France, the second largest economy in the EU, has voted for central planning and to maximize low-skill immigration (the glass ceiling for female leaders that Marine Le Pen hoped to shatter was apparently made from Florida-style hurricane laminates). That’s the right of voters in a democracy (maybe we’ll see the same thing here in November), but it seems confusing that France can be part of the same political entity, with a lot of share policy, as the eastern European nations whose citizens prefer a market economy and to exclude low-skill immigrants (short of a cataclysmic war, the biggest imaginable transformational force for any country).
How can a Eurocrat in Brussels set a policy that will be accepted by both Estonia and France, for example?
From the Iranians: “During the victory rally of the left coalition in the French parliamentary elections’ second round on Sunday evening, supporters of the left coalition and social democrats held more Palestinian flags than French flags.”
As a Muslim nation (as measured by number of hours devoted to religious observance) and one with a highly centralized and powerful government, maybe France would fit better into the Arab League? Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya was in the Arab League and implemented an Arab-Islamic Socialism.
Note that Science proves that what France needs is a larger role for government in its economy and more low-skill immigration. “Scientists relieved by far-right defeat in French election” (Nature magazine):
RN had been tipped to achieve a majority after winning the first round of voting on 30 June, and scientists feared that this could spell cuts for research budgets, restrictions on immigration and the introduction of broad climate scepticism into France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly.
Here are immigrant Scientists learning French back in 2018 (arabnews.com):
Why do they need to learn French if English is the international language of Science? “‘At least half of Paris crime is committed by foreigners,” said Macron (Le Monde), but it is unclear if he meant PhD biologists were perpetrating crime or PhD chemists.
Related (all from France’s “greatest living writer”):
Given that Marine Le Pen’s party got the most votes, by margin of around 2 millions, and fail to win parliamentary majority due to Macron’s party collusion with islamo-communists, should we expect refugees from France?
Think that France is ready to join Sunni alliance: it’s main enemies are Iran and Israel (which, was excluded from Le Bourget arms trade show by Macron, and whose citizens were excluded by French courts), it has smallish not effective army, its main land force is a group of foreign mercenaries in French Legion, and it works to increase its nuclear power, which it did not create itself but was given by rogue foreign scientists.
Should Israel and the world now more worry about stealth nuclear weapons from French submarines the about Iranian nuclear program?
Anon: It would certainly make sense for France to fight a war against Israel since French progressives now say that liberating Palestine is their most important political goal.
I read somewhere that the Israeli military is larger than those of France and Britain combined so the French alone would be unlikely to succeed against Israel – regardless of France’s desire to obtain justice for its Palestinian brethren.
Clearly, there have been two significant elections in Europe in the past week (UK and France). Both have made it very clear that the working folks are enraged by the wealthy, elite capitalists who have lined their pockets at the expense of the average working man for decades. I think the premise of your question is misguided. These two elections are clearly on the leading edge and others are likely to follow.
Just as in Libya! I believe one of Macron’s predecessors championed sectarian war there.
To quote Bill Clinton, “it’s the economy” that holds together Eastern Europe and France. The EU might not be fantastic but Easterners realize that it would be worse outside. If you were parachuted by night in Romania or Ukraine or Moldova in 1999 you couldn’t be sure which country you were in when you woke up in the morning and looked around. Today the difference is striking.
The EU does not (yet) have the right to directly raise taxes (that is (one of) the grail(s) of EU bureaucrats and they are continuously pushing for it) but it has its own money, transferred from the member states. I think more than half of this budget goes back as subventions to farmers (the contested “Common Agricultural Policy”). Another part of the budget goes to “Regional development” or “Structural funds”, I don’t recall their precise names. These are money transferred from rich to poor countries for all kinds of projects, mainly infrastructure or education, probably also for the “green transition” (or that is another fund, I don’t know). (I don’t claim that everything is fine with these initiatives. They are a big source of corruption. For example schools built on Greek islands with no children or an airport perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing winds that was almost never used, lies abandoned and is overgrown with grass. But I suppose these are the exception and not the rule.) Eastern European countries are still net receivers (i.e. they get more from the EU than they pay), (though the economies of some countries are comparable to Western ones, e.g. Estonia, Slovenia, maybe the Czech Republic) so they “like” the EU. Definitely, from the cultural point of view (immigration, LGBT) they like it less and less. But they cannot afford to leave. As they are still low-cost countries a lot of production is outsourced there. So official unemployment is at about 2%, people consume, build houses, make holidays, the economy grows. Many realize that it is because of the EU. Some are old enough to remember how it was before 1989, when one saw the Louvre or Vienna only on TV.
We should not forget the security aspects. Yes, NATO membership would suffice, but when the West has huge economic interests and invested capital in your country then it is an additional guarantee that they won’t let you be sucked up back in some Warsaw pact or the Community of Independent States (the “EU” of Russia).
The EU was founded in 1992. Until then it was a purely economic pact between countries. The original purpose was the free movement of products, services, capital and people. Some things work very well (free movement of people, including some political rights, for example a Dane can run in local elections in Germany and be elected as mayor or local councillor, but again, there is the possibility of exploiting the system, such as Eastern European Gypsies claiming child support in Germany), some almost work (in theory the movement of goods is free, in reality member states sometimes slap additional national standards and regulations on top of the European-wide ones in order to protect local producers by hampering the access of other European producers to the internal market of the country), the movement of services is not really really free (e.g. I can build a house in France with a building company from Letonia but I don’t know why I cannot insure my car with a Lithuanian insurance company).
While I am what they call a “eurosceptic” (when it comes to the current form of the EU), I think that actually the initial idea was a very good one. I can even approve the introduction of the Euro, the single currency of the EU (only Denmark has an official opt-out, all the others are obliged to adopt the euro, just that some of them, e.g. Sweden, artificially keep some necessary “convergence criteria” unsatisfied in order to have an official excuse for indefinitely postponing the adoption of the Euro). Or negotiating trade agreements as a bloc (with China or NAFTA for example) is also a good idea.
I just don’t understand why some really trivial things are not uniformized. For example driver’s licenses. Some national driver’s licenses never expire, some must be renewed after 10 or 15 years, depending on country. Or electricity sockets. For example Italian ones are different from the rest of the continent. Or car registrations. For example if you move from one country to another you must exchange your driver’s license and register your car in the new country after 6 months. One could say these are details for little people. But even the voltage of rail lines differs between The Netherlands and Germany for example.
The tensions and euroscepticism arose when the EEC (European Economic Community) became the EU and got state-like powers. A EU-wide court of law for economic matters was obviously inevitable and I have nothing against it. By why a European Court of Human Rights? A legislative body that would issue European-wide laws concerning stricly economic norms and competition would also be inevitable and ok. (Or it could be just a board of economists.) But I am not sure that the European Parliament produces laws only in this domain, though I admit I do not know. In any case, European law overrules national law and all European countries had to amend their constitutions in order to relinquish this part of their sovereignty. I think if the EU stayed with its core-business, which is the economy, Poland and France, with their totally different attitudes to immigration, minority rights, abortion, etc, could live together frictionless in the EU for many years. It is just this appropriation of more and more “competences” that exasperates.
Another aspect is that the attitude to the EU is similar to the attitude towards the state in communist countries: as private property was confiscated and became state property it was perceived as being nobody’s property. So one could steal, mismanage, bend the rules to one’s own profit, no one was harmed (only the “greater good”). It’s the same with the EU. EU funds, european research grants, etc, everybody sees them as no-one’s assets and behaves rapaciously. I have friends in academic research. I see how they gang up together to apply for EU research grants (it’s always good to have research groups from several countries working on the same project, because apparently this increases European cohesion and integration!), then buy super laptops, then have project meetings in each-other’s country (it is always good to have a partner in Southern Europe, you can always schedule a project meeting in the winter that you can extend with a couple of days vacation to exchange the gloom in Amsterdam for some sunny days in Sicily) etc.
I have not followed the saga of the EU’s accounts for decades, but I remember that in the 2000s, when I still followed it, it never got the ok from the institution (or company?) tasked with auditing the EU’s accounts. But the show went on.