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Europe is Burning
There will be elections for the European Parliament on May 23-26 2019. They will likely change the face of Europe more than anything has done since the EU was founded. That is not some wild prediction. Many European countries have held elections since the last European elections in 2014, and just about all had outcomes that shook up domestic political ratios.
In most cases, countries went from traditional parties to newly founded ones. France erased the Socialists and center-right in 2017, and the final round of the presidential elections was between Marine Le Pen’s Front National and Emmanuel Macron’s brand-new En Marche. Macron won sort of by default, because France as a country would never have voted for Le Pen.
In Italy, M5S and Lega have taken over. In Germany, Merkel’s CDU/CSU coalition lost bigly though it remained the biggest party, but Angela lost her ‘socialist’ SPD partner which gave up so much it didn’t want to be in government anymore. In Spain, Mariano Rajoy’s center right lost enough to cede power to the Socialists who came up tops because they played a smart game, not because the Spanish wanted it to rule.
We don’t have to go through all 27/28 different countries to establish that there are almost tectonic shifts happening all over, away from traditional parties and towards whoever showed up without insanely extreme views. And if you think this move is now completed, you may want to think again.
It’s amusing to realize that the country with the biggest political shift, the UK, is the only one that still hangs on to its traditional parties, and seeks its protest voice in a different way, namely through Brexit. That is, Britain shows it can get no satisfaction from the EU, whereas in the other major EU nations the dissatisfaction is projected onto domestic parties.
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Democracy on Hold: President of European Parliament Suspends Vote on Secretive U.S.-EU Trade Pact as Tide Turns Against It
Democracy on Hold: President of European Parliament Suspends Vote on Secretive U.S.-EU Trade Pact as Tide Turns Against It
Today was supposed to be a historic day — the day when hundreds of MEPs, representing hundreds of millions of European citizens, were to finally get their say on the hugely contentious EU-US trade bill commonly known as TTIP. Granted, the result would not have been binding, but a no-vote would have represented a resounding slap in the face of the European Commission.
Things began fairly auspiciously when, early on Tuesday, The Guardian reported that dissension was growing in the ranks as MEPs threatened to block the trade deal unless it guaranteed states’ rights to regulate over climate, health, and social laws. Now news is emerging that the President of the Parliament, Martin Schulz, has decided to postpone the vote altogether amidst fears that a majority of MEPs might reject the bill.
Here’s more from the Spanish news site El Diario.
The differences between the European People’s Party (EPP) and the social democratic bloc on the issue of arbitration and especially the internal division among the socialists have led to the withdrawal of the report, although the official justification given by the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz has been the huge number of amendments (over 200) proposed by the Committee on International Trade (INTA).
“In view of the more than 200 amendments and requests for separate vote, President Schulz has decided, using the Rule 175 and after consulting the chairman of the Committee on International Trade (INTA), to postpone the vote”. In fact, more than half of the amendments came from committee members fiercely opposed to the treaty (the European United Left and the Greens) and Schulz’s last-minute decision was to head off the “danger” that the TTIP would be defeated on Wednesday, according to parliamentary sources…
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