European Politics discussion
My statement was a bit of sarcastic take on that specific issue, and the general carceral state.
Ahh, it's been a while since I missed the sarcasm in an online post. Hello embarrassment, my old friend!
Np, I thought it would translate that that I've never heard of "not enough space in our prisons" in America because we love to overcrowd them so much.
German police say 26-year-old man has turned himself in, claiming to be behind Solingen knife attack
SOLINGEN, Germany (AP) — A 26-year-old man turned himself into police, saying he was responsible for the Solingen knife attack that left three dead and eight wounded at a festival marking the city’s 650th anniversary, German authorities announced early Sunday.
Duesseldorf police said in a joint statement with the prosecutor’s office that the man “stated that he was responsible for the attack.”
“This person’s involvement in the crime is currently being intensively investigated,” the statement said.
The suspect is a Syrian citizen who had applied for asylum in Germany, police confirmed to The Associated Press.
On Saturday the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, without providing evidence. The extremist group said on its news site that the attacker targeted Christians and that he carried out the assaults Friday night “to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere.” The claim couldn’t be independently verified.
The attack comes amid debate over immigration ahead of regional elections next Sunday in Germany’s Saxony and Thueringia regions where anti-immigration parties such as the populist Alternative for Germany are expected to do well. In June, Chancellor Olaf Scholz vowed that the country would start deporting criminals from Afghanistan and Syria again after a knife attack by an Afghan immigrant left one police officer dead and four more people injured.
On Saturday, a synagogue in France was targeted in an arson attack. French police said they made an arrest early Sunday.
Friday’s attack plunged the city of Solingen into shock and grief. A city of about 160,000 residents near the bigger cities of Cologne and Duesseldorf, Solingen was holding a “Festival of Diversity” to celebrate its anniversary.
The festival began Friday and was supposed to run through Sunday, with several stages in central streets offering attractions such as live music, cabaret and acrobatics. The attack took place in front of one stage.
Sigh.
Sigh.
Yeah, quite a few ---hats doing their best lately to prove right wing "throw em all out and build a wall" jerks correct. Solingen was just the most headline-grabbing event, but there has been a rash of stabbings by migrants/refugees recently.
Prederick wrote:Sigh.
Yeah, quite a few ---hats doing their best lately to prove right wing "throw em all out and build a wall" jerks correct. Solingen was just the most headline-grabbing event, but there has been a rash of stabbings by migrants/refugees recently.
You say it like that isn’t exactly the strategy of these groups. The primary goal is to sow terror amongst their enemies but the strong secondary goal is to isolate members from their own groupings from any other options.
If migrants/refugees are able to integrate with German society then this withers away. People with good jobs and prospects in just environments don’t commit terrorism (or nearly any crime tbh)
If migrants/refugees are able to integrate with German society then this withers away. People with good jobs and prospects in just environments don’t commit terrorism (or nearly any crime tbh)
I worry that this either isn't happening on a significant scale, or will simply take multiple generations. Granted, I'm only talking about my small corner of Germany, but I'm not noticing a major intermingling (and Bavarians, especially Franconians, are quite insular people generally, so that makes it even harder), and the jobs most of them appear to be doing is packaging and delivering our Amazon crap, low-end construction jobs, and the like. Obviously there are exceptions like Afghan friends of ours who are now doing tax prep work, but I do worry about a ghetto-ization of a major portion of migrants, and the future problems that will cause.
I hope that worry is unfounded, and I do intend to do what I can to make sure it doesn't happen.
Scholz vows to speed up deportations after Solingen stabbings
I wish this wasn't exactly what I expected, but it is.
Irregular migration into Germany "must go down" after a Syrian man who came to Germany as an asylum seeker was charged with killing three people in an attack in the western town of Solingen last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said.
"This was terrorism, terrorism against us all," Mr Scholz said during a visit to Solingen on Monday.
Mr Scholz also said his government would have to do "everything we can to ensure that those who cannot and should not stay here in Germany are repatriated and deported" and that deportations would be sped up if necessary.
He also promised to tighten laws on weapons ownership "very quickly".
The political ramifications of the tragedy started reverberating across Germany as soon as officials confirmed the suspect in Friday’s deadly stabbings was a Syrian refugee.
The alleged attacker - named as 26-year-old Issa Al H. - is suspected of links to the terror organisation Islamic State.
An already heated debate about migration has become even more ferocious.
A day after the attacks, conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz demanded an end to taking in refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and called for controls on all of Germany’s borders.
Alice Weidel, leader of the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD), has gone a step further and wants a complete stop to all migration.
Experts say such suggestions are not feasible and incompatible with German and European Union law.
Mr Scholz’s governing centre-left SPD party says Germany remains committed to its legal and humanitarian commitments to help those fleeing persecution.
But his government has also pledged to deport migrants who have committed serious crimes and people whose application for asylum has been rejected.
The suspect in the Solingen attack came to Germany in 2022 as a Syrian refugee. Usually Syrians have a good chance of being granted asylum in Germany.
But his application was rejected and he was ordered to be deported to Bulgaria, because he had already registered for asylum there. Officials say when they tried to deport him, they could not locate him and he remained in Germany.
Now a row has broken out about who was responsible for that failing.
Germany does not generally deport people back to unsafe countries or war-zones such as Syria, or Afghanistan - which would involve negotiating with the Taliban government. But there are calls to change that.
For years Germany has been embroiled in a controversial debate about migration. Local councils say their budgets are stretched. There are also calls to speed up the application process and allow refugees to work sooner which some say would help them integrate into German society.
Given the large numbers of refugees Germany takes in, the country generally copes well, and this year refugee numbers appear to have been dropping.
However, Germany typically takes in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers every year.
In 2023 just over 350,000 people applied for asylum. In addition, around 1.2 million Ukrainians have arrived in Germany since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Compared to other countries which take in fewer refugees, terror attacks connected to asylum seekers in Germany are rare.
The last major incident was in 2016, when 12 people were killed when an Islamist extremist drove a lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin.
But this latest attack may have a huge political impact.
On Sunday, two large eastern German states - Saxony and Thuringia - will hold key regional elections.
The AfD, which is hoping to do well and may even win the most votes, is already using the attack as part of its campaign.
Within hours of the stabbing, the AfD - referring to the party's regional leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke - posted a video on social media captioned with the words “Höcke or Solingen”.
DoveBrown wrote:If migrants/refugees are able to integrate with German society then this withers away. People with good jobs and prospects in just environments don’t commit terrorism (or nearly any crime tbh)
I worry that this either isn't happening on a significant scale, or will simply take multiple generations. Granted, I'm only talking about my small corner of Germany, but I'm not noticing a major intermingling (and Bavarians, especially Franconians, are quite insular people generally, so that makes it even harder)
History has shown over and over and over again that, generally, immigrants do not integrate - their children do. Expecting anything else is just not going to happen, and anyone arguing that something should happen because they haven't integrated is arguing in bad faith or a fool.
Germany had 300 murders last year. Did they also call for bans on things that contributed to those murders?
Even the children don't necessarily integrate. Stuff like this can indeed take many generations.
In any case, as far as I recall Germany have had a few knife attacks in recent years, more often than not, done by "ethnic Germans"?
Not to mention the ridiculous right wing group that, *checks notes*, wanted to make an actual coup.
This is a horrible event of course, and things (police work, social work) should be done to prevent it from happening.
But it feels like the same story everywhere; whenever it is "your own" political or ethnic group doing the violence, it is "thoughts and prayers", followed by silence. When it is someone from a group you don't like, it is a systemic issue that needs drastic measures to stop.
Surely they can figure out how to reverse Brexit without a plan. They already managed to leave EU without a plan.
Surely they can figure out how to reverse Brexit without a plan. They already managed to leave EU without a plan.
There's a plan. Steps 2 and 3 are ?? and PROFIT, respectively.
Also posted this in the migrant thread, but it's also a political story, given this weekend's elections:
German far right hails 'historic' election victory in east
Germany's anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) is celebrating a "historic success", with a big victory for the far-right party in the eastern state of Thuringia.
The AfD won almost a third of the vote, nine points ahead of the conservative CDU, and far in front of Germany's three governing parties.
The result gives the far right its first win in a state parliament election since World War Two, although it has little hope of forming a government in Thuringia because other parties are unlikely to work with it.
The AfD came a close second in Sunday's other big state election, in the more populous neighbouring state of Saxony.
Results there gave the CDU 31.9% of the vote, just ahead of the AfD, again far ahead of the three parties running the national government - the Social Democrats, Greens and liberal FDP.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the results were "bitter" and called on other mainstream parties to form state governments without the far right. "The AfD is damaging Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country's reputation," he said in a statement to Reuters.
The AfD's top candidate in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, who is a highly controversial figure in Germany, hailed a "historic victory" and spoke of his great pride. He failed to win a direct mandate for the state parliament, but secured a seat because he was top of his party list.
Mr Höcke's party has been designated as right-wing extremist and he has been fined for using a Nazi slogan, although the former history teacher denies knowingly doing so.
One of Germany's best-known Holocaust survivors, Charlotte Knobloch, pointed out that the election had taken place 85 years to the day since the outbreak of World War Two. The result had left the country in danger of becoming "more unstable, colder and poorer, less safe and less worth living in", she said.
With federal elections only a year away, the AfD is second in national opinion polls. Co-leader Alice Weidel said the result was a "requiem" for the three parties running Germany and it was clear that voters in both eastern states wanted her party in government.
"Without us a stable government is no longer possible at all," she said.
That message was repeated by Björn Höcke, who suggested there were plenty of CDU voters who would be happy if they worked together.
Without the support of other parties, the AfD cannot govern in Thuringia, and the CDU has made clear it will not consider ruling with the far right.
Mathematically, the conservatives will need support from parties on the left to form a majority.
Some five million Germans in the east were eligible to vote on Sunday and, according to a survey for public broadcaster ZDF, 36% of under-30s in Thuringia voted for the AfD, far more than any other party.
The biggest issue for AfD voters on Sunday was immigration, and in particular the issue of refugees and asylum.
“Politicians have promised a lot, particularly concerning migration and foreigners," AfD voter Michael told the BBC in Thuringia's state capital, Erfurt.
"But nothing happened. Nothing. Just promises came from these parties. Now I have my party. And I stand with my decision," he said, standing beside his partner Manuela, who agreed that people wanted change.
The asylum issue was re-ignited nationally little more than a week before the vote, when three people were murdered at a street festival at Solingen in western Germany, and a Syrian man facing deportation was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.
AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch told the BBC's Newshour programme that political opponents had been attacking her party's asylum policies as extremist for years. "Two days ahead of the election they started to do what we always said had to be done," she said, referring to a series of government measures aimed at toughening asylum laws.
The AfD also wants to stop weapons supplies to Ukraine, as does a new party heading for third place in both states, left-wing populist leader Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW.
Although she has similar ideas to the AfD on Ukraine, Ms Wagenknecht has, like the other parties, refused to take part in any coalition with the far right.
Provisional results in Thuringia give the AfD 32 seats in the 88-seat Thuringia state parliament, and the CDU 23 seats, with only one of the three parties in the national government represented.
That gives the AfD more than a third of the seats, handing it a blocking minority on decisions that require a two-thirds majority, including changes to the state constitution or appointing judges.
Chancellor Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) is set to win just six seats, with none for the Greens and liberal FDP.
In Saxony, the conservatives won 42 seats, just ahead of the AfD with 41, while Sahra Wagenknecht's party is in third with 15 seats.
Sunday's elections have underlined the unpopularity of Germany's ruling "traffic-light" coalition, so named because of the red, yellow and green of the party colours.
A third eastern state, Brandenburg, is due to vote in three weeks' time and although the AfD is ahead in the opinion polls, the Social Democrats and conservatives are only a few points behind.
While Björn Höcke hailed his party's victory with supporters in Erfurt, anti-AfD protesters gathered outside the Thuringia state parliament.
The AfD has been classified as right-wing extremist by domestic intelligence in Thuringia as well as Saxony. In May, a German court ruled that the BfV intelligence agency was justified in placing the AfD under observation for suspected extremism.
Among the protesters was Hannah, a local student, who said she was very worried by the result: "I think there are a lot of people who are aware they have Nazi policies and don't care. Germany has some kind of responsibility on that matter."
The rise of Sahra Wagenknecht's populist party had a direct impact on the Left party, which won the last election in Thuringia but has now slipped into fourth place.
Bodo Ramelow, the Left-party state premier of Thuringia, who had led a coalition with the SPD and Greens, said the election campaign had been characterised by fear and that he was "fighting against the normalisation of fascism".
Grenfell families say they were 'failed by dishonesty' as inquiry finds deaths were avoidable
The long-awaited Grenfell inquiry report was published today, seven years on from the high-rise building fire that claimed the lives of 72 people in June 2017.
Here's a look at what you need to know about the report:
- The Grenfell inquiry blames "decades of failures" from governments, firms and the fire service for the disaster that unfolded in west London
- The inquiry's chairman Sir Martin Moore-Bick says that all deaths in the fire were avoidable
- Grenfell residents were badly let down by those responsible for fire safety and there was a "failure on the part of the council"
- Manufacturers of cladding products – which were "by far the largest contributor" to the fire – are found to have engaged in "systematic dishonesty"
- The report also says that "incompetent" companies involved in the 2011 refurbishment of the tower – Studio E and Harley Facades – bear "significant" responsibility for the disaster
- The report said there was a "chronic lack of leadership" and an "attitude of complacency" at the London Fire Brigade
- The victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster were killed by toxic gases, not the fire itself, Moore-Bick says
There's "a shocking crime" and then there's this:
(The story is profoundly distressing, just FYI.)
Woman describes horror of learning husband drugged her so others could rape her
A French woman who was raped by unknown men over 10 years after being drugged to sleep by her husband told a court of her horror at learning how she had been abused.
Gisèle Pélicot, who is 72, was giving evidence on day three of the trial in Avignon, south-east France, of 51 men – including her husband of 50 years, Dominique. All are accused of rape.
Documents before court indicate that Dominique Pélicot, 71, admitted to police that he got satisfaction from watching other men have sex with his unconscious wife.
Many defendants in the case contest the rape charge against them, claiming that they thought they were taking part in a consensual sex game.
But Gisèle Pélicot told the court she was "never complicit" in the sexual acts and had never pretended to be asleep.
This is a case that has shocked France, all the more so because the trial is being held in public.
Gisèle waived her right to anonymity to shift the "shame" back onto the accused, her legal team has previously said.
Taking the stand on Thursday, she said she was speaking for "every woman who's been drugged without knowing it... so that no woman has to suffer."
She recalled the moment in November 2020 when she was asked by police to attend an interview alongside her husband.
He had recently been caught taking under-skirt photographs of women at a supermarket, and Gisèle told the court she believed the meeting with police was a formality related to that incident.
“The police officer asked me about my sex life,” she told the court. “I told him I had never practised partner-swapping or threesomes. I said I was a one-man woman. I couldn’t bear any man’s hands on me other than my husband’s.
“But after an hour the officer said, ‘I am going to show you some things which you will not find pleasant’. He opened a folder and he showed me a photograph.
“I did not recognise either the man or the woman asleep on the bed. The officer asked: ‘Madame, is this your bed and bedside table?’
“It was hard to recognise myself dressed up in a way that was unfamiliar. Then he showed me a second photo and a third.
“I asked him to stop. It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me. My world fell apart.”
Gisèle said that up until then their marriage had been generally happy, and she and her husband had overcome a number of financial and health-related difficulties. She said she had forgiven the upskirting after he promised her that it had been a one-off incident.
“All that we had built together had gone. Our three children, seven grandchildren. We used to be an ideal couple.
“I just wanted to disappear. But I had to tell my children their father was under arrest. I asked my son-in-law to stay next to my daughter when I told her that her father had raped me, and had me raped by others.
“She let out a howl, whose sound is still etched on my mind.”In the coming days, the court will hear more evidence from the investigation, about how Dominique allegedly contacted men via sex-chat websites and invited them to his suburban home in Mazan, a town north-east of Avignon.
Police claim the men were given strict instructions. They had to park at some distance from the house so as to not attract attention, and to wait for up to an hour so that the sleeping drugs which he had given Gisèle could take effect.
They further claim that, once in the home, the men were told to undress in the kitchen, and then to warm their hands with hot water or on a radiator. Tobacco and perfume were not allowed in case they awoke Gisèle. Condoms were not required.
No money changed hands.
According to the investigation, Dominique watched and filmed the proceedings, eventually creating a hard-drive file with some 4,000 photos and videos on it. It was as a result of the upskirting episode that police found the files on his computer.
Police say they have evidence of around 200 rapes carried out between 2011 and 2020, initially at their home outside Paris, but mainly in Mazan, where they moved in 2013.
Investigators allege that just over half the rapes were carried out by her husband. Most of the other men lived only a few kilometres away.
Asked Thursday by the judge if she knew any of the accused, Gisèle said she recognised only one.
“He was our neighbour. He came over to check our bikes. I used to see him at the bakery. He was always polite. I had no idea he was coming to rape me.”
Gisèle was then reminded by the judge that in order to respect the presumption of innocence, it had been agreed in court not to use the word rape but “sex scene”.
She replied: “I just think they should recognise the facts. When I think of what they have done I am overcome with disgust. They should at least have the responsibility to recognise what they did.”
After the truth emerged, Gisèle found that she was carrying four sexually-transmitted diseases.
“I have had no sympathy from any of the accused. One who was HIV-positive came six times. Not once did my husband express any concern about my health,” she said.
She is now in the process of divorcing him.
After speaking for two hours in front of Dominique and the other accused, she said: “Inside me, it is a scene of devastation. The façade may look solid... but behind it...”
I am against Capital Punishment. Generally. But there are definitely cases where I wonder if there should be exceptions.
She may also be one of the bravest women who ever lived.
German border plan to stop ‘irregular migration’ unacceptable, says Tusk
The Polish government is accusing Germany of acting unilaterally and unfairly over its “unacceptable” plans to introduce temporary controls into in the passport-free Schengen zone at all the country’s nine land borders, in what Warsaw says is a contravention of European law.
Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, said Germany had introduced a “de facto suspension of the Schengen agreement on a large scale” after the interior minister, Nancy Faeser, announced Berlin’s decision to confront what she called “irregular migration” by introducing spot controls along Germany’s 2,300-mile (3,700km) frontier after a recent spate of suspected Islamist attacks.
Tusk called for “urgent consultations” with Germany’s other neighbours.
The new regulations are due to start next Monday and to be in place for an initial six months. The decision comes amid a heated political debate in Germany on migration after recent fatal attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers whose claims had been turned down, and as Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), campaigning heavily against migration, this month became the first far-right political party since the Nazi era to win a state election in Germany.
‘The end of Schengen’: Germany’s new border controls put EU unity at risk
Germany’s decision to tighten controls at every one of its land borders seems driven chiefly by politics, is difficult to justify in law, deals a heavy blow to Europe’s prized free movement and could severely test EU unity.
Berlin said on Monday that controls in place at its border with Austria since 2015, and since last year with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland, would be extended next week to France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark.
The move would curb migration and “protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious crime,” said Nancy Faeser, the interior minister.
The most recent in a series of deadly knife attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers, in Solingen last month, came days before crunch regional elections in eastern Germany that resulted in the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party scoring historic successes in two states.
Polls show migration is also voters’ biggest concern in Brandenburg, which holds its own elections in a fortnight – with Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic party forecast to finish behind the far-right party – and the chancellor’s ailing coalition seems to be heading toward a crushing defeat in federal elections next year.
“The intention of the government seems to be to show symbolically to Germans and to potential migrants that the latter are no longer wanted here,” said Marcus Engler of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research.
Faeser said the new controls would include a scheme allowing more people to be turned back directly at the border, but declined to go into detail. Officials and diplomats in Brussels have expressed dismay, calling the move “transparent” and “obviously aimed at a domestic audience”.
Germany’s central position in the EU and its status as the bloc’s largest economy, mean the controls, due to come into force on 16 September for an initial six months, could have an impact that reaches far beyond the country’s voters.
In principle, Europe’s passport-free Schengen area, which was created in 1985 and now includes 25 of the 27 EU member states plus four others including Switzerland and Norway, allows free movement between them all without border controls.
Temporary checks are allowed in emergencies and exceptional circumstances to avert specific threats to internal security or public policy, and have typically been imposed after terror attacks, for major sports events and during the pandemic.
Increasingly, however, European governments, often under pressure from far-right rhetoric on immigration, have reimposed checks without the justification of concrete and specific threats, or clear arguments as to how controls can help mitigate them.
Although immigration policies and asylum follow-up procedures, for example, are decided nationally, European free movement, many observers argue, makes for an easy target – and “taking back control of borders” for effective headlines.
Besides Germany, Schengen members currently operating controls on particular borders include Austria, which cites Ukraine-related security threats and pressure on asylum to check arrivals from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Hungary.
Denmark, citing terror threats related to the war in Gaza and Russian espionage risks, is carrying out checks on land and sea transit from Germany, and France is checking Schengen zone arrivals on the grounds of an increased terror threat.
Italy, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia and Finland are also operating border checks, variously citing terrorist activity, the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Russian intelligence activity, increased migration flows and organised crime in the Balkans.
As the guarantor of the Schengen treaty, the European Commission – which was notified of Germany’s plans on Monday – has generally accepted member states’ justifications for reintroducing temporary controls without demur.
Observers expect it to do the same for Berlin’s demand, despite the fact that there appears to be little clear practical justification – beyond an electoral threat from the anti-immigration far right – for checks on all nine of the country’s borders.
The commission said on Tuesday that member states were allowed to take such a step to address “a serious threat”, but the measures needed to be “necessary and proportionate” and must “remain strictly exceptional”.
The temporary German controls “represent a manifestly disproportionate breach of the principle of free movement within the Schengen area,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European law at HEC Paris.
“It won’t fly under EU law – yet will this dissuade Scholz from going ahead?” he said. Christopher Wratil of the University of Vienna was even more scathing, accusing Berlin of “governing as if the AfD were [already] in power”.
After today, Wratil said, German politicians “should no longer tell me that somebody else is failing to comply with EU law … Wanting to wipe out Schengen with a mere stroke of the pen – and entirely without thinking.”
Others noted the economic value of the Schengen zone. A report by the Bertelsmann Foundation as long ago as 2016 estimated the reintroduction of internal border controls would cost Europe about €470bn (£397bn) in lost growth over 10 years.
Gerald Knaus, the chair of the European Stability Initiative think tank, also questioned the measure’s efficacy. “Internal border controls that are intended to have any effect mean the end of Schengen,” Knaus said on X.
They would also require “federal border protection and fences around Germany” and, moreover, “will fail if neighbours are not interested in participating,” he said.
After the EU finally agreed a hard-fought overhaul to its asylum and migration laws earlier this year, with the rules only due to come into force in 2026, European unity could be seriously tested if Germany asks its neighbours to take back large numbers.
Austria has already said it will refuse to take back any migrants refused at the German border, while the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, on Tuesday called Berlin’s decision “unacceptable” and demanded urgent consultations.
France’s leftwing coalition had a serious chance to change the country. It blew it
My friend Guillaume recently hit on a perfect analogy for French politics: in a scene from Succession, Logan Roy’s children ask him why he is putting them through so much misery, and why he won’t just turn his company over to them. To which the surly CEO says: “I love you, but you are not serious people.”
The beauty of the Fifth Republic’s institutions is how flexible they are. When there is a clear majority, the system is presidential. When there’s not, it’s parliamentary. Except, a parliament with no clear majority requires serious people willing to do the difficult work of forming a coalition that is able to govern. And unfortunately, France’s collection of leftwing parties were unable to be serious about what governing entails.
French voters are upset with Macron – and rightly so – for naming the EU’s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier as prime minister. Barnier’s political family, Les Républicains, has only 47 seats (of 577) in the national assembly, and he will only survive no-confidence votes at the discretion of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) – the party that leftwing and centrist voters voted strategically to block. The disillusionment alone is a vast danger in a time when voters everywhere are losing faith in their democracies. Macron’s ego, his inability to accept having been wrong and to learn from it, ultimately swallowed his presidency.
But this situation is also the fault of the far-left leader Jean Luc Mélenchon’s extreme intransigence. The entire left alliance, the New Popular Front (NFP), won more seats in the July elections than any other bloc but still lacks a majority. It has only 182 out of 577 seats in parliament. Of those, 71 belong to Mélenchon’s party, France Unbowed (LFI). And yet, Mélenchon – who is like Macron in one specific way: the widespread rejection he as a person elicits among the French at large – and others in his party insisted that the left would enact “its programme, nothing but the programme, but all of the programme”.
There is just as much contempt for democracy in LFI’s “our way or the highway” approach as there was in Macron’s nomination of Barnier. The difference is that it failed, and Mélenchon’s obstinacy torpedoed the one real shot that the NFP had in governing the country and enacting some portion of its programme – Laurence Tubiana.
The NFP had nearly seven weeks to assemble a majority coalition. It could have put serious effort into building a coalition with other parties (a numerical necessity) behind France’s most high-profile international climate diplomat and key architect of Cop21’s Paris agreement as a consensus candidate. Instead, it fought and bickered for weeks, before tepidly landing on someone with no experience in governing, negotiating or coalition-building at a national or international level, and who more or less nobody had ever heard of. It was clear from day one that Lucie Castets was not going to solve the parliamentary casse-tête.
But there is a nugget of hope for the left: Barnier may be a blessing in disguise. The country is not going to be simple to govern, and whatever political instability or legislative failures follow will be owned by Macron and Barnier. The left will be able to run from the far easier place of opposition, not incumbency, in 2027. But to have a real second chance, it will have to truly break from Mélenchon in the way that the UK’s Labour party broke from Corbyn, and it will have to “get serious” about its economic programme.
The French left often speaks as if France were the United States – in the throes of neoliberalism with relatively low government spending, a huge margin to raise tax rates, and with the “exorbitant privilege” of printing the world’s reserve currency. But France is not the US. It has one of the highest levels of taxation and the highest public spending relative to GDP (57.3 %) in the OECD, an unsustainable budget deficit, and a debt verging on unsustainable as well. When 10.9% of all French state spending currently goes to servicing existing debt, that is a leftwing issue: it means that €52bn a year is not being invested in green energy, sustainable agriculture, university facilities, research and public housing.
France has a modern service and knowledge economy, where more than a fifth of the labour force either works for a small business or is self-employed, and where one of the areas actually growing – tech – requires investors to risk huge amounts of capital for very uncertain future payoffs. The left needs to speak to these people not about what the economy looked like in the 1970s, but about what it is going to look like tomorrow. And yet, in the whole of the NFP’s programme, AI wasn’t mentioned once.
Not all of this is purely about Mélenchon’s left. Even the centre left has failed to offer productive ways to reform the retirement system. The only thing that a majority of parliamentarians and the French public (everyone but Macron’s centrist coalition) agree on is their dislike of the retirement reform, which they pledge to repeal. But there’s no repealing the maths behind it: there are just fewer workers for every retiree than there were a generation ago.
Are there ways around this? Undoubtedly. France could, for example, set up a system of public pension funds – modelled on its collection of non-profit health “mutuals” that form the backbone of its well-designed and effective hybrid public-private universal healthcare system – to redistribute market gains back to workers. Or, for a country firmly committed to a retirement system based on “repartition”, the centre-left could propose some type of points-based system that applied a multiplier to all years worked prior to the age of 25, to account for the disparity between those who go to university and those who begin working early (most likely in jobs that take a bigger physical toll). Workers could have the choice to take their additional points in either time (departing for retirement at a younger age) or money (by benefiting from a boosted monthly payment).
France – and Europe – face many challenges. War still rages in Ukraine, and an unreformed unanimous requirement means the EU has no effective foreign policy voice on Gaza. A humanitarian crisis and disaster of massive proportions is happening in Sudan. The EU needs to plan for a worst-case scenario in the US in November. Mario Draghi’s report on competitiveness published this week warns of the risk of Europe’s decline, and recommends an €800bn-a-year spending boost to maintain the foundation of competitiveness and innovation that can underwrite the green transition and a strong European social state into the future.
To act on any of it, though, the French left is going to have to jettison its obstructionists – and become a force capable of building coalitions and governing.
That analysis is really egregious. Macron was gonna snub the left no matter what.
I love how this thread and the mgirant crisis thread have basically merged:
Brexit deal impact in UK is worsening, warn economists
Brexit red tape on British businesses has caused goods trade between the UK and EU to slump and the problem is getting worse, a study has warned.
Many smaller UK producers have given up exporting small amounts to the EU after facing more rules and regulations, a report by Aston University Business School has found.
Between 2021 and 2023, the study calculated that UK goods exports to the EU were down 27% and imported goods were 32% lower than where they would have been had Brexit not happened.
The report does not include the service sector, which has performed better than many experts had expected since Brexit.
The variety of trade export goods has also dropped, the study found, with 1,645 fewer types of British products exported to every EU country.
The authors said this is due to smaller British producers giving up on exporting consignments to some EU nations after facing increased red tape.
Mary Quicke of Quicke's Cheeses in Devon told the BBC's Today programme that she had found it "really, really difficult to deal with all the regulatory burdens".
She said she used to supply four customers directly in the EU but "we had to give them away to somebody else".
"We just don't have the people to do the paperwork.”
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