European Politics Thread

Yeah. And it seems that if the Social Democrats are willing to go for whites-only socialism and slam the border on immigration as hard as the EU will let them, the Sweden Democrats will have their back (assuming the latter understand that Swexit is not happening, ever).

Italy is much more likely to leave the EU than Sweden is.

Nah, their economy would be absolutely screwed if that happened. And they know it. And for all its issues, Italy hasn't been subjected to decades of anti-EU propaganda and scapegoating the way the UK has.

x3 Which is unlikely to happen given that they can see the results of that happening in Denmark right now, and while the Social Democrats are showing growth in party membership, it's mostly among 55+ year old white men. Not exactly a demographic that's going to be sticking around for a while.

Meanwhile, they're dropping an entire generation of young voters on the floor like a hot potato chasing the Prime Minister's office. Their youth wing is still the largest in the country, but it's not getting any bigger, and there are huge rifts between party leadership and the young voter base.

Edited by math792d on Jul 12th 2018 at 1:21:45 PM

Spain to outlaw groups honoring dictator Francisco Franco

Macron's popularity dips to new lows. It's an acceptable level for France, but I doubt that trying to present corporate benefits as helpful to the impoverished (bullshit) or publically scolding a teen, when he's already seen as arrogant, are helping his case.

"Acceptable level in France?" Do the French just always hate their presidents?

Incidentally, Iceland just assumed the post left vacant by the US in the UN Human Rights Council.

By the way, the new university access process mentioned in the article is seen as a disaster by university staff (candidates have to submit a set number of applications and aren't allowed to rank them by preference, so I agree with them), so I wouldn't count it as a success. And let's not talk about the labour reforms, I'd only get angry.

Yes, the French do tend to not think very highly of their president.

Which seems to be some sort tradition among them. Who was the last French president with consistently high approval ratings? Mitterand?

To my knowledge, the French hated Mitterrand's guts during the latter half of his tenure. You might have to go back to someone, like, I dunno... René Coty.

A great man. He put his mark on history!

I am not going to lie, I had to google this one first, but Wikipedia has several nice things about him to say, so I'll believe this.

Russia meddles in Greek town to push back the west

Trying to fan the flames on the name dispute between Greece and Macedonia.

Need a subscription to read. Can you quote it?

Forgot, direct link don't work. Go through here.

Edited by TerminusEst on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:24:27 AM

Frankly more worried about Macedonia than Greece at this point when it comes to this matter. Russian efforts here will fail.

It's almost as if Putin wants the Balkans to align with NATO...

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jul 14th 2018 at 7:11:41 PM

Nah, the amount of smartness that is needed for the Balkan countries to realize that they are being played is considerably greater than the amount of smartness that accompanies politicians which had a conflict about a country name going in the first place.

The Balkans always go by their own logic. Neither the EU nor Russia has ever really understood the region.

Same old...the Russian finance pretty much every group which can stir up trouble no matter if left or right or how high the level of success actually is.

Regarding the name question: It isn't quite as silly as it sounds. Basically Macedonia used to have a party in power (or on the rise to power, frankly, the various political woes of the Balkan states are too complicated to just read up on them) which wanted to use the supposed connection to Alexander the great in order to satisfy their territorial urges and claim a part of Greece which also happens to be called Macedonia. So...the worries of Greece are a little bit understandable or at least they used to be. Nowadays it really is silly because neither country has any interest to move its border and they both would be better off if they have better relations to each other. Ie the stupid name dispute is one the things which kept Macedonia from furthering their aspiration to join the EU. But through an EU membership there would be more money in the country which means more trade which means that Greece could profiteer from it in the long run.

Though currently it looks like the Balkans are more likely to fall under Chinese influence than either the EU or Russia. Russia, well, their memory is not THAT short, and the EU used to be what they aspired to, but now that China is investing heavily in the region they moved basically to a "do we need the hassle with the EU" position.

The Appeal To Alexander was also because they wanted to get further from their Slavic identity, since that identity is quite Bulgarian in nature, and the Bulgarian far right probably still sees Skopje as a wayward province.

There's also the small fact that Tito deliberately named the constitutent republic Macedonia in case he ever wanted to press claims on Greek Macedonia in the future.

These days, that's probably less of a worry anymore. Skopje isn't interested in rejoining Bulgaria or joining Greece, which means that the arbitrary lines pencilled in on the map of the dying Ottoman Empire are now the facts on the ground.

I'm not saying it's still an issue for Skopje, just explaining why it historically obsessed over Macedonianism. That it succeeded is probably why they can make the agreement they are making, now that the party that started said obsession was knocked out of power.

That being said, the far right in Bulgaria still doesn't see them as a different people, and those parties (as with most of Eastern Europe) are on the rise there. GERB better watch it's back...

Bit late for this, but at the rate Macron's going, it's looking like he's going to have to spend most of the last couple years in the run-up to the election doing mostly damage control. Not sure if that'll save us from the likes of Melenchon or Le Pen, mind...