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So how familiar are you with the power (or lack thereof) wielded by the European Parliament vis-a-vis the national legislatures? To what extent is the EU a unitary or federal state? Who -- if anyone -- purports to be the leader of Europe?
I'd be very surprised if the far-rightists (and Greek far-leftists) accomplished much besides endless temper tantrums.
A crack in the dyke is just a crack until it isnt.
Wouldn't read too much into this as there is much going on in the background inflaming passions of many French.
France's economy is going down the toilet and much of the promises made by M. Hollande have not happened. Well aside from gay marriage and raising taxes and in general the austerity measures needed to control the country's deficit rates.
Problem for France is it is part of the EU and therefore must abide by the rules. The country has been running deficits for years at or over the 3% allowed by EU rules and must take actions to bring things under control. Sadly a time of high unemployment, social changes and so forth are *NOT* the time to anger many French with talk of government spending cuts.
In many ways Hollande is like Obama; the man made lots of promises and much of his schemes relies upon soaking the rich to pay "their fair share", and so forth. Problem is that only goes but so far for two main reasons: there are only so many "wealthy" and those assets often are largely portable as are the persons themselves.
Also like Obama Hollande and his party pushed through SSM hoping it would preserve their fortunes. While gay marriage is gaining in popularity with the French slowly it still remains a dividing issue. Worse for M. Hollande his party only gave gays part of what his manifesto promised; that is regarding the matter of children. That subject still remains such very hot potato it seems all but abandoned for the moment.
In brief it isn't about gay marriage/equality, or anything else but the fact France and the French must accept the world is changing and they will need to adapt. The vast and expensive social welfare systems cannot go on if the funds aren't there to pay, and simply printing money and running up deficits to paper over the situation is no longer possible in the long run.
On the employment side companies and businesses in France are subject to the same global forces as anywhere else. The more protective French government becomes of businesses basically making them into instruments of the state, the less likely they are to hire and or invest. What they are doing is looking for ways to move all or part of their operations offshore.
Yes, they do. They also change *back*. And anyone who thinks this automatically means Marine Le Pen will be the next President of France is in for a rude awakening.
The important thing to keep in mind is that once a political party becomes one of the main players on the national political scene it attracts many followers. While a party is on the fringes of politics people don't give them much credence. But now that Marine Le Pen's party is a main player they will attract people from the political center and right of center into their orbit. It always happens that way. At least in European politics. So the National Front is going to grow and grow and it wouldn't surprise me if in 5 years(next election) they will take 50% of the vote. As far as Le Pen becoming the president of France I think she stands a very good chance.
In brief it isn't about gay marriage/equality, or anything else but the fact
France and the French must accept the world is changing and they will need to
adapt
That just changed. Those things that you talk about are going to have to adapt to the new France.
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