An Americaless NATO: should they be pushed before they jump?

Donald Trump threatened to pull the United States out of NATO at last week's summit in Brussels. Perhaps European leaders should call his bluff. A European Treaty Organisation may be the only logical way forward.

As Donald Trump stood beside Vladimir Putin on Monday and stated that he believes the Russian president over his own intelligence agencies, you could feel a collective shudder pass across Europe.

"If Trump isn't even willing to side with his own intelligence agencies over Russia right now, why would anyone think he would side with us?” one Latvian friend sent me in a text. “NATO is finished. And if NATO is finished, Latvia is finished."

There has been much speculation since Monday over why Trump would defy his own intelligence, his own party and even his own advisors in refusing to acknowledge that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election. But whatever the reason, Trump’s summit with Putin, immediately following his aggressive attacks on NATO during his visit to Brussels, have left many Europeans with only one conclusion: we’re on our own now.

After trauma of Lisbon, Macron faces uphill battle for EU treaty change

The new French president may have softened Merkel's resistance to change, but leaders across Europe will be wary of opening a pandora's box.

Emmanuel Macron made his first foreign visit as French president yesterday, coming here to Berlin for a meeting with Angela Merkel.

That Berlin was his first destination is no surprise. The Franco-German relationship is the most important for Paris, and also the most important relationship in the European Union as a whole. But there was an added importance to this first visit. During his campaign Macron made promises about a process of renewal and reform of the EU. None of that will be possible without the cooperation of Germany's chancellor.

We still do not know if Merkel, a conservative, will be that chancellor. Germany is having a general election in September and she may be unseated by her center-left challenger Martin Schulz, a former president of the European Parliament.

Le Pen and Trump: politics-as-entertainment

The French presidential debate echoed last year's US debates. Like Trump, LePen laughed while she bullied and mocked her opponent. We are living in an age of clowns.

Last night marked the one and only debate between the two candidates who will participate in Sunday's final round of French presidential elections, far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and centrist internationalist Emmanuel Macron. For me, it had eery similarities to last year's Trump-Clinton debates in the United States.

Donald Trump had a way of getting under his opponents' skin. He would mock them, call them names, and laugh in their face. Marco Rubio was "Little Marco". Ted Cruz was "Lyin' Ted". Hillary Clinton was "Crooked Hillary". He dragged the Republican presidential primary into the mud, as his opponents desperately tried to counter his popularity by sinking to his level. Trump even goaded Rubio, a US Senator, into challenging his penis size.

Europe’s new hope

Emmanuel Macron’s first-place finish in France’s first round of presidential elections was calming for people fearful of the rising nationalist tide. But Le Pen still poses a clear and present danger.

Standing in front of the EU and French flags last night, the man who came first place in France’s first round of presidential elections spoke passionately of a France at the heart of Europe, and part of a global community.

Emmanuel Macron came top in the country’s first round of voting, and is now heading for a run-off with far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen. In an extraordinary development, the two of them have exiled the country’s two mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties from power. And both could significantly change France from the country it has been under those parties’ rule over the past 30 years. “The people of France wanted change so badly…in one year we have entirely changed the French political situation,” he told the crowd.

There is no such thing as Frexit

You cannot exit something that no longer exists.

I'm in Paris this weekend covering the first round of French presidential elections, a historic contest which will have a profound impact on Europe and the world.

Tomorrow's first round of voting could result in a run-off between a far-left and a far-right candidate, both of whom are hostile to the European Union and have in the past called for France to leave the EU. The latest polls show a race that is anyone's game, and could result in any number of second round combinations across the political spectrum. It is an election like France has never seen, and nobody knows that tomorrow will bring.

A first round win for far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen and far-left communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon would send shock waves throughout the world. It would not only mean the collapse of the mainstream political infrastructure in France. It would put the future of Europe, and of Western liberal democracy as a whole, in terrifying doubt.

Mélenchon would 'renegotiate' Europe and call a referendum after. Sound familiar?

The far-left firebrand's plan to completely overhaul the EU or call a referendum on membership if he doesn't get his way is as naive and dangerous as David Cameron's 2015 gambit.

Two years ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron was running scared.

Faced with unending sniping about the European Union from his backbench MPs, and a UK Independence Party with the wind at their backs (they had finished first in the UK's European Parliament election the year before), Cameron panicked. He promised to 'renegotiate' the terms of Britain's membership of the EU, and then hold an in-out referendum based on the result.

As The Economist wrote earlier this month, it was a solution in search of a problem. Only 5% of British people saw the EU as one of the most important issues facing Britain at the time (more than half see it that way today). It was a move to placate politicians in his own party, not to address any real pressing concern from the public.

Europe's 2017 elections are turning into referendums on Trump

Feelings of nationalism are running strong in France, but anti-Americanism may be stronger.

Three years ago, when a former investment banker named Emmanuel Macron was appointed as interior minister in the French government, nobody had ever heard of him. 

Today, he has come out of nowhere to second place in the French presidential election. It looks increasingly likely that he will be in a head-to-head with French far-right leader Marine Le Pen in May's second round of voting. More than anything else, there is one element that explains his meteoric rise: he is presenting himself as the anti-Trump.

His candidacy comes at a time when many in France, and indeed the entire European continent, are terrified that the French presidency will be snatched by Le Pen's far-right National Front - a party with anti-Semitic routes from the ashes of the Second World War. Were Le Pen to win, it would not only have implications for France. It would probably mean the collapse of the European Union, or at least its transformation into an irrelevance.

Europeans have been lied to their whole lives. They have three months to learn the truth.

European politicians have never explained to their citizens how dependent they are on America. As the Trump emergency unfolds, many still do not understand the danger they are in.

At the tail end of 2016, as Europeans adjusted to the reality that Donald Trump had won the presidential election, I found myself having two very different conversations in Europe.

One was with my Brussels and Berlin friends from what some might derisively term the 'educated elite'. They were scared, talking about what the result meant for Europe and how things on the 'old continent' were about to change.

Then there was the conversation I found myself having with people I just met, or acquaintances - people who don't follow politics or world events very closely. "What do you think about Trump?" they snickered, as if he was entirely my problem and not theirs. They expected a reaction of, "I'm so embarrassed for my country" or "things are going to be bad in my homeland". I've told them the entire global order is about to be thrown into chaos, starting first here in Europe. They stared back at me in confusion. Surely, Trump is America's problem, not Europe's.

Why England in the EEA would be a victory for France

France has always resented British influence in the EU. Excluding the UK from EU law-making could reshape the union in the French model.

In 1963, when the United Kingdom first applied to join the European Community, the answer from Paris was a resolute 'non'. 

French President Charles de Gaulle vetoed the application in '63 and again in '67. He said that "a number of aspects of Britain's economy, from working practices to agriculture...made Britain incompatible with Europe". He added that the UK had a “deep-seated hostility” to any pan-European project.

It wasn't until De Gaulle relinquished the French presidency that Paris finally relented and allowed the UK to join the club in 1972.

So what were the "aspects of Britain's economy" that De Gaulle was so worried about? It was free market liberal economics. De Gaulle, and his successors, distrusted the "Anglo-Saxon" (The French term for Anglo-American) model of capitalism and had a very different vision for Europe.

Ryanair for rail? Don't hold your breath

New 'budget trains' between Brussels and Paris give the illusion of competition, but in fact are designed to block new market entrants.

After 24 years in the making, today there is finally light at the end of the world's longest tunnel. Today in Switzerland the first train is passing through the monumental Gotthard Base Tunnel, carrying Germany's Angela Merkel, Italy's Matteo Renzi and France's Francois Hollande.

It will carry passengers between the German-speaking canton of Uri and the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in an astonishing 16 minutes. It will cut the journey time between Zurich and Milan by one hour. 

Though you might expect a massive infrastructure project like this to be opposed by environmentalists, it was in fact welcomed. It will stop the daily journey of hundreds of trucks carrying goods over the Alps between Northern and Southern Europe, a journey which has been causing huge environmental damage.

It is part of the steady expansion of high-speed rail across Europe. Trains will be able to link up with Italy's impressive Frecciarossa trains, which whizz passengers from Milan to Naples in just four hours, at 360 km/h (224 m/h). New high-speed routes are coming online all over Europe.

English has taken over Eurovision

Only three out of the 42 entries in this year's Eurovision Song Contest will not be sung in English - a new record. And maybe that's not a bad thing.

When the Eurovision Song Contest began in 1956, organisers had not thought to specify any policy for what language the acts could sing in. It was just assumed that each country would sing in their own language.

That changed in 1965, when Sweden showed up to the contest with an entry in English. France was not amused. They convinced the Geneva-based European Broadcasting Union, which runs the contest, to impose a rule requiring each country's entry to be in an official language of that country. Otherwise, they argued, English would erode the contest's cultural legitimacy.

Would Brexit banish English from continental Europe?

'Brussels English' could be vulnerable to French attack if the UK leaves the EU.

Much has been written about the future of the UK if it chooses to leave the European Union in June’s referendum. Less has been written about the effect of Brexit on the EU. 

The loss of British influence in Europe would be felt in many ways, most likely resulting in a less neoliberal, free-market-oriented bloc. Recently I’ve written about the possibility of a more proactive EU environmental policy if the UK were to leave. But could a Brexit also affect linguistics?

Today The Local, an expat newspaper in France, published a tongue-in-cheek (note today's date) evaluation of what a Brexit would mean for the English language in Europe, given that it has long been in the crosshairs of the French government. They imagine a future where the Academie Francaise, France's notoriously strict language enforcer, would send patrols around the country looking for British expats who can't speak French. Given the (well-deserved) reputation of Anglophones for not sufficiently learning the langauges of the countries they move to, the April Fools article hits where it hurts.

But in fact there is truth behind this gag. Right now UK citizens have the right to live and work in France, and the government cannot require them to speak French in order to do so. Were the UK to leave the EU and not be allowed to join the European Economic Area, it would mean Brits would have to apply for a visa to live in France. And France could easily require language proficiency as a requirement for granting visas.

International nationalists

The far right has a poor history of working together in international forums. An alliance brokered by Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen is seeking to reverse that trend.

"There is nothing harder to set up than a nationalists' international," wrote political scientists Michael Minkenberg and Pascal Perrineau when they analysed the performance of the radical right in the 2004 European Parliament elections. The latest attempt to disprove that truism was launched last week by Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s Front National (FN), and Geert Wilders, the Dutch maverick anti-Islam campaigner.

At a press conference held at the Dutch parliament in The Hague this week, Le Pen and Wilders announced a pact to work together to build an alliance in the next European Parliament to slay “the monster in Brussels” and wreck the Parliament from within. Given the patchy – to say the least – record of populist and nationalist groups’ attempts to join forces at European level, it was hardly surprising that scepticism dominated the initial reaction.

In the last Parliament, far-right groups briefly forged an alliance under the “Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty” group banner. But that pact fell apart after Romanian and Italian nationalists rowed over Alessandra Mussolini calling Romanians “habitual lawbreakers”. Perhaps it is not surprising that nationalists whose principal policy platform is being anti-foreigner have trouble co-operating with “foreigners”.

Violence erupts at French anti-gay-marriage protests

Across Europe and the Americas, gay marriage has been enacted peacefully and with minimal protest. Meanwhile, in France...

Yesterday, an estimated one million people flooded the streets of Paris to protest plans to enact same-sex marriage in France. It was the second such massive demonstration, following one held in January against French President Francois Hollande’s effort to enact gay marriage - a fulfilment of a promise made during last year’s presidential campaign.

This time, the demonstration took a nasty turn. The protestors became violent. The police resorted to using tear gas, which allegedly injured some of the many children being used in the protest. The police counter that the anti-gay-marriage protestors were using children as human shields. The president of France's Christian Democrat party says she was injured by police during the protest. Today, the opposition UMP party of Nicolas Sarkozy is calling for the resignation of the Paris chief of police and French interior minister Manuel Valls in response to the tear gas 'used against children'.

Frigide Barjot - a very French protest

On Tuesday of this week, I was sitting in the press room of the European Parliament in Strasbourg - waiting for a press conference on the 2014 EU elections - when suddenly a woman clad in hot pink burst into the room. Her leathery brown skin and wild hair stood in stark contrast to the suited conservative members of parliament who were ushering her in. By her side was a young man with bleach-blond hair, also clad in pink.

This, the journalists learned, was Frigide Barjot - the leader of France’s anti-gay-marriage movement. The Conservative MEPs had invited her to the European Parliament to speak about her desire to extend her anti-gay-marriage movement to all of Europe. While notorious in France, Ms Barjot is unknown outside the country, and the journalists were perplexed as to why she was there. But I knew of her already, if only from the many Facebook posts I see from my French friends decrying her antics.

UK rejects ‘separate but equal’ marriage

The British House of Commons has just concluded a historic vote, voting 400 to 175 to adopt gay marriage in England. But despite its historic nature, the legislation will prove to be of more symbolic than practical importance – particularly for its author, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

In effect, the UK has already had gay marriage for eight years – but by another name. The Civil Unions signed into UK law in 2004 confer the exact same rights as a marriage – to the letter. Interestingly, as I’ve written about before, this made the gay marriage debate fade out of the limelight for many years in the UK. Because the civil unions were theoretically “equal”, gay rights activists weren’t really pushing too hard to have the word changed to ‘marriage’.

That was until an unlikely hero came along – David Cameron, leader of the British Conservative party. Cameron made it the central mission of his leadership to “detoxify” the conservative brand in the UK after years of being successfully cast as the “nasty Tories” by Tony Blair. Part of his effort to modernise the party was an campaign pledge in 2010 to enact gay marriage if elected. The response from gay UK was, “well, alright then I guess.”

Is this the Élysée or Melrose Place?

The French papers can hardly contain their excitement this morning over the catty details of the first scandal to come out of the Élysée Palace since the election of Socialist François Hollande – the self-styled “Mr. Normal”.

Journalist Valerie Trierweiler, Hollande’s partner (Americans – ‘partner’ is French for ‘unmarried fornicator’) made the faux pas of endorsing a rebel challenger to Socialist party standardbearer Segolene Royal in this Sunday’s elections for the French Parliament. This might seem fairly uninteresting, until you add the fact that Royale, herself the 2007 presidential candidate for the Socialists, is the former partner of Hollande and they have four children together.

The offending endorsement of challenger Olivier Falorni from the French first lady was made in a tweet posted by Trierweiler yesterday. The reaction from Hollande’s fellow Socialists has been furious. They have pointed out that not only has the tweet exacerbated the inter-party tensions and in a way that could cost the Socialists seats on Sunday, it also seems grotesque on a personal level. For the first lady to go out of her way to publicly insult and humiliate the mother of her partner’s four children seems exceptionally cruel, French politician Daniel Cohn Bennett said. But it seems entirely consistent with her previous behaviour toward Royal (more on that later).

Burqa ban leads to rioting in Brussels

The area of Molenbeek in Brussels was the scene of low-level rioting at the end of last week following the arrest of a woman for wearing a full face-covering niqab. It is the largest and most violent incident of resistance since France and Belgium enacted bans on face-covering in 2010 and 2011.

For those who oppose the burqa ban, the rioting is evidence that it is causing more problems than it solves and giving the garment more power as a symbol of resistance. For those who support the ban, the rioting is evidence that the state was right to take a stand against the increasing radicalisation they say is taking place among Belgium’s sizable Muslim minority of mainly North Africa immigrants.

On Thursday, Brussels police arrested a 23-year-old woman in Molenbeek – one of the neighborhoods of Brussels with a very high Muslim population at over 50% - for refusing to take off her face covering. That night, police say about 100 people surrounded the Molenbeek police station where she was being held, throwing stones at officers. A large number of riot police were deployed, giving the area the feeling of a city under siege. After Muslim prayers on Friday afternoon additional skirmishes broke out in the area, forcing the authorities to shut down some metro stations. The police say the violent demonstrations were organised by the group Shariah4Belgium

Sarko presents a Latin/Germanic choice to France

Someone tuning in to last night’s presidential debate in France might have thought Nicolas Sarkozy was running for president of Germany. Praising the economic model of France’s eastern neighbour, he continually stressed that Germany is more competitive and an easier place to do business.

Even his Socialist challenger Francois Hollande had to agree with him. “Germany in all fields is better than us,” Hollande conceded, with a tone that seemed to imply, ‘if you love it so much, why don’t you go there.’

Germany and its chancellor Angela Merkel loomed large over this debate, although she was never mentioned by name. Sarkozy continually returned to a theme of defending his close partnership with the chancellor and her austerity regime for Europe. He has been accused, both in Germany and France, of being Merkel’s poodle. “We avoided the implosion of the euro,” he spat at Hollande incredulously after he questioned the austerity strategy. “It was hard work, which was founded on the Franco-German partnership. It is irresponsible to want to question it.”

And thus the lines were drawn in precisely the way Sarkozy wanted them. “For me, the example to follow, it is that of Germany rather than that of Greece or Spain,” said the president. He stressed that it was the Socialists who have been in power in Spain during the economic crisis, and today Spain’s economy is on the verge of collapse. Contrast that, he said, with Germany where his fellow conservatives have been in power. Germany has the most successful economy in the EU. Hollande, he warned, would make France like Spain.

The battle for the May Day voter

The first of May is always a big deal in France. This year it’s taken on an even more politically charged tone, with groups of far-left and far-right demonstrators possibly coming into conflict during the course of today. But it might be hard today to differentiate between the two groups based on their rhetoric alone.

May Day, originally a pagan spring festival, became an international workers day in the late 19th century. Ironically this Socialist holiday is unknown in the United States, despite the fact that it actually commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago. An American ‘Labor Day’ was instead set in September so that it wouldn’t coincide with international workers demonstrations. The day has long since lost any association with workers rights in the US.

But in continental Europe, the 1st of May is still a public workers holiday during which labour unions and activists demonstrate in the streets. It is also known for anti-capitalist violence, particularly in Southern Europe.

In recent years, the increasingly mainstream far right in Europe has challenged the idea that May Day is the sole domain of the left. The National Front party in France has begun to stage May day marches to the Place de l’Opera in Paris. There they hold a rally in front of a statue of Joan of Arc, who they have adopted as a symbol. This year, following the record 18% showing of National Front leader Marine Le Pen in last Sunday’s first round of presidential elections, it is predicted that they will garner the largest turnout ever.