Skyline of Paris, France, May 27, 2020 (Unsplash/Nicolas Jehly)
Two videos, two visions of France.
The first kicks off Éric Zemmour’s presidential campaign. (With English subtitles here.) It’s a France where gangs of dark-skinned men rob elderly women and liberal elites call true patriots racists and xenophobes.
The second comes from the Elysée Palace and celebrates the “pantheonization” of American-born singer and French Resistance fighter Josephine Baker. It appeals to the best of France: brave, cultured, multiethnic, republican. It’s a vision Emmanuel Macron will want to make his own. Read more “Two Visions of France”
French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Angela Merkel enter the Elysée Palace in Paris, November 12, 2019 (Elysée)
French Republicans have thrown away their two best chances of denying Emmanuel Macron a second term.
Party members eliminated Michel Barnier and Xavier Bertrand from the center-right’s presidential primary on Thursday, giving the men 24 and 22 percent support, respectively.
The more right-wing Éric Ciotti and Valérie Pécresse qualified for the runoff on Saturday.
Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz meets with French Republican party leaders Laurent Wauquiez and Michel Barnier in Salzburg, September 19, 2018 (EPP)
French Republicans choose their presidential candidate this week, who will challenge Emmanuel Macron in the spring.
Like all French elections, the primary is held in two rounds. Five candidates have qualified.
German finance minister Olaf Scholz attends a debate in parliament in Berlin, July 8, 2018 (Bundestag/Inga Kjer)
Germany’s Social Democrats, Greens and liberal Free Democrats are ready to govern. Two months after federal elections almost to the day, they unveiled a 177-page coalition agreement that lays out their program for the next four years.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Olaf Scholz, who would succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, hailed the deal as the “biggest industrial modernization of Germany in more than 100 years.” It calls for major investments in decarbonization and digitalization.
Free Democratic Party (FDP) leader Christian Lindner would succeed Scholz at the Finance Ministry, despite his party being the smallest in the “traffic light” coalition (named after the parties’ colors).
The Greens get climate and foreign policy, and the right to nominate the next German EU commissioner. (Unless the conservative Ursula von der Leyen is reelected as commission president.)
French president Emmanuel Macron speaks with Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte during a European Council summit in Brussels, June 24, 2018 (Elysée/Philippe Servent)
The European Commission has sided with the Netherlands and smaller nations against a Franco-German proposal for industrial policy.
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden of the United States deliver a news conference outside the White House in Washington DC, May 13 (White House/Adam Schultz)
During last year’s presidential election, Joe Biden promised to end America’s “artificial trade war” with Europe. His predecessor, Donald Trump, had imposed $7.5 billion worth of tariffs on European aluminum and steel.
Biden has relaxed the tariffs, but not abolished them. The EU has completely pulled down its retaliatory tariffs on bourbon whisky and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, June 23, 2014 (Pixabay/Elena Repina)
One of my laments about Spain’s inability to resolve the Catalan independence crisis is that it complicates all other political issues in the region.
Catalonia’s pro-independence Republican Left has much in common with the Socialists and other left-wing parties, which want to remain in Spain. The formerly center-right Together for Catalonia now calls itself a big tent, but its economic and fiscal policies are still similar to those of the unionist Citizens and People’s Party. Yet separatists and unionists refuse deals, giving two far-left parties in parliament the balance of power. One is reasonable, the other is not.
The reasonable one, Catalonia in Common (which includes the Catalan branch of Podemos), supports Catalan self-determination but not independence, which is why it can’t join a government that wants to exit Spain.
The even more left-wing Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) is also the most strident separatist party: it would secede from Spain tomorrow if it could. It has reliably backed governments of the Republicans and Together for Catalonia, but it has been fickle in its support for their policies. Read more “Catalan Budget Crisis Is Tied to Independence”
Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte meets with French president Emmanuel Macron in the Elysée Palace in Paris, August 31 (Elysée/Laurent Blevennec)
A deal between two of the four parties negotiating to form a government in the Netherlands has leaked.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s liberal VVD (of which I am a member) and the Christian democratic CDA wrote the outlines of a coalition agreement for review by the social-liberal D66 and the smaller Christian Union.
Christian Union leader Gert-Jan Segers forgot a copy of the document on a train, where it was found by a fellow commuter, who sent it to de Volkskrant newspaper. (Seriously.)
Earlier D66 and VVD wrote their own outline of a coalition agreement, which was released officially.
Spain’s ruling left-wing parties have agreed to reverse the labor market liberalizations of the previous conservative government, which made it easier for firms to hire and fire workers.
The decision is hard to justify even by the standards set by proponents of repeal. The reforms did not create more precarious jobs, they did not cause higher structural unemployment and they barely made a dent in wages. Read more “Repeal of Spanish Labor Reforms Is Unwise”
Illustration from the cover of Der Spiegel, October 16
Der Spiegel makes a mockery of the Dutch drug policy. Under the header “Käse, Koks und Killer” (Cheese, Coke and Killers), the German weekly portrays the Netherlands’ stereotypical Frau Antje with a joint between her lips, a Kalashnikov in one hand and a round cheese stuffed with cocaine in the other. The Netherlands, it claims, is “terrorized” by drug traffickers.
(An English version of the story can be read here.)
