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After the round of elections in France and Netherlands this spring, and Germany this summer, Europe may or may not start disintegrating, depending on the outcom

After the round of elections in France and Netherlands this spring, and Germany this summer, Europe may or may not start disintegrating, depending on the outcome. Ms. le Pen may not win this time, but she will one day. A correctly timed scandal or major terrorist attack in the second round may sink her opponent. Moscow, London and Washington are hard at work with her, to make this happen. When she, or someone like her, wins in either France or Germany, the EU comes to an end. It is very difficult for me to understand what strategic goal the new White House administration intends to achieve by disintegrating the EU and thereby pushing parts of it from the American to the Russian sphere of influence, but I'm sure they have thought this through very carefully.

jerf 10y ago
You seem to be operating under the belief that the disintegration of the EU started three weeks ago or something? It's been an ongoing saga for years. I mean, Brexit predates Trump, and Brexit itself is the result of years of pressures. I can see why you'd be so confused by the "strategy" if you think Trump is causing it, but he's reacting to it. And my assessment of the situation is the other way around; there's nothing Trump could do to stop it even if he wanted to. The explosion is in progress, the very latest I could put the date for that is the Brexit vote (which, again, is itself a result, not a cause), and the only question is who can best surf the aftermath. The EU is falling apart because of issues within the EU, not because somewhere in the early 2010s the penumbric emanations of the future Trump presidency reached back in time and started whispering in politician's ears.
- bad_user 10y ago
  The Brexit campaign was fueled by lies. The real issue is a trend of anti-intellectualism and xenophobia, which I fear we've seen before, triggered by the great depression and a precursor to WWII. It's as if, whenever a financial crisis happens, people go dumb.
  - jerf 10y ago
    That's moving the goalposts. Nothing about what you said makes it the result of Trump's administration. Also, might I just point out the irony of accusing people of being "anti-intellectual" in reaction to the financial crisis that is precisely the one the intellectuals promised us could never possibly happen under their guidance, and were mocking people for even considering it possible right up to the day it happened. How rational is it to belief false things simply because they carry the label "intellectual"?
    - bad_user 10y ago
      It's not moving the goalposts, I was just noticing the global trend that links Brexit, Trump and possibly other upcoming events like Le Pen. > the intellectuals promised us could never possibly happen under their guidance, and were mocking people for even considering it possible right up to the day it happened Well, source please. Not that I don't believe you, but don't remember the deriding or the predictions you're mentioning and it's actually really hard to predict a financial crisis, being dangerous to put a break on the economy based on speculations.
      - mcguire 10y ago
        Check out Debunking Economics. It's kind of a horrible book, but the economic arguments seem sound and are very interesting.
  - justinlaster 10y ago
    Stable economies provide a buffer for the less intelligent parts of society. When you're fed, have money, and feel secure xenophobic and baseless opinions tend to not have any weight. Or at the very least, there's no reason to act on them. People don't go dumb around a financial crisis, they tend to just start acting after one. People get away with having these opinions for so long because our societies have an abundance of resources. You're rarely "punished" in any significant way for your lack of skills, intellectually or otherwise.
  - DarkKomunalec 10y ago
- quonn 10y ago
  The UK was never a very convinced member of the EU, so Brexit is not a good example. But more importantly, the EU is not falling apart, it is merely facing a crisis. A pro-EU US administration could help to save it while Trump will likely accelerate it's decline.
  - jerf 10y ago
    If the EU, designed to be the counterbalance to the United States, is so delicate that it lives or dies based on the decisions of one man that doesn't even live there, it is falling apart. There's no way around this; if it's gotten to that point of illness it has already proved itself extraordinarily weak. Blaming Trump for pushing it over the edge is just a politically-convenient privileging of the numerous other forces that must be pushing it over, and it's hard for me to believe that Trump is even in the top 10 reasons, especially given the lateness of his entry on the scene. Do we seriously believe that things would be so much better if Trump had not won? It's not like Obama particularly managed to hold it together or anything.
    - quonn 10y ago
      > designed to be the counterbalance to the United States That would be news to me. The EU has never claimed it is a counter-balance to the United States. Some people argue for a stronger, independent EU, but this is surely not the primary purpose of it.
    - sveme 10y ago
      > If the EU, designed to be the counterbalance to the United States That was never the reason for the foundation of the EU. If that's the level of your understanding of European politics, I can't take you seriously anymore. If the EU fails, which I doubt, Trump would have played a minuscule role, exacerbating existing tensions. I actually expect quite the opposite from a Trump presidency, though unintended by him.
    - wobbleblob 10y ago
      The EU is designed entirely for internal reasons: to end the cycle of great wars between France, Germany, Russia and Britain over resources and arable land. The basic idea is that you don't need to fight over coal and steel, if you can just buy it. Protectionism, by design, leads to conflict. This could be intentional, expecting to win that conflict, but for Europe, with several adjacent powers of similar strength and modern weaponry, it was obviously not working out well. American influence has actually been instrumental in getting the project started[1]. 'Europe' doesn't have any geopolitical or military ambitions, and as so many member states are NATO members, it tends to follow American interests in these matters. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Eur...
- pi-err 10y ago
  > Ms. le Pen may not win this time, but she will one day There is very little to support this. FN has been around 20% for decades, racking in about the same 5-6M voters at most elections. Structurally, far right in France (as in other countries) splits up as soon as it starts compromising to reach a wider audience. Also structurally, contrary to UK/US, all elections in France have 2 rounds - and Le Pen will never get to win the 2nd one. Yes, she and Mélenchon are symptoms of anger/apathy. Netherlands and Germany have similar issues. It doesn't mean the extremes are nowhere near winning. > The EU is falling apart because of issues within the EU Predictions on how the EU will die started in 1957. The last 10 years have put an impossible amount of stress on it - and here it is, alive, and with increasing voter support.
- sveme 10y ago
  If gp thinks a win by Le Pen or her counterpart in Germany is a given, he does not understand the election system in each respective country. Living in the EU, I actually experience quite the opposite to what jerf is predicting: a reemergence of the EU as a passionate project after Brexit. People have taken the EU for granted for way too long, now it starts to emerge as an issue that is worth fighting for (check e.g., pulseforeurope.eu). Granted, there's also a nationalistic reemergence acting against the EU, but at least it's proponents are starting to fight back.
  - jerf 10y ago
    I don't necessarily predict the disintegration. I'm pointing out that the idea of blaming Trump for it is temporally silly. It's an ongoing process that didn't start three weeks ago, and even trying to backdate it to Trump's candidacy would A: be insufficient to explain anything anyhow and B: have to explain how Trump somehow knocked over the EU despite hardly saying a word about it during his campaign. But as for everything being fine and dandy, when you get to the point that you've got sub-polities not only seriously talking about secession, but actually doing it, no, that polity is not in good health. Yes, that fully applies to the US.
    - urbanj 10y ago
      >But as for everything being fine and dandy, when you get to the point that you've got sub-polities not only seriously talking about secession, but actually doing it, no, that polity is not in good health. I'd say that any "polity" mature enough to allow member states to leave and not force them to remain is actually in excellent health.
    - wobbleblob 10y ago
      If you look again, I didn't mention that name at all. The only relation is that, after the changes in London and Washington, outside interference will now not only be coming from Moscow, and they are capable of exerting far more refined influence than Moscow's online troll army and funding of anti EU activists.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  People have been saying the Euro will collapse "any day now" since about 2008. Things don't just happen by themselves, and trends do not continue forever. It does seem like Trump and Putin are playing a divide-and-conquer strategy with Europe, but not necessarily coordinated.
- jonathanstrange 10y ago
  I doubt that the EU is falling apart, but if it ever does, then certainly more because of perceived issues rather than real ones. Although it was created democratically and by countless unanimous votes of its member states, the EU has always been an easy scapegoat for national politicians who did not do their own job right. In the UK, they quite obviously got the revenge for this behavior. (Remember, most MPs were and probably still are against the Brexit, and for good reasons, of course.) The good news is that the vast majority of national politicians know fairly well how they abused the EU rhetorically and that their own countries would be crushed by global economic pressures if they left the EU. The UK and Germany are quite possibly the only countries who may be able to afford to leave the EU without major harm, and most smaller countries are aware of that. But I agree that the perils of cheap populism and nationalism ought not be underestimated, and let's not forget that weakening Europe is in the current interest of Russia, the US in the eyes of the current Trump administration, and maybe even China. Anti-EU forces are strong, no doubt about that. In the end, the current state of discussion is rather saddening anyway. The EU was primarily funded as a way to prevent Europe from being destroyed by inner conflicts again, which makes some sense after two devastating world wars that left Europe in ruins and killed millions of citizens. It's sad that this is sometimes forgotten and only emphasized by older politicians.
  - Kurtz79 10y ago
    "The EU was primarily funded as a way to prevent Europe from being destroyed by inner conflicts again, which makes some sense after two devastating world wars that left Europe in ruins and killed millions of citizens. It's sad that this is sometimes forgotten and only emphasized by older politicians." This is such an important point. Whatever problems the EU indeed might have, its role in keeping the peace in a continent that has seen war almost uninterruptedly over the course of its history cannot be emphasized enough. It is human nature blaming others for our own problems: as soon you cannot blame the EU anymore, you will start blaming your neighbors...
    - gadders 10y ago
      >>Whatever problems the EU indeed might have, its role in keeping the peace in a continent that has seen war almost uninterruptedly over the course of its history cannot be emphasized enough. I think you are confusing the EU with NATO.
zmb_ 10y ago
> what strategic goal the new White House administration intends to achieve by disintegrating the EU Together the EU is a formidable negotiation partner (GDP equal to the US), while alone each EU state is in a much weaker position, thus giving the US an advantage. Also Trump has said that he sees the EU and the Euro as a tool created by Germany to give them a competitive advantage. And Trump seems to see Germany is one of the main competitors of the US (and has a massive trade surplus with the US).
quonn 10y ago
There is not doubt that in Germany the moderate parties will win again (SPD, CDU/CSU, Green Party, Liberals currently get 75% of the votes; The parties that constitute the current government would get 60%; The party that is currently openly opposed to the EU is at 11%.) [0]. Fortunately, I don't see this changing, even in the far future. The far left and far right can perhaps get up to 20-40% in total in the long run, but they are opposed to each other. [0] http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
DarkKomunalec 10y ago
France, Netherlands, Germany, and the U.K. are all countries with large and growing immigrant populations. Seeing their countries 'taken over' by foreigners, people vote for parties promising to put a stop to it. Unfortunately, there are no pro-EU parties making those promises. Quite the opposite - they prefer to chastise their people for not wanting their countries to irreversibly change. So that's how you end up with this mess - I don't think prodding by the Americans had much to do with it.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  This is an issue. But it seems even the Europhiles are smarting up to it It's easy to be "humanitarian" with somebody else's money and resources
  - DarkKomunalec 10y ago
    It's actually not the spending of money I have issue with, though admittedly I don't know how big a part of the budget foreign humanitarian aid represents. It's the underhanded way in which immigration is being accomplished - Germany had "guest workers", which the government promised would return to their home countries. The U.S. had the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was promised wouldn't change the ethnic make-up of the U.S. Both promises were broken. I don't think anyone believes the current wave of refugees will ever leave - who would be willing to deport them, after they spend 10+ years in Europe, and raise children here who've never seen their 'home' country? Consider this - despite graphic photos of drowned children, the funding of refugee camps on the other side of the Mediterranean was not exactly loudly promoted.
- yokisan 10y ago
  It's literally this simple. Integration has been a disaster to the extent that soldiers now patrol within the borders of France and Belgium. The great opportunity-cost of integrating populations and monitoring them when it fails has clearly become too expensive and people are saying "enough". Oddly, the EU doesn't seem to acknowledge the sentiment of the public and just keep hammering on about 'ever closer union'. Clarity from mainstream Parties on this issue alone would shrink the poll numbers of the Far-Right.
raverbashing 10y ago
I'll only say one thing: people outside of France are much more worried/supporting LePen than the ones inside it In fact, anglophones have some trouble understanding the situation through the language barrier She's getting "pumped up" through the Brexit/Trump wave, but don't assume it's the same thing (though I am worried about the repercussions, if she gets elected, naturally)
- wobbleblob 10y ago
  On the contrary. People outside of France get to see her through the mainstream media, which makes it look like only xenophobes could be voting for her. From Francophone friends I hear she's actually smart, witty, an excellent debater, and if she weren't held back by her name and the reputation of her father, she could have more mainstream appeal.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Oh I'm sure she's smart, for her own personal gain
runeks 10y ago
The EU coming to an end is not the disintegration of Europe. Personally, I would feel no less united with my fellow Europeans if we were to lose a common regulatory body looking over us.
- disgruntledphd2 10y ago
  I would dislike having to get visas to visit other parts of Europe. And inevitably, if the EU falls apart, at least some parts will get very nasty towards others.
  - rleigh 10y ago
    You could visit other parts of Europe without a visa before the EU, and before the EEC. I see little reason why it would change. Right to live in another country might require some paperwork filing, but visiting is rather different.
ptaipale 10y ago
Europe is not disintegrating. Europe is just geography. The European Union might be disintegrating. Why it might be disintegrating is then a more complex thing. But mostly it's not because of Trump or because of populists or because of Russian influence. It's because those who are building a federal state, United States of Europe, are far too impatient and try to rush it. We are witnessing a backlash. I am myself contributing to a backlash, because EU is doing things it shouldn't. Yes, I definitely don't want to be in a Russian sphere of influence, but EU isn't acting credibly here. And the White House has little to contribute to current development. It's done by the EU itself by trying to legislate member countries over things I and many others don't want to be legislated at. Starting from things like whether we are allowed to control who comes to our country and lives here. Or to prepare for and resist to Russian attempts to take over. EU leaders (Juncker, Schulz and many others) act as if they had an empire, before they actually built it.
mason240 10y ago
Asserting that the US, UK, and Le Pen herself are planning terrorist attacks in France is a serious allegation.

jerf 10y ago

You seem to be operating under the belief that the disintegration of the EU started three weeks ago or something? It's been an ongoing saga for years. I mean, Brexit predates Trump, and Brexit itself is the result of years of pressures. I can see why you'd be so confused by the "strategy" if you think Trump is causing it, but he's reacting to it. And my assessment of the situation is the other way around; there's nothing Trump could do to stop it even if he wanted to. The explosion is in progress, the very latest I could put the date for that is the Brexit vote (which, again, is itself a result, not a cause), and the only question is who can best surf the aftermath. The EU is falling apart because of issues within the EU, not because somewhere in the early 2010s the penumbric emanations of the future Trump presidency reached back in time and started whispering in politician's ears.

bad_user 10y ago
The Brexit campaign was fueled by lies. The real issue is a trend of anti-intellectualism and xenophobia, which I fear we've seen before, triggered by the great depression and a precursor to WWII. It's as if, whenever a financial crisis happens, people go dumb.
- jerf 10y ago
  That's moving the goalposts. Nothing about what you said makes it the result of Trump's administration. Also, might I just point out the irony of accusing people of being "anti-intellectual" in reaction to the financial crisis that is precisely the one the intellectuals promised us could never possibly happen under their guidance, and were mocking people for even considering it possible right up to the day it happened. How rational is it to belief false things simply because they carry the label "intellectual"?
  - bad_user 10y ago
    It's not moving the goalposts, I was just noticing the global trend that links Brexit, Trump and possibly other upcoming events like Le Pen. > the intellectuals promised us could never possibly happen under their guidance, and were mocking people for even considering it possible right up to the day it happened Well, source please. Not that I don't believe you, but don't remember the deriding or the predictions you're mentioning and it's actually really hard to predict a financial crisis, being dangerous to put a break on the economy based on speculations.
    - mcguire 10y ago
      Check out Debunking Economics. It's kind of a horrible book, but the economic arguments seem sound and are very interesting.
- justinlaster 10y ago
  Stable economies provide a buffer for the less intelligent parts of society. When you're fed, have money, and feel secure xenophobic and baseless opinions tend to not have any weight. Or at the very least, there's no reason to act on them. People don't go dumb around a financial crisis, they tend to just start acting after one. People get away with having these opinions for so long because our societies have an abundance of resources. You're rarely "punished" in any significant way for your lack of skills, intellectually or otherwise.
- DarkKomunalec 10y ago
quonn 10y ago
The UK was never a very convinced member of the EU, so Brexit is not a good example. But more importantly, the EU is not falling apart, it is merely facing a crisis. A pro-EU US administration could help to save it while Trump will likely accelerate it's decline.
- jerf 10y ago
  If the EU, designed to be the counterbalance to the United States, is so delicate that it lives or dies based on the decisions of one man that doesn't even live there, it is falling apart. There's no way around this; if it's gotten to that point of illness it has already proved itself extraordinarily weak. Blaming Trump for pushing it over the edge is just a politically-convenient privileging of the numerous other forces that must be pushing it over, and it's hard for me to believe that Trump is even in the top 10 reasons, especially given the lateness of his entry on the scene. Do we seriously believe that things would be so much better if Trump had not won? It's not like Obama particularly managed to hold it together or anything.
  - quonn 10y ago
    > designed to be the counterbalance to the United States That would be news to me. The EU has never claimed it is a counter-balance to the United States. Some people argue for a stronger, independent EU, but this is surely not the primary purpose of it.
  - sveme 10y ago
    > If the EU, designed to be the counterbalance to the United States That was never the reason for the foundation of the EU. If that's the level of your understanding of European politics, I can't take you seriously anymore. If the EU fails, which I doubt, Trump would have played a minuscule role, exacerbating existing tensions. I actually expect quite the opposite from a Trump presidency, though unintended by him.
  - wobbleblob 10y ago
    The EU is designed entirely for internal reasons: to end the cycle of great wars between France, Germany, Russia and Britain over resources and arable land. The basic idea is that you don't need to fight over coal and steel, if you can just buy it. Protectionism, by design, leads to conflict. This could be intentional, expecting to win that conflict, but for Europe, with several adjacent powers of similar strength and modern weaponry, it was obviously not working out well. American influence has actually been instrumental in getting the project started[1]. 'Europe' doesn't have any geopolitical or military ambitions, and as so many member states are NATO members, it tends to follow American interests in these matters. [1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Euro-federalists-financed-by-US-spy-chiefs.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/1356047/Eur...
pi-err 10y ago
> Ms. le Pen may not win this time, but she will one day There is very little to support this. FN has been around 20% for decades, racking in about the same 5-6M voters at most elections. Structurally, far right in France (as in other countries) splits up as soon as it starts compromising to reach a wider audience. Also structurally, contrary to UK/US, all elections in France have 2 rounds - and Le Pen will never get to win the 2nd one. Yes, she and Mélenchon are symptoms of anger/apathy. Netherlands and Germany have similar issues. It doesn't mean the extremes are nowhere near winning. > The EU is falling apart because of issues within the EU Predictions on how the EU will die started in 1957. The last 10 years have put an impossible amount of stress on it - and here it is, alive, and with increasing voter support.
sveme 10y ago
If gp thinks a win by Le Pen or her counterpart in Germany is a given, he does not understand the election system in each respective country. Living in the EU, I actually experience quite the opposite to what jerf is predicting: a reemergence of the EU as a passionate project after Brexit. People have taken the EU for granted for way too long, now it starts to emerge as an issue that is worth fighting for (check e.g., pulseforeurope.eu). Granted, there's also a nationalistic reemergence acting against the EU, but at least it's proponents are starting to fight back.
- jerf 10y ago
  I don't necessarily predict the disintegration. I'm pointing out that the idea of blaming Trump for it is temporally silly. It's an ongoing process that didn't start three weeks ago, and even trying to backdate it to Trump's candidacy would A: be insufficient to explain anything anyhow and B: have to explain how Trump somehow knocked over the EU despite hardly saying a word about it during his campaign. But as for everything being fine and dandy, when you get to the point that you've got sub-polities not only seriously talking about secession, but actually doing it, no, that polity is not in good health. Yes, that fully applies to the US.
  - urbanj 10y ago
    >But as for everything being fine and dandy, when you get to the point that you've got sub-polities not only seriously talking about secession, but actually doing it, no, that polity is not in good health. I'd say that any "polity" mature enough to allow member states to leave and not force them to remain is actually in excellent health.
  - wobbleblob 10y ago
    If you look again, I didn't mention that name at all. The only relation is that, after the changes in London and Washington, outside interference will now not only be coming from Moscow, and they are capable of exerting far more refined influence than Moscow's online troll army and funding of anti EU activists.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
People have been saying the Euro will collapse "any day now" since about 2008. Things don't just happen by themselves, and trends do not continue forever. It does seem like Trump and Putin are playing a divide-and-conquer strategy with Europe, but not necessarily coordinated.
jonathanstrange 10y ago
I doubt that the EU is falling apart, but if it ever does, then certainly more because of perceived issues rather than real ones. Although it was created democratically and by countless unanimous votes of its member states, the EU has always been an easy scapegoat for national politicians who did not do their own job right. In the UK, they quite obviously got the revenge for this behavior. (Remember, most MPs were and probably still are against the Brexit, and for good reasons, of course.) The good news is that the vast majority of national politicians know fairly well how they abused the EU rhetorically and that their own countries would be crushed by global economic pressures if they left the EU. The UK and Germany are quite possibly the only countries who may be able to afford to leave the EU without major harm, and most smaller countries are aware of that. But I agree that the perils of cheap populism and nationalism ought not be underestimated, and let's not forget that weakening Europe is in the current interest of Russia, the US in the eyes of the current Trump administration, and maybe even China. Anti-EU forces are strong, no doubt about that. In the end, the current state of discussion is rather saddening anyway. The EU was primarily funded as a way to prevent Europe from being destroyed by inner conflicts again, which makes some sense after two devastating world wars that left Europe in ruins and killed millions of citizens. It's sad that this is sometimes forgotten and only emphasized by older politicians.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  "The EU was primarily funded as a way to prevent Europe from being destroyed by inner conflicts again, which makes some sense after two devastating world wars that left Europe in ruins and killed millions of citizens. It's sad that this is sometimes forgotten and only emphasized by older politicians." This is such an important point. Whatever problems the EU indeed might have, its role in keeping the peace in a continent that has seen war almost uninterruptedly over the course of its history cannot be emphasized enough. It is human nature blaming others for our own problems: as soon you cannot blame the EU anymore, you will start blaming your neighbors...
  - gadders 10y ago
    >>Whatever problems the EU indeed might have, its role in keeping the peace in a continent that has seen war almost uninterruptedly over the course of its history cannot be emphasized enough. I think you are confusing the EU with NATO.

zmb_ 10y ago

> what strategic goal the new White House administration intends to achieve by disintegrating the EU Together the EU is a formidable negotiation partner (GDP equal to the US), while alone each EU state is in a much weaker position, thus giving the US an advantage. Also Trump has said that he sees the EU and the Euro as a tool created by Germany to give them a competitive advantage. And Trump seems to see Germany is one of the main competitors of the US (and has a massive trade surplus with the US).

quonn 10y ago

There is not doubt that in Germany the moderate parties will win again (SPD, CDU/CSU, Green Party, Liberals currently get 75% of the votes; The parties that constitute the current government would get 60%; The party that is currently openly opposed to the EU is at 11%.) [0]. Fortunately, I don't see this changing, even in the far future. The far left and far right can perhaps get up to 20-40% in total in the long run, but they are opposed to each other. [0] http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/ http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/

DarkKomunalec 10y ago

France, Netherlands, Germany, and the U.K. are all countries with large and growing immigrant populations. Seeing their countries 'taken over' by foreigners, people vote for parties promising to put a stop to it. Unfortunately, there are no pro-EU parties making those promises. Quite the opposite - they prefer to chastise their people for not wanting their countries to irreversibly change. So that's how you end up with this mess - I don't think prodding by the Americans had much to do with it.

raverbashing 10y ago
This is an issue. But it seems even the Europhiles are smarting up to it It's easy to be "humanitarian" with somebody else's money and resources
- DarkKomunalec 10y ago
  It's actually not the spending of money I have issue with, though admittedly I don't know how big a part of the budget foreign humanitarian aid represents. It's the underhanded way in which immigration is being accomplished - Germany had "guest workers", which the government promised would return to their home countries. The U.S. had the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which was promised wouldn't change the ethnic make-up of the U.S. Both promises were broken. I don't think anyone believes the current wave of refugees will ever leave - who would be willing to deport them, after they spend 10+ years in Europe, and raise children here who've never seen their 'home' country? Consider this - despite graphic photos of drowned children, the funding of refugee camps on the other side of the Mediterranean was not exactly loudly promoted.
yokisan 10y ago
It's literally this simple. Integration has been a disaster to the extent that soldiers now patrol within the borders of France and Belgium. The great opportunity-cost of integrating populations and monitoring them when it fails has clearly become too expensive and people are saying "enough". Oddly, the EU doesn't seem to acknowledge the sentiment of the public and just keep hammering on about 'ever closer union'. Clarity from mainstream Parties on this issue alone would shrink the poll numbers of the Far-Right.

raverbashing 10y ago

I'll only say one thing: people outside of France are much more worried/supporting LePen than the ones inside it In fact, anglophones have some trouble understanding the situation through the language barrier She's getting "pumped up" through the Brexit/Trump wave, but don't assume it's the same thing (though I am worried about the repercussions, if she gets elected, naturally)

wobbleblob 10y ago
On the contrary. People outside of France get to see her through the mainstream media, which makes it look like only xenophobes could be voting for her. From Francophone friends I hear she's actually smart, witty, an excellent debater, and if she weren't held back by her name and the reputation of her father, she could have more mainstream appeal.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Oh I'm sure she's smart, for her own personal gain

runeks 10y ago

The EU coming to an end is not the disintegration of Europe. Personally, I would feel no less united with my fellow Europeans if we were to lose a common regulatory body looking over us.

disgruntledphd2 10y ago
I would dislike having to get visas to visit other parts of Europe. And inevitably, if the EU falls apart, at least some parts will get very nasty towards others.
- rleigh 10y ago
  You could visit other parts of Europe without a visa before the EU, and before the EEC. I see little reason why it would change. Right to live in another country might require some paperwork filing, but visiting is rather different.

ptaipale 10y ago

Europe is not disintegrating. Europe is just geography. The European Union might be disintegrating. Why it might be disintegrating is then a more complex thing. But mostly it's not because of Trump or because of populists or because of Russian influence. It's because those who are building a federal state, United States of Europe, are far too impatient and try to rush it. We are witnessing a backlash. I am myself contributing to a backlash, because EU is doing things it shouldn't. Yes, I definitely don't want to be in a Russian sphere of influence, but EU isn't acting credibly here. And the White House has little to contribute to current development. It's done by the EU itself by trying to legislate member countries over things I and many others don't want to be legislated at. Starting from things like whether we are allowed to control who comes to our country and lives here. Or to prepare for and resist to Russian attempts to take over. EU leaders (Juncker, Schulz and many others) act as if they had an empire, before they actually built it.

mason240 10y ago

Asserting that the US, UK, and Le Pen herself are planning terrorist attacks in France is a serious allegation.