http://news.telegraph.co.uk/core/Content/displayPrintable.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/08/16/wlich16.xml&site=5
The Telegraph
Royal power shift in Liechtenstein
By Kate Connolly in Berlin
(Filed: 16/08/2003)
Prince Hans Adam II of Liechtenstein is to hand over power to his son Alois but will retain the title of head of state.
The move, announced by the crown prince yesterday, the tiny country's national holiday, came a few months after he won extended ruling powers in a bitterly fought referendum campaign .
Explaining his decision at a party for the state's 33,000 inhabitants at his castle in Vaduz, Prince Hans Adam, 58, said the handover would take place at next year's national holiday.
"The problems of foreign and domestic politics in which I have been involved are either solved or close to a successful solution," he said.
"New problems have to be solved, and the heir to the throne has already been working on these."
Prince Alois, 35, is the eldest of the Prince Hans Adam's four children.
Two thirds of Liechtenstein's 17,000 voters supported the new constitution proposed by the Prince Hans Adam, giving him the right to dismiss the government, veto legislation and appoint judges. The prince, whose family has ruled the state for 300 years, already had the power to dissolve parliament and call elections.
The campaign led to claims that the prince - who took over government rule from his father in 1989 - was a despot, liable to turn the Ruritanian principality into a dictatorship.
But critics of the crown prince's campaign, which split Liechtenstein like few other events in its history, were ostracised.
One found a disembowelled cat at his front door while another discovered a rotten pig's snout and tail nailed to his fence with the message: "Shut your mouth and sling your hook."
The prince threatened to leave Liechtenstein in favour of neighbouring Austria, where he has a castle, and to sell the royal palace to the Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates if voters failed to back his proposals.
Prince Alois, who has four children from his 10-year marriage to Princess Sophie of Bavaria, studied at Sandhurst in the 1990s, and has a law degree from Salzburg university.
He has already demonstrated that he shares his father's stubborn streak by recently suggesting, as Prince Hans Adam has done, that Liechtenstein should leave the Council of Europe if it carries out its threat to monitor Liechtenstein's commitment to democracy in the light of the recent referendum.
This year, the state, sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria and known for allegedly harbouring illicit money , offered itself for rent to multi-national companies for #320 per head per day.
Prince Hans Adam allowed the use of his wine cellar and castle as part of the deal.
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R. A. Hettinga