There is little doubt Angela Merkel will win reelection in Germany on Sunday. Her Christian Democrats are projected to win up to 40 percent support against 25 percent for the second party, the Social Democrats.
The two could continue to share power in a “grand coalition”, but we’re hoping the liberal Free Democrats will win enough seats to help form a center-right government instead.
Polls suggest that the two parties might just fall short of a majority. Conservative and liberal voters who want to keep the left out of power ought to give the Free Democrats their support. (more…)
This British election is an impossible choice for liberals.
We can’t possibly support Jeremy Corbyn, whose policies of nationalization and unilateral nuclear disarmament would compound the disaster of Brexit — which he did far too little to prevent — many times over.
But we are not impressed with Theresa May either. She was the best candidate to succeed David Cameron, but only because the alternatives were worse. Many British voters could make the same calculation this week. (more…)
For once, the French are spoilt for choice.
Their presidential elections used to be a battle for the center between the mainstream left and the mainstream right. Now there are five candidates with a reasonable chance of qualifying for the second voting round in May, including a big-government socialist, a small-government conservative, a nationalist of the left and a nationalist of the right.
Our sympathies lie with the fifth man in the middle: Emmanuel Macron. Comfortable with neither the statist inclinations of the Socialist Party nor the social conservatism of the Republicans, he launched his own progressive movement last year for the rejuvenation of France. It represents the best alternative to the anti-globalism of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Marine Le Pen. (more…)
Europe celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome on Saturday, which created the European Economic Community that has since morphed into the EU.
It’s a day to appreciate what has been achieved: sixty years of peace and comity between the peoples of Europe.
But it’s also a day to look to the future. Europe, after all, is not done. Nor can European unification be taken for granted. Britain is leaving. For the first time in its history, the EU has a president in Washington who doesn’t support it. And it must cope with a president in Moscow who actively seeks to undermine the European project.
The Atlantic Sentinel has selected several stories from its archive to help readers understand where the EU is at — and where it is going. (more…)
