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Nicolas Sarkozy to seek French presidency again

Simpleχity;1066234214 said:
Nicolas Sarkozy to seek French presidency again

Both Le Pen and Sarkozy are Putin lapdogs.
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If you survey the Russian media, you would get the idea that Sarkozy was Putin's closest freind. And that Sarkozy doesn't go soft and gooey in the knees, when he regards our manly CIC, you probably understand.
 
Never write off a poisonous dwarf.
 
i mean, considering how bad the communist has screwed things up, he probably has a decent chance.
 
QuadpolarNutjob said:
i mean, considering how bad the communist has screwed things up, he probably has a decent chance.
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Except you think people won't remember how badly Sarkozy screwed things up between 2007 and 2012? It's quite unusual for French presidents not to win second terms. Only he and Giscard-d'Estaing have failed to win reelection since the start of the Fifth Republic. Also, he's positioning himself far to the right of where he stood before, going head-to-head with Marine Le Pen. He's no shoo-in, that's for sure, not even to make the second round.
 
Andalublue said:
Except you think people won't remember how badly Sarkozy screwed things up between 2007 and 2012? It's quite unusual for French presidents not to win second terms. Only he and Giscard-d'Estaing have failed to win reelection since the start of the Fifth Republic. Also, he's positioning himself far to the right of where he stood before, going head-to-head with Marine Le Pen. He's no shoo-in, that's for sure, not even to make the second round.
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It might be an attempt to sabotage Le Pens chances. The right and left have had a long tradition (recent) of sticking it to Le Pen and FN..
 
PeteEU said:
It might be an attempt to sabotage Le Pens chances. The right and left have had a long tradition (recent) of sticking it to Le Pen and FN..
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Maybe, but I reckon they'd need a candidate a lot less toxic than Sarkozy for that.
 
Andalublue said:
Maybe, but I reckon they'd need a candidate a lot less toxic than Sarkozy for that.
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Well we shall see... there can come a left wing candidate to challenge Hollande as well.. so it will be one big mess. Thankfully it is not a winner takes all election, but one where a majority of the electorate is needed.. so the run off candidates will be key. Stopping Le Pen getting into the run off might be the goal of the traditional parties in France..
 
In my mind, Sarkozy's return in politics is symptomatic of a big problem in France : there're no young politicians who maybe could bring new things in the political life. Sarkozy was already in the government in the 90's, Juppé in the 80's, etc... The only one is Macron who isn't really matching with social ideas shared by a very large part of the population.
 
Thalassin said:
In my mind, Sarkozy's return in politics is symptomatic of a big problem in France : there're no young politicians who maybe could bring new things in the political life. Sarkozy was already in the government in the 90's, Juppé in the 80's, etc... The only one is Macron who isn't really matching with social ideas shared by a very large part of the population.
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The lack of renewal is bothersome but young candidates would change nothing.

Look at Macron, who gives the English medias an orgasm anytime he speaks, which love to cast him as France's savior (like Sarkozy was before, and Balladur before, and...). He is certainly young, but his ideas are ones we have heard for decades. He is a conservative who wants to continue drawing the perfectly straight line that France has been drawing for the past decades. And he could never gather a strong political majority to chain reforms.

We need young ideas, not fashionable young candidates with old ideas. The problem is that in France and elsewhere, no one has significant and plausible new ideas; we live in an ideological void where we still cling to failed solutions and paradigms. In this context the far-right ideas (not necessarily party) are fated to win because they are the only ones who propose to break with the present, which is ironically the closest thing we have from an innovation.
 
Auvergnat said:
The lack of renewal is bothersome but young candidates would change nothing.

Look at Macron, who gives the English medias an orgasm anytime he speaks, which love to cast him as France's savior (like Sarkozy was before, and Balladur before, and...). He is certainly young, but his ideas are ones we have heard for decades. He is a conservative who wants to continue drawing the perfectly straight line that France has been drawing for the past decades. And he could never gather a strong political majority to chain reforms.

We need young ideas, not fashionable young candidates with old ideas. The problem is that in France and elsewhere, no one has significant and plausible new ideas; we live in an ideological void where we still cling to failed solutions and paradigms. In this context the far-right ideas (not necessarily party) are fated to win because they are the only ones who propose to break with the present, which is ironically the closest thing we have from an innovation.
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I like your post. I absolutely agree that what is needed is a new politics, not just a new generation of politicians, but I'd challenge the part I've emboldened.

There are plenty of new ideas coming from the left. Perhaps in France they are not getting the same traction as they are in the UK (Corbyn's Labour Party), the US (Sanders), Spain (Podemos), DiEM25 (pan-European). These ground-up, grass roots movements are all devising strategies and prescriptions for dealing with the decline and failure of neo-Liberalism across the world. It's unsurprising that they receive less media attention than the demagogues of the right, since the media oligarchy finds right-wing prescriptions of deregulation, scapegoating and increased militarisation infinitely more attractive than the anti-global capitalist ideas coming from the left.

As we all know, the far-right ideas of the likes of Trump, LePen, Farage etc. are absolutely not a 'break with the present'. You think any of those figures have any intention of challenging the dominance of corporate capitalism or the overweening influence of the military-industrial complex? If you do, perhaps you could link us to where in those right-wing movements' policy proposals any such intention is evidenced?

I don't keep on top of French domestic politics very much, so it may be that the dead hand of the moribund Partie Socialiste is killing debate on the left, I simply don't know, but the lack of fresh left-leaning alternatives in France seems to me to be the exception rather than the rule.
 
Andalublue said:
There are plenty of new ideas coming from the left. Perhaps in France they are not getting the same traction as they are in the UK (Corbyn's Labour Party), the US (Sanders), Spain (Podemos), DiEM25 (pan-European). These ground-up, grass roots movements are all devising strategies and prescriptions for dealing with the decline and failure of neo-Liberalism across the world. It's unsurprising that they receive less media attention than the demagogues of the right, since the media oligarchy finds right-wing prescriptions of deregulation, scapegoating and increased militarisation infinitely more attractive than the anti-global capitalist ideas coming from the left.
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Honestly, no.

I am perfectly aware of those new ideas, some are actually very old, but they do not hold their ground. Most of them are mere daydreams without any plausibility, others are little more than narcissistic do-it-yourself anecdotes. For two decades there has been a widespread global movement, born in France, named alterglobalization (altermondialisme). What did they produce? Nothing. Some people in those movements tried to use this inertia to fuel initiatives to rewrite the WTO rules and foster other changes. They managed to vulgarize why it was important. Yet they failed to propose anything new because it would have violated the very internationalist software of the left and because they wanted to try to fix every human problem at once, and because the competent people who could have helped them did not share their ideas and participative methodology.

The left reformism died with the death of the alterglobalization and the 2005 divisions on European treaties. The left demonstrated its fundamental inability to achieve anything that could fit in its dead-end internationalist framework. For the left to recover, it will first have to reappropriate the concept of nation and national sovereignty, and use them to rebuild a progressive (rather than liberal) project, a global mesh of sovereign nations and cities. It will also have to regrow a respect and sympathy for the popular layers, for the "white thrash" as large parts of the left see them. Finally the left will have to re-acknowledge science and its achievements and needs to formulate a new social and environmental global ambition.

As we all know, the far-right ideas of the likes of Trump, LePen, Farage etc. are absolutely not a 'break with the present'. You think any of those figures have any intention of challenging the dominance of corporate capitalism or the overweening influence of the military-industrial complex? If you do, perhaps you could link us to where in those right-wing movements' policy proposals any such intention is evidenced?
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First of all I would not put Trump and Le Pen in the same category at all. Trump swore to nuke Europe, Le Pen merely proposes to slow down Muslim immigration. While they both draw angered popular classes to them, by the American scale Le Pen would be center-right.

Second of all the far-right ideas are "innovative" because they break with internationalism, which is the pervasive force of the political debate today in Europe. Its two manifestations around here are the European nation and unbound immigration / borderlessness.

The "novelty" of the far-right is to reintroduce nationalism, an ideology that left Europe decades ago as it was confused with jingoism and supremacism. On a completely internationalist substrate, they are relegitimating the nation and the rejection of the forced immigration and unification. Not so long ago, and to some extent still, merely wanting to slow immigration was absurdly said to be racist, and identity discussions were taboo. It is hard to swallow but we will all owe a lot to the far-right.
 
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Auvergnat said:
I am perfectly aware of those new ideas, some are actually very old, but they do not hold their ground. Most of them are mere daydreams without any plausibility, others are little more than narcissistic do-it-yourself anecdotes.
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Yep, that's the standard conservative response. Plausibility is entirely subjective. Most of the proposed solutions forwarded by the newer left-wing movements have never been attempted.

For two decades there has been a widespread global movement, born in France, named alterglobalization (altermondialisme). What did they produce? Nothing.
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Their ideas were never tried.

Some people in those movements tried to use this inertia to fuel initiatives to rewrite the WTO rules and foster other changes. They managed to vulgarize why it was important.
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I'm not sure what 'vulgarize' (sic) means in this context.

The left reformism died with the death of the alterglobalization and the 2005 divisions on European treaties.
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Oh, anti-globalisation movements are still very much alive.

The left demonstrated its fundamental inability to achieve anything that could fit in its dead-end internationalist framework. For the left to recover, it will first have to reappropriate the concept of nation and national sovereignty, and use them to rebuild a progressive (rather than liberal) project, a global mesh of sovereign nations and cities.
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To an extent, yes. The left needs to apply ideas of subsidiarity to an overall internationalist approach to solutions. It needs to realise that objectives can and should be internationalist, but that solutions may need to be tailored to specific regions, nations or communities. One size doesn't fit all. It also needs to achieve its momentum at a grass-roots, local level ensuring that top-down imposition of ideas do not alienate communities from the mechanics of change.

It will also have to regrow a respect and sympathy for the popular layers, for the "white thrash" as large parts of the left see them.
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I have never heard anyone on the left use the expression 'white trash' nor anything of that nature. That comes from a populist, right-wing lexicon. The left can be and has been guilty of a certain paternalist attitude to the issues the populists attempt to exploit, such as migration, welfare reform and electoral reform, but recognising the concerns of the 'popular layers' doesn't necessarily mean buying into populist solutions such as scapegoating, closing borders, targeting welfare 'scroungers'.

continued/...
 
Continued/...


Auvergnat said:
Finally the left will have to re-acknowledge science and its achievements and needs to formulate a new social and environmental global ambition.
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I think that it's only the left that actually does this. You won't find climate-change deniers and anti-science crack-pots driving policy in the new left movements.


First of all I would not put Trump and Le Pen in the same category at all. Trump swore to nuke Europe,
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Did he? When?

Le Pen merely proposes to slow down Muslim immigration.
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That's simply not true. The FN attacks on Muslims in general, not just immigrants but French-born and raised Muslims, are well documented.
While they both draw angered popular classes to them, by the American scale Le Pen would be center-right.
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On certain issues she's more in line with the left. That's dangerous in itself. Economically speaking, she acts like a Keynsian-style, protectionist. She's no economic libertarian at all. On certain social issues she's outwardly quite progressive, probably differentiating her from Trump because she has no strong, conservative Christian power-base to pander to. If she had, I've no doubt she would be much less gay-friendly than she appears to be.

Second of all the far-right ideas are "innovative" because they break with internationalism, which is the pervasive force of the political debate today in Europe. Its two manifestations around here are the European nation and unbound immigration / borderlessness.

The "novelty" of the far-right is to reintroduce nationalism, an ideology that left Europe decades ago as it was confused with jingoism and supremacism. On a completely internationalist substrate, they are relegitimating the nation and the rejection of the forced immigration and unification.
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There's nothing innovative about nationalism. It has a long and despicable tradition stretching back to Louis XIV and beyond.

Not so long ago, and to some extent still, merely wanting to slow immigration was absurdly said to be racist
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Not so, it has just been the case that discussions of migration from the right have always been driven by and couching in the terms of racism. The only innovative thing about the new far right is that they've sacrificed some of their prejudices in order to prioritise their hate targets. The LGBT movements and communities are being co-opted by people who realise they lost that cultural war years ago, into conflating peaceful and law-abiding Muslims with the fundamentalist, illiberal and homophobic right of the Muslim world. At a time when that exteme is strong, newsworthy and murderous, the right are having a lot of success in doing that and are proving the jihadists' most potent recruiting sergeants. Every burkini ban and 'Muslim rape jihad' piece of propaganda causes a bit more of society to disintegrate.

, and identity discussions were taboo.
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Nonsense. It's all they used to talk about.

It is hard to swallow but we will all owe a lot to the far-right.
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Well, we owe them the credit for shaving off a whole stream of society and pushing them in the direction of religious extremism, for sure.

What I do think Le Pen and Trump share is a desire to see a more militarised, more repressive, disintegrated and tribalised society. They both hanker after cultural warfare between races, religions and social classes. They both want their nations to retreat into a bunker mentality fed by xenophobia and generalised fear. They may have wildly different economic policies, but it's really not 'about the economy, stupid' any more. It's about fear and populist demagoguery. The idea that either of these two figures: one a narcissistic fraudster, the other a career politician whose pre-politics career lasted all of six years, would be the champions of the marginalised, under-represented or alienated masses is just a joke. Just not a very funny one.
 
Andalublue said:
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- I do consider myself as a progressive nationalist leftist. I criticize the left because it matters to me and I am convinced they will follow the same trajectory I did. On the other hand I never discuss conservatism because I do not give a damn. This discussion is not about the left versus the right. It is just about the left ecosystem.

- Many ideas are factually implausible, at least for any rational mind. Sometimes there is a great room for debates however. I would like to know which ideas come to your mind especially?

- I made a linguistic mistake: "vulgariser" in French means to introduce the masses to a complex knowledge, usually by simplifying it. It has a positive connotation.

- In your mind, would your internationalist vision acknowledge the right for a community to choose its culture by closing its borders to some cultural influences? Would it acknowledge that democracy and solidarity require identity and language, which are at most found at the level of an ethnic group, and that any attempt to impose instances above that would run against democracy? Would it still try to impose a global government to rule them all? Would it try to create an international economy or rather a mesh of interdependent but completely sovereign national economies?

- Compared to what it was fifteen years ago, the alterglobalization movement is comatose.

- You are right about the "white thrash" expression, yet in Europe the divorce has been consumed between the bourgeois and proletarian fractions of the left. One benefited from globalization, the other one suffered from it. One is fluent in this internationalist English-speaking EU, the other is illiterate in this context and French only. One supports minorities but do not live with them, the other live and work with, sometimes among, them, a change usually seen as negative. Half of French blue collars and employees now vote for the FN, and many socialists despise them for this. When I tell a socialist that they should not just care about refugees but also about the people who live in Calais, I usually hear their contempt for those people who have no right to complain because they are white.

- Most of the European left has completely rejected GMO, their opposition to nuclear power has turned even against nuclear fusion and all projects related to nuclear waste (without formulating any proposition), there is a growing paranoia against chemicals and electromagnetic waves, I see a worrying number of eschatological and Malthusian ecologists, etc.

- Trump and nukes. I caricatured his position, but you get the idea.

- About the FN you are erroneously influenced by the former president's reputation. The current leader of the FN has never been sentenced for hate speech and I do not think you can find cases incriminating the current bureau of the party either. The former president and founder was more aggressive, with edgy statements about gas chambers and a violent temperament. But all of that was twenty or thirty years ago, and things were very different then, and many of his statements reflected a bad taste rather than something worthy of a judiciary question.

Anyway today the FN supports a 10k quota of Muslims a year, after subtracting the departures. They say absolutely nothing against the owners of the French nationality. They do not oppose the coming in France of foreign spouses and children of French citizens. Absolutely nothing in their policies and speeches for the last ten years justify the ostracism they suffer. The regular right-wing is actually more aggressive than they are.

- The return of nationalism in the current internationalist political context is the novelty. And this question, identity and sovereignty, are going to be very strong questions during the next decades. But of course I used quotes around "innovation".

- Identity is what made them ostracize. Today we still suffer ostracism if we dare to say that Islamic cultures have different values from ours and that Muslims must adopt our identity and values instead of theirs if they want to stay.

- We owe the far-right credit for re-legitimating the much needed identity and sovereignty questions in the debates.

- I think the demagoguery is to deny the failure of Islamic immigration, to deny the fact that millions of people are less free in France because of Muslim immigration, the cultural incompatibility between the Arabo-Muslim cultures and our owns, the catastrophic failure of the eurozone, the failures of the European Union, and to deny the interdependence of national sovereignty and democracy. More than this, refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of those political questions and simply blaming fear is in my opinion the real demagoguery of our times.
 
Andalublue said:
Mr Sarkozy, I know Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion Lannister is a friend of mine. Mr Sarkozy, you are no Tyrion Lannister.
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But Tyrion Lannister is not married to Carla Bruni!

Nya, nya ...
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Auvergnat said:
I think the demagoguery is to deny the failure of Islamic immigration, to deny the fact that millions of people are less free in France because of Muslim immigration, the cultural incompatibility between the Arabo-Muslim cultures and our owns, the catastrophic failure of the eurozone, the failures of the European Union, and to deny the interdependence of national sovereignty and democracy.
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The EU is the best thing that happened to Europe since Charlemagne.

Its fusion has allowed, finally, for the the EU market-economy to compete aptly on a global level with the only equivalent other market-economy (the US). In doing so, it has developed its economic might to the benefit of its peoples to the point where they are living better lives than even Americans. (America is in profound structural decline and its democracy in tatters.)

(Not to mention that the EU's common-market has the effect of subduing Europe's bent to go to war with itself.)

The only EU development remaining is to, finally, pass Executive leadership on to a higher level of governance; that is, to replace Berlaymont with an elected President - the EU legislative branch existing in Strasbourg and the EU Judiciary already well in place. This will reduce the status of national leaders to that similar to American "state governors". Allowing them to concentrate on national matters (for which they are elected), because as regards inter-EU matters they have proven to be wholly inept. (The fact that the EU could not act more forcefully to stop the migrant-invasion in the Med before it became massive has rocked its political structure like no other cross-EU problem to date.)

But the adoption of an EU-presidency will not happen for quite some time. The Europeans are not yet prepared for it.

But come the day, Merkel would be the right person for the job ...
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THE ENARQUES IN FRANCE

Thalassin said:
In my mind, Sarkozy's return in politics is symptomatic of a big problem in France : there're no young politicians who maybe could bring new things in the political life. Sarkozy was already in the government in the 90's, Juppé in the 80's, etc... The only one is Macron who isn't really matching with social ideas shared by a very large part of the population.
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There are at least five I can think of who have declared they are running for president of France.

Most notable amongst them is a guy called Emmanuel Macron, who in his mid-thirties not only made a megabuck at Goldman Sachs but married a very rich woman. So, he doesn't know what to do with himself, and PoF evidently seemed like a good alternative.

How the present socialist president of France could think of naming him Minister of the Economy is beyond comprehension given Macron's background, but in doing so he boosted Macron into the political stratosphere of France.

Macron is detested by most of the French political class who make a career of politics. Meaning they haven't the foggiest notion of how a market-economy functions, but they are certain they could run one as PoF. Or ruin one, depending upon the circumstances.

One reason for France's immobility may well be the fact that it is run by a group of people who hail from the same university. They are called "ENArques", and graduate from the Ecole Nationale d'Administration. Meaning they know how to "administrate". Meaning further, for Americans, it's as if Washington ran the economy by graduates from the JFK School of Public Administration at Hah-vahd.

MY POINT

The problem in France, as well as Europe, is the realization that "good-ole-days' from the 1960s up to the turn of the new millennium are not coming back. The advent of Cheap Chinese goods laid waste to all entry-level manufacturing jobs - and those jobs are not coming back. France has presently an unemployment rate of about 10%. It's historical evolution looks like this table.

Descending historically in the table we see that France has not known an unemployment rate below 5% since 1980 - that is the past quarter of a century.

The EU is between a rock and a hard-place, meaning this: If it wanted to bring down unemployment, it would have to embark upon massive Stimulus Spending. But to do that would require to spend beyond its present means. And the Maastricht Treaty has been very clear - no country must have a recurrent debt of more than 3% of its GDP.

So, the EU will attempt to muddle through, with gross disparity in unemployment rates. That is, France is around 10% and Germany is at half that rate. Why should that be?

The answer is complex, but one major difference between the two countries is that Germany's breadwinner is Manufacturing and France's is Tourism. Manufacturing employs more people than Tourism.

That may be a simplification, but it's not far from the truth ...
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Lafayette said:
The EU is between a rock and a hard-place, meaning this: If it wanted to bring down unemployment, it would have to embark upon massive Stimulus Spending. But to do that would require to spend beyond its present means. And the Maastricht Treaty has been very clear - no country must have a recurrent debt of more than 3% of its GDP.
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And this is precisely because of those rules that the EU has sunk into a permanent crisis since 2008 and may trigger a far bigger one in a near future. On the other hand, if we had immediately spent, this problem would have been solved in three years and we would now have healthy budgets.

Yes we went through a spiral of death through the past decades. Nothing says it should be like that forever. it is time we try to understand why this happened and admit the role of the EMU in this. Not many economists defended it when it was crated, even less would defend it today. As for the EU itself, the pros have proved disappointing, the cons now get far more attention from economists.

The answer is complex, but one major difference between the two countries is that Germany's breadwinner is Manufacturing and France's is Tourism. Manufacturing employs more people than Tourism.
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OF COURSE NOT!

Tourism only amounts to 6% of France's GDP. Our main specialty are B2B services (communication, sales & marketing, finance, accounting & expertise, consulting, logistics, ...). Manufacturing, while having decreased (which is indeed related to unemployment because of demand-offer asymmetry), is still there and now robust with B2B manufacturing (aeronautics, communications, robotics, industrial softwares, car parts, construction, materials, ...) and luxury products (fashion, food, design, art, ...).


We also have the problem of the concentration of activity in Paris' region, another demand-offer asymmetry. And finally other countries' jobs are far more often part-time, and this difference alone equates the unemployment gap in total hours.
 
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Lafayette said:
Its fusion has allowed, finally, for the the EU market-economy to compete aptly on a global level with the only equivalent other market-economy (the US). In doing so, it has developed its economic might to the benefit of its peoples to the point where they are living better lives than even Americans. (America is in profound structural decline and its democracy in tatters.)
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The common market is mostly a myth.

There is no common European market because the rules are different, the cultures are different, the languages are different, the social networks are mostly isolated. We live in a global world, the borders are opened, the tariffs ridiculous, the transports are cheap, communications instantaneous, and 100$ spent on the American or Chinese markets will be far more profitable than 100€ spent on the German market. For most sectors, there is no reason to be bound by the geographic proximity, we're not in 1950.

As a matter of fact, young European enterprises all follow the same target patterns: national market, then American market, then the biggest western markets, then the rest. Variant: American market, then the biggest western markets (including national one). Many European enterpreneurs even move to the USA just before they create their enterprise. Let's not mention how much easier it is to raise capital on the American market.


You think it could change? Not unless you destroy our cultures and languages. And economy will be of poor importance before that.

The only EU development remaining is to, finally, pass Executive leadership on to a higher level of governance
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What is democracy for you? What are politics?

Do you think democracy is only about dropping a piece of paper every five years and the 51% rule? Sorry but it does take more, such as a political life, a common culture and perception of the world, common medias to forge a consensus, strong solidarity and perception of a common fate. You cannot have this without a common culture and language, without a common identity. And you cannot achieve this without the destruction of our cultures and languages. In the name of what? What justifies this sacrifice?

And do you think the shift of power from the national to international power is harmless? On the other hand I think power should be as close as possible to the individual while you insist of systematically moving it away from the individual, to entrust it to people with different cultures and interests than the ones they are supposed to represent. By moving this power away you disempower individuals. In the name of what? What justifies this sacrifice?


Maybe you will advocate for all this destruction in favor of growth, or in the name of our salvation against invisible threats. Even though Western Europe has had a very low growth since the formation of the EU, even more since the introduction of the EMU. Even though economists were in their majority opposed to the euro, and they now deem it as a disaster triggering a bigger crisis. Even though economists realized that the ever freer market didn't hold its promises, that its benefits were fewer than expected and its social costs greater. Even though the EU and recent treaties did impose a lot on us while the fewer core WTO rules alone are almost as profitable if not better, and the global default rules. As demonstrated by many countries outside the EU, smaller than France or Germany, who underwent a far more dynamic economy for the past decades and especially since 1999.

Anyway is economy still that important? Europeans have been working less and less while being ever wealthier, are we not reaching the point where economy should be less important than ever? For the past decades global competition has paradoxically made competitiveness more important than ever and took more sacrifices every year, so how do we now fix the rising social costs? What will we do when automation will have made employment scarce? Would not it make more sense to start excluding an increasing number of economic fields from this relentless competition in the name of social harmony and ecology? Protectionism is certainly no magic bullet, but it is not a smear word either when used with parsimony.

The EU? In the name of what?
 
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Auvergnat said:
And this is precisely because of those rules that the EU has sunk into a permanent crisis since 2008 and may trigger a far bigger one in a near future. On the other hand, if we had immediately spent, this problem would have been solved in three years and we would now have healthy budgets..
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If only.

The present plight in Europe (causing high-unemployment) derives directly from the fact that the EU euphorically kept government spending high to maintain employment subsequent to the Great Recession imported from Uncle Sam. Not a bad idea, normally, but in the present condition in Europe, the countries were taking on mountainous debt in order to provide that spending. Something had to give.

And it did. Interest rates rose to summits and countries (in the southern underbelly of Europe*) found themselves between a brick and a hard place. Whamo!

They had assumed enormous debt that they could neither maintain (interest payments) nor pay-off in the future. Thus, finally, in 2012 it all came apart, and Merkel slammed down on the profligate spending that the countries had asked the EU to finance! (Germany remains the only major EU country that has the ability to contribute to EU-financing employed by EU countries.)

She insisted upon the Maastricht Rule that all countries maintain their debt at levels of 3% of GDP or lower. So, the countries had to reduce drastically spending and watch unemployment skyrocket. Which, over time, had the effect of stopping the hallucinatory rise in total EuroZone debt:
EuroZone - government debt to GDP to GDP.jpg

So, mon cher ami, the problem in these countries today - and particulary that of France - is that its politicians cannot unhook themselves from the only tool that they have ever known. That of government-spending that they employed willfully in order to sustain EU-growth and, of course, have voters return them to office!

The EuroZone has been these past 6-years a game of "Wakey, wakey" to the realities of the market-economy. And I still do not believe the French socialists have understood that Basic Lesson.

As for the French Right, whilst in power, they used the same silly mechanism, so they are not blameless either. The French should retire the political mandarins on both sides. They have nothing new whatsoever to add** in terms of a solution.

The French (and much of Europe) themselves must wake up to the fact that the "good ole days" of post-war resurgence is done and gone. They need a New Market-economy Outlook to reduce stubbornly high long-term unemployment ...

*Namely Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and also Ireland. (Not to mention Greece that was a political shambles from the get-go.)
**Except perhaps Macron, but if he told everything that was in under his bonnet publicly, he'd never get elected.
 
NOTHING IS FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG!

Auvergnat said:
The EU? In the name of what?
Click to expand...

OK, so name an alternative?

You seem to want to upset the present market-economy based upon capitalism. But to change it to what?

We go back to the pre-capitalism days of barter? (Ok, silly nonsense on my part.)

But the question still imposes itself! What is the EU market-economy supposed to do concretely in terms of economic policy?

And my answer is this: "There have been tough-times and those times will continue for a few more years as the EU works its way out of the long-term recessionary disinflation that befell it in 2012. There is nothing "fundamentally wrong" with the EU. It is the largest single market-economy in the Western World - larger than that of the US in terms of population alone.

Why is that fact key? Because "population" is the be-all and end-all of economics. Without population, you don't have consumers and without consumers you do not have production of goods/services. And without production, you do not have GDP.

Finally - GDP is the only economic-game worth playing because it sustains the economy, which sustains families. Since the dawn of time, there is no societal formation that has been more important than the "family".

It is as simple as that, methinks ...
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