European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread - Page 575

On October 26 2016 06:00 lord_nibbler wrote:

That is such a misinterpretation of what actually happens.
Members of parliament (EU and local) were first completely shut out of the process. They could not get even one look at the EU negotiation position or already agreed parts or even the names of the negotiators!
After month of struggle they were finally able to read part of the contracts but only in a special room and they could not make any notes or copies. And after they had entered that room, they were not allowed to speak about what they had read in public anymore. We are talking about elected officials (remember 'our representatives') here.

The answer was always "but they will see the written contracts at the end anyway". Sure, but afterwards they can only say "yes or no" to the whole thing. And the amount of pressure to quickly accept is so enormous just look at how they treat Wallonia now (and this is only because they did not want to sign today but study the consequences of the treaty for 2 weeks longer).

And here comes the kicker, while all this "you can not have public influence during the negotiations or it would never get to an end" was going on, hundreds of lobbying and interest groups had access to the papers and could directly draft phrasing all this time! While people complained about the lack of transparency of the process, for a select few it was positively lucent.

"Got addressed". That's funny.
Yea, while it used to be that 3 lawyers in a room (!!!) could impose fines in the billions circumventing laws of any country. They now want to polish up this farce by making it a semi-official court. Still ignoring local law and annulling the very core of democracy but hey "they addressed the problem".

Oh, and because is point gets mentioned too little, I would like to emphasize that the goal of the treaty is to set the minimum standards of service and production in place forever!
Countries will never get to raise these standards ever again without heavy backlash (fines in the billions). Consumer rights, health concerns, environment issues and so much more will be set in stone from here on out!

So in conclusion, obviously it is all just a little 'free trade agreement' and big-headed Wallonia is embarrassing the EU in the world because of pig farmer votes...

After success in Britain and the U.S., populists are setting their sights on the next five dominoes at risk.

....

Italy referendum

The first test is less than a month off. Italians vote on Dec. 4 in a constitutional referendum that Prime Minister Matteo Renzi says will make governments more stable and streamline legislation. Renzi’s promise to resign if he loses has helped turn the plebiscite into a vote on his premiership. Opinion polls, if they are to be believed, predict a narrow defeat for Renzi, which would boost the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. It could also trigger early elections next year -- meaning that governments accounting for more than 75 percent of the euro area would be in play in just one year.

Comic-turned-politician Beppe Grillo, co-founder of Five Star, said that the Trump win was “incredible” in his online blog. “This is the deflagration of an epoch. It’s the apocalypse of this information system, of the TVs, of the big newspapers, of the intellectuals, of the journalists.” Five Star, which already runs cities including Rome and Turin, calls for a referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro area.

Austria presidency

The same day, Dec. 4, Austrians return to the polls to elect a new president after an earlier attempt was annulled. While in Austria as in neighboring Germany the real power is held by the chancellor, the contest for the mostly ceremonial post of president will be closely watched since it could bring to power the first far-right leader of a western European country since World War II. In May, Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen eked out a victory over the anti-immigration Freedom Party’s Norbert Hofer of about 30,000 votes from the more than 4.5 million cast. Polls suggest the outcome this time around is still too close to call.

For Chancellor Christian Kern, the U.S. vote holds lessons for Europe. “I’m convinced that electoral battles will become fierce battles for the middle classes, and that’s a fight we’ll take on,” he told journalists in Vienna.

Netherlands elections

The Dutch kick off Europe’s unprecedented 2017 voting season with parliamentary elections on March 15. The Netherlands is something of a laboratory for European politics, with unstable, multi-party coalitions the norm and some 13 parties poised to enter parliament next year. Geert Wilders, who leads the anti-Islam Freedom Party -- allied with but no relation to the Austrian party of the same name --- is running neck-and-neck with Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Liberals (VVD) in some polls. “The people are taking their country back,” tweeted Wilders, who wants to emulate Britain with a “Nexit” vote on European Union membership. “So will we.”

And yet the Netherlands, with more than a decade of experience of populists stretching back to Pim Fortuyn, may use the time to help thwart a Wilders surge. Rutte has ruled out a coalition with the Freedom Party, and it’s hard to see how Wilders could cobble together a working majority if he won the election. “On the one hand, the victory of Trump makes populist politics more accepted,” said Kees Aarts, professor of political science at Groningen University. “But on the other, all parties and politicians that might have still been a little asleep regarding the March elections, are now wide awake.’’

French presidency

French voters have twice backed the National Front to the runoff stage of elections, under two separate generations of Le Pens, only to back away from the anti-immigration party at the last moment. Brexit and Trump’s victory show nothing can be taken for granted in the presidential election second round on May 7.

With Hollande the most unpopular president in French history and his deeply disliked predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy vying to ride the Republican nomination to a comeback, Marine Le Pen may have an opening. The only head of a major French political party to have backed Trump, she congratulated him in a post on Twitter referring to “the American people, free!” Le Pen later said she trusted the French, “who cherish their liberty,” would break with the system which was “shackling them.”

“Up to now everybody in France has said, just as all kind of informed opinion so-called in America has said, ‘Oh well, Trump cannot win, Marine le Pen cannot win,”’ Howard Davies, Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, told Bloomberg TV’s Tom Keene. “Well, I think there’ll be a lot of people asking themselves if that really is quite so certain, and so I think the French will be very nervous.”

Germany elections

Germany, with its constitutional checks and balances intended to prevent dictatorial bents, is also the European country most resistant to populism. Federal elections in the fall of 2017 will show if that postwar assumption still holds.
Frauke Petry, co-leader of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, sees Trump’s victory as a lesson for Germany. “Just as Americans didn’t believe the pollsters of the mainstream media, Germans also must have the courage to make their mark at the ballot box themselves,” Petry said.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has yet to reveal whether she will run again, has already suffered a series of regional election defeats on the back of an open-door refugee policy denounced by AfD and described as “insane” by Trump. The Republican’s surprise victory might just tip her in favor of seeking a fourth term.

On November 10 2016 21:34 TheDwf wrote:

Quite on the contrary, the governing pseudo-left and the right love nothing more than crying wolf and overestimating the weight of the Front National to coerce voters. Marine Le Pen has no chance of winning in 2017, you need ~18 millions votes to win the second round and the Front National never had more than 7. They should improve that in 2017 (again thanks to this disgusting pseudo-left), but you don't gain 11 millions votes like that. Marine Le Pen's only chance would be to meet Hollande in the second round, and there's no chance of that since his score would be divided by 2 or 3 compared with 2012; assuming this living disgrace dares to run for his reelection, that is. Plus you still need 289 députés to govern after that, and the Front National has literally zero major ally. Our institutions are designed to prevent extreme parties from conquering the power alone, and they're working as intended.

And don't give us “but Brexit! but Trump!”, everyone who followed those events without being blinded by wishful thinking knew it would be close. The fact that the establishment seceded from reality doesn't mean everyone did.