established in the old continent throughout the 1930s. It was deceptive because, under the guise of a benevolent dictatorship, a highly repressive regime was concealed, as shown by the dark history of its feared political police, the PIDE. It was deceptive because, under a semi-liberal political structure, a true personal dictatorship was developed, that of the Head of the Council of Ministers, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar.

One year after the death of the “Iron Lady”, it seems mandatory to make some comments on her figure and her political leadership. Margaret Thatcher was a world-renowned stateswoman. This is not only due to her three election victories (1979, 1983 and 1987), but also to the loyalty she always showed to her principles, specially to her unconditional defence of freedom, to which she linked a disused concept (then and now): responsibility.

November 9, 2004 was the fifteenth anniversary of the ?fall? of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate the event, the FAES Foundation organized a series of lectures called ?The Freedom Revolution?, in which twelve figures from the political and intellectual world in the East and West took part. The series was coordinated by Ana Palacio, a member of the Spanish Parliament and former Minister for Foreign Affairs, and it ran from November 2004 to May 2005.One of the main theses of the ?Freedom Revolution? is that the Berlin Wall did not collapse of its own accord. The Wall was pulled down by the determination of people who risked their lives in order to regain their freedom. If the Wall fell it was also because of the steadfastness of a generation of politicians who were determined to stop the advance of totalitarian tyranny despite of the incomprehension of a large proportion of intellectuals in the West. These efforts helped to bring freedom and peace to the other side of the Iron Curtain.Some of the eye witnesses of that time, many of whom played key roles in the process, took part in the lecture series and explained their vision of events and their response. Helmut Kohl, Bronislaw Geremek, Giovanni Sartori, Nicolas Baverez, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Jesús Huerta de Soto, Francis Fukuyama, Guy Sorman, André Glucksmann, Richard Perle, Joseph Weiler and Christopher DeMuth took us through what happened in the Freedom Revolution. Their words, their memories and their teachings, given in the Great Hall of San Pablo-CEU University, are gathered together in this volume, which also includes the introductions made by José María Aznar, AnaPalacio and José María Lassalle.The FAES Foundation would like to give special thanks to Noah Clarke, Carmelo López-Arias, Elena Segura, Jessica Zorogastua and Miguel Ángel Quintanilla Navarro for their work in putting together this publication.We would also like to thank the Rector of San Pablo-CEU University, José Alberto Parejo Gámir, for the magnificent facilities offered by the university, which made this lecture series possible.

Europe is in the throes of two simultaneous crises: on the one hand, it is suffering from a political crisis, a crisis of leadership, one that has led to constitutional failure; on the other, it is suffering from a loss of identity, a phenomenon that results in cultural relativism. Marcello Pera, Speaker of the Italian Senate and Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pisa, delivered a conference entitled “Strength of Identity” during the course of the FAES Campus 2005, a paper which the FAES Foundation is now publishing. Also known as the co-author of the book Senza Radici (“Without Roots”) alongside Cardinal Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Professor Pera urges European culture to proudly recall and reaffirm its origins and its universal democratic principles: freedom, equality and tolerance. In this respect, Europe must recognise the intrinsic value of a civilisation, Western civilisation, that has given the world so many universal ideas. “Europe must be aware of the moral superiority of a series of values that have prevailed over centuries and that have produced beneficial results wherever they have become established”.