[Discussion] European Politics Discussion

European Politics discussion

Hopefully they dont copy Germany too much. Part of their 'success' has been gained exactly by creating low paying jobs and an increasing working poor population.

There is a growing wealth gap, that's true. I get the impression that most countries deal with this to varying degrees, however.

The German government has started to work against the ease with which companies and agencies/schools can keep people hired "temporarily" for years on end, as well as efforts at combating using sub-contractors as cheap regular employees, without the benefits or job security.

EDIT: should we amend the scope of discussion? It seems mostly out of date.

Axon wrote:

So, the real fun begins for Macron. Eleima?

Eleima wrote:

I haven't had time to look into the details of this new labor law, but what I do know is that most people aren't happy, and that unions are promising to strike.
So business as usual. :)

Maybe you missed this from Axon's link: "Muriel Pénicaud (L) spoke of an unprecedented transformation of France's labour rules."

No precedent. Nothing like this has happened before. /shrug

wordsmythe wrote:
Axon wrote:

So, the real fun begins for Macron. Eleima?

Eleima wrote:

I haven't had time to look into the details of this new labor law, but what I do know is that most people aren't happy, and that unions are promising to strike.
So business as usual. :)

Maybe you missed this from Axon's link: "Muriel Pénicaud (L) spoke of an unprecedented transformation of France's labour rules."

No precedent. Nothing like this has happened before. /shrug

Business as usual is referring to people not being happy and unions promising to strike.The changes may be unprecedented, but the people's reaction(s) aren't.

Stengah has the right of it. Presidents are constantly trying to reform to various degrees (see unrest under Juppé in 95), and unions are often going on strike. Which is a damned inconvenience when you live in the heart of Paris, believe me.
It seems like things shouldn't be too bad though, since only the CGT is threatening to go on strike, so we'll just have to see how things go.

The German election is all over bar the shouting. Of course something completely out of the ordinary will hit the moment I post this.

Guess we live in a world where Germany is the only stable major country around.
Sounds like the real fight in their election is who will join Merkel in government. Seems best if CDU and SPD would stay together.

I had meant to update with a post about the German general election but Macron has already made his move. He is criticising the CAP system live on TV. This is European politics third rail. He is clearly of the view that Merkel is now going to be forced into major reforms either by the Green or the Liberals.

It seems everyone was waiting for the German elections.

Edit: Go find the speech. This is incendiary stuff. Harmonised corporate tax between Germany and France. Eurozone reforms. No social dumping. Justice before competition. On and on.

While his labour reforms might be right wing this is all very left wing. Macron is prepared to deliver on what he promised. And I’m delighted.

Was listening to a podcast yesterday where they talked about this topic as well.
From what I gathered he basically seem to argue that the current eurozone benefits 'northern European' countries and are detrimental to the southern European countries.
Which is surely not 100% wrong. A shared currency without shared financial systems create some real problems.
But it is also a too convenient excuse when trying to dodge your own countries financial issues and lack of reforms.
Even if he is likely right that the eurozone, and thus EU as a whole, would be stronger and better off with harmonized financial structures, and more support for the struggling economies (though, it kinda should have happened years ago), that is very much not going to happen in the current situation in Europe. Hopefully he does not paint himself into a Cameronian corner.

CAP needs to die though (or greatly adjusted). Likewise good luck with that. I'm fairly certain people have wanted to kill CAP more times the last 20 years than Republicans have tried to kill Obamacare in the last month...

I dont necessarily see his labour reforms as right wing though. They are just only half of the reform.
Macron has in the past cited the Scandinavian Flexicurity labour model. And in some ways, his reforms gets closer to the Flexibility part. While ignoring the Security part... Of course the security part is the one that costs a lot of money France doesn't have.
Some time ago I heard that Macron actually had announced reforms of the latter later in the year (better unemployment benefits, better job training and so on), but I dont know if that is true.
At least it does make sense to implement the stick before the carrot, considering how much France has struggled with the first part.

I see your point about financial reforms, Shadout. Never considered that angle. All politics is local, after all.

On CAP, thinking about it, is Macron throwing that out there as something he eventually concedes down the line? I can see the other side of the argument but it’s not as if it’s a hill I’d die on. Never mind a French PM.

I see the leader of the Greens in Germany has praised the speech. Seeing as he is tipped to be the next foreign minister am I too cynical to suggest that he and Macron might be looking to box Merkel in? I wonder how close the two are working together?

The political nerd in me is getting over excited about what is coming

So, what’s the spread on Rajoy making the end of next week? More importantly what is the impact for all the other separatist movements across Europe?

Seems like it will be really hard for Spain to walk back on what happened today at least. Sure didn't look pretty.
Not convinced it will change much for other separatists yet. If some area - not necessarily Catalonia - forces independence and is allowed into EU someday (if EU still exists...), that could spread like fire.

In guess Putin had his Best Day Ever number 350 in a row today.

How would it be hard for Spain? They never recognized the vote as legal and it was pretty much only those who wanted to secede who voted. God knows they're not going to let go of a rich region like Catalan peacefully and I don't think the secessionist/pro-independence groups are going to start up an IRA-like campaign against the Spanish.

bnpederson wrote:

How would it be hard for Spain? They never recognized the vote as legal and it was pretty much only those who wanted to secede who voted. God knows they're not going to let go of a rich region like Catalan peacefully and I don't think the secessionist/pro-independence groups are going to start up an IRA-like campaign again against the Spanish.

FTFY?

I mean, if we want to go back to the pre-Franco Spain/Catalan, sure. Or the Catalan Revolt of the 1600s, I guess?

But, as far as I'm aware, none of those currently voting have taken terrorist actions against Spain before.

It will be hard due to the harsh actions taken against the separatists. The separatists (and likely people who did not consider themselves that before) will be even more pissed now. Can't imagine you will see terrorist groups emerging any time soon, but increased tensions and destructive behavior on both civil and political level seems likely. Spain already went for the violent response, so what is their next step? The road toward violent secession groups got to start somewhere.
Sounds like some groups are calling for a general strike, it will be interesting to see how many, if any, choose to support that.

Seems like Spain had been better off simply allowing/ignoring the vote, but continue to say that the vote is illegal. Which they are entirely correct about.

But it certainly isn't easy to know how to handle the situation. Other than the police violence yesterday (no matter if they were merely responding to violent civilians) the Spanish government has every right to try to prevent secession.
And hopefully they do - as said before, I doubt yesterday will affect other separatist groups, but a succesful secession really could start a wave of other attempts.

I note, with some disgust, that Westminster has refused to condemn the violence. No doubt Darth May was taking notes, just in case...

bnpederson wrote:

I mean, if we want to go back to the pre-Franco Spain/Catalan, sure. Or the Catalan Revolt of the 1600s, I guess?

But, as far as I'm aware, none of those currently voting have taken terrorist actions against Spain before.

Terra Lliure, apparently.

I don't care if the vote was legal or not. Once you have military outfitted police attacking firemen and civilians, something is wrong. My Dutch broadcast company NPO / NOS didn't show any of the violence. Also disturbing.

pyxistyx wrote:

I note, with some disgust, that Westminster has refused to condemn the violence. No doubt Darth May was taking notes, just in case...

bnpederson wrote:

I mean, if we want to go back to the pre-Franco Spain/Catalan, sure. Or the Catalan Revolt of the 1600s, I guess?

But, as far as I'm aware, none of those currently voting have taken terrorist actions against Spain before.

Terra Lliure, apparently.

Just for a bit of perspective, prior to the 1916 Rising in Ireland the vast majority of Ireland were in favour of remaining in the UK. The vast majority of the public viewed them as a nuisance or crackpots. It was the crackdown post the Rising, which was a complete failure militarily, that caused public opinion to swing. By 1919 Ireland was fighting a war of independence.

I'm not saying that the same can happen here but the lesson of history is once you loose the moderates anything is possible. Spain just made a huge political error with this behaviour and there is no question that the moderate Catalan has lost faith in Madrid. The fallout remains to be seen.

All of the EU politicians are silent about this, which is alarming.

The majority in Catalunya doesn't want independence and if the ones who want it knew that forcing independence would keep them indefinitely out of the EU, I'm sure they'd rethink their choice.

Now, after all the shenanigans from last week, the public opinion may start going against Madrid/Spain.

pyxistyx wrote:

I note, with some disgust, that Westminster has refused to condemn the violence. No doubt Darth May was taking notes, just in case...

bnpederson wrote:

I mean, if we want to go back to the pre-Franco Spain/Catalan, sure. Or the Catalan Revolt of the 1600s, I guess?

But, as far as I'm aware, none of those currently voting have taken terrorist actions against Spain before.

Terra Lliure, apparently.

Yeah, there's a long history of nationalist and resistance terrorism going back to the rise of Franco. Many of them (ETA especially) had close ties to the IRA.

Where are my hot takes on "Sortir significa sortir"?

bnpederson wrote:

How would it be hard for Spain? They never recognized the vote as legal and it was pretty much only those who wanted to secede who voted.

When you have 42% turnout, and a 90% margin to leave, the chance of the remaining votes overriding that are extremely small, particularly considering that the Spanish government was violently suppressing the vote. It wasn't just "no" votes that were blocked from the polls.

They had a higher turnout with the suppression than the US typically gets in a normal election year.

Things is Malor, that's about in line with the polling data running up to the vote. About 42-43% want to declare independence and 48-49% don't. I'd also take any information on turnout with a huge pinch of salt. Sinn Fein TDs/MPs were not touting those figures which is a good indication that their election observers weren't happy.

To explain, Sinn Fein support Catalonian and Scottish independence as they believe that it's a path to unite the Island of Ireland (North Ireland declare independence and later joins the Republic). I have to agree with Slazev, The major stumbling block is EU memberships. None of these movements will succeed without guaranteed EU status post election.

As for the harsh crackdown, it appears that Rajoy had a pretty good handle on public opinion. Doesn't appear to have caused a major shift in opinion either way. I'm not happy about that but that appears to be the reality.

Axon wrote:

Things is Malor

PS, Malor has been banned from P&C.

On the subject of extrapolating the turnout, in general I think that "extrapolating voter opinions to entire population opinions" is always a dangerous game. For example, here in the US polls of "registered voters" are always several points different from polls on all adults. That's one of the reasons voter suppression is a thing!

This extrapolation goes from iffy to useless in some sorts of elections: specifically, elections where one of the parties is actively boycotting the election. While it sounds dumb, it's absolutely a thing that happens, and when it does happen it absolutely throws those numbers way out of wack.

The last Puerto Rico statehood referendum is a very stark example of that. A combination of the previous statehood referendum being ignored with the justification of "not enough people voted", and a protest for the wording of the "status quo" option meant that a LOT of "status quo" voters just didn't go to the polls, in an explicit boycott. The election got a turnout of 23%, in a territory where turnout is usually significantly above the mainland.

I see that in the 2016 Spanish General Election overall turnout was 66.5% (low for the nation) but quick English googling unfortunately didn't turn up Catalonia's specific turnout in that. It's true that in this specific case the suppression raises much more of a question of why turnout was low, but just like in Puerto Rico there were strong justifications for the "status quo" votes to stay home, so these results really don't--for me--suggest that the overall polling showing a minority wanting to leave are incorrect.

Catalonia: "I'd like to keep my options open."

Spain: "Nah."

The Spanish government is to suspend Catalonia’s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region’s president refused to abandon the push for independence that has led to Spain’s biggest political crisis for 40 years.

The announcement of the unprecedented measure came after Carles Puigdemont threatened a unilateral declaration of independence if the Spanish government did not agree to talks on the issue.

In a letter sent on Thursday morning to the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, Puigdemont said discussions were the only way to avert the crisis, as the deadline set by Madrid for the region to abandon its independence plans passed.

The Catalan president also accused Spanish authorities of seeking to repress the independence movement after two of its leaders were denied bail by a national court judge earlier this week, and he said using article 155 of the constitution to impose direct rule from Madrid would force his hand.

There is no way for the Spanish government to exert this control that does not involve boots on the ground, is there?

I assume it involves boots on the ground, further protest/riot suppression, and bringing in federal employees to replace striking city workers. Because I'm thinking teachers will strike, at the very least.

So apparently the next leader of the Czech Republic is going to be another scandal embroiled populist.

His party won with nearly 3x as many votes as the next party. Media here is calling him the Czech Trump, and he ran on a Eurosceptic platform.

Great, as if Poland, Hungary, the UK, Russia and Turkey (did I forget anyone?) weren't trouble enough.

Also, Austria just shifted more to the right as well. The most likely coalition for the winning center-right ÖVP party (Austria's new leader will be 31 years old), is with the far right FPÖ, though they are officially keeping their options open and not ruling out a coalition with the more liberal SPÖ (which held power until now).

I posted it in another thread, but European (hell, globally) populism is here to stay.

Meanwhile, the Catalonia crisis rumbles on.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont says Catalonia will not accept Madrid's plan to impose direct rule on the region.

He described it as the worst attack on Catalonia's institutions since General Franco's 1939-1975 dictatorship, under which regional autonomy was dissolved.

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy's plans include the removal of Catalonia's leaders and curbs on its parliament.
It follows the independence referendum that went ahead despite being banned by Spain's Constitutional Court.

Mr Puigdemont said the Spanish government was acting against the democratic will of Catalans after refusing all offers of dialogue.

He said he would call for a session in the Catalan parliament to debate a response to Mr Rajoy's plans.

Addressing European citizens in English, he added that the European Union's founding values were "at risk in Catalonia".

Catalonian regional parliament makes it official

The Catalan regional parliament has voted to declare independence from Spain, while the Spanish parliament has approved direct rule over the region.

Catalan MPs easily approved the move amid an opposition boycott.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had told senators direct rule was needed to return "law, democracy and stability" to Catalonia.

The crisis began earlier this month when Catalonia held a controversial referendum on independence.

EDIT: The fact that no-one has headlined this story "Things Getting Messi in Spain" is a INTERNATIONAL TRAVESTY.