Monday, October 14, 2013

What's (Not) Making Headlines

Photo: Martinis Marchi
By far the biggest story of the day is that of Hartmut Lademacher, Princess Claire's father, and his Croatian castle. According to information of the German press agency DPA and reprinted by almost all of Luxembourg's newspapers (Wort, Tageblatt, L'essentiel, etc.) Mr Lademacher purchased a dilapidated castle and some other lands on the island of Šolta about ten years ago. He restored and transformed the castle into a hotel. He also heavily invested into the whole island making it a tourist attraction which attracts about 20,000 people per year now.

When all the work was completed, the state's forestry department claimed that the land was in its possession and that the local commune never had the authority to sell the land to Lademacher in the first place. While a local court recently ruled against a complaint by Lademacher, there is still hope for him as new laws came into effect earlier this year stating that a foreign buyer is allowed to keep land that he bought “in good faith” from a state institution. The father of Princess Claire isn't the only foreign investor who has had such troubles in Croatia during the last few years.

Turning to Belgium and not really headline-making news, Archduke Carl-Christian of Austria, husband of Princess Marie-Astrid, participated in the 2nd European Encounters "of active young Christians implicated in professional, family and associative life wishing to articulate the faith of their heart". The event took place in Brussels over the weekend and on Saturday morning, Archduke Carl-Christian gave a speech entitled "Culture – Blessed Charles of Austria, builder of the civilisation of love".

Probably sometime over the weekend, Princess Marie welcomed 16 children from the county of Maramureş in Romania at Schloss Vaduz. The children from disadvantaged families are currently on holiday in Liechtenstein thanks to the help of the Liechtenstein Red Cross that the Princess is president of. If you'd like to know more, check out these two ghetto-translated Romanian articles in the hope that you can make more sense of them than I. At times, at least.


Source: Wort, actualMM, European Encounters

2 comments:

  1. Interesting that they didn't bother with their property when it as dilapidated nor while Hartmut was investing millions into it.

    It smacks of incredible dishonesty and corruption to wait until he's completed a multi-million refurbishment of the area to claim it as their property. Not a great way to encourage other, much needed, foreign investors to come to Croatia.

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  2. I completely agree with your statement, unfortunately corruption and dishonesty are rampant in most governments but I don't think (and hope) they Croatian government will pursue anything because it would be bad PR for the country and tourism

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