Will the Intransigence of Junker and EU Eurocrats Lead to What Marine Le Pen Calls Its "Funeral"

To talk about BREXIT -- the UK's June 23 vote to leave the European Union -- we must start with Italy and France. ~~~~~~ Some analysts predict that the Italian government risks collapse within weeks because of growing unrest in the country and concern that debt-ridden Italy will drag the EU down. When Italian prime minister Matteo Renzo visited Naples and Sicily this week to try to garner support for his series of reforms to Italy's constitution, education system and banking industry, clashes between protesters and police broke out. Left-wing protesters became violent in Naples on Monday as demonstrators broke through police cordons, hurled gargage cans and set off flares. Anarchist city councillor Eleonora De Majo, who was among the dozens of protesters at the riot, was hit in the head by a police truncheon during the clashes. Last weekend, an anti-Renzi riot broke out before his visit to Sicily, which has the worst of Italy's high unemployment rate and slow growth. Despite a large police presence, the town of Catania saw angry locals throwing bottles and stones in scuffles because Prime Minister Renzi has called for a referendum in October on changing the country's constitution, which some say could bring down the government. Renzi tried to calm fears amid the growing social unrest, writing on Facebook : "The antagonists who resort to violence will not frighten me. I stand in solidarity with the police. This is a beautiful country that wants to do well. Let's make it together." Renzi has staked his political career on the referendum result that, at the moment, polls say is too close to call. Many in the EU have sharply criticized Renzi for calling the referendum, because it could have not only political and economic consequences for Italy but also economic consequences for the European Union, especially in relation to Italy’s banks that could collapse under the weight of their serious capitalization problems and more than 300 billion Euros in bad loans. The Five Star movement party -- supported by George Soros -- which recently elected its candidate as mayor of Rome, has used its growing political clout to demand a referendum on the Euro. ~~~~~~ There also is France, where Front National president Marine Le Pen predicted the end of the EU as she promised a FREXIT referendum during the European Parliament session in which European Commission president Jean-Claude Junker tried to provide a roadmap for a post-BREXIT EU. Le Pen delivered a potentially crushing blow to the EU when she promised, after Junker's speech, to hold a referendum to decide whether France remains in the Union if she is elected president of France in May 2107. Le Pen leads the right-wing Eurosceptic Front National party, and recent polls have placed her as one of the front-runners for next year's presidential race, although she faces a contest which will also includes former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose own polls show him as the leader French voters see as most able to fight France's migration and internal security problems. Marine Le Pen's warning to Juncker, a former Luxembourg prime minister, began when she labeled his state of the EU speech to MEPs "insipid," calling it a "funeral" for the EU. Junker had said : "The scope in which we cooperate together is far too small. Far too often national interests are brought to the fore. We shouldn’t misunderstand this. European integration must not bow to the interests of the nation-state." [That is the essential message of Global One-Worldism.] Le Pen and other Eurosceptic party leaders argue that, as Le Pen told Junker on Wednesday : "Europe cannot become a colorless melting pot." Le Pen emphasized what many see as the EU's biggest failure : “But really, you haven’t been paying attention to the ambition of people in the European Union to reestablish and retake their sovereignty and their independence. Brexit has really broken a taboo. The Brits have shown us that you can leave the European Union and you can come out better. The catastrophic visions were just a lie. The UK is doing quite well, the shock that you wanted to see has now turned into trust, everybody thought there was going to be apocalypse falling on the UK but that didn’t happen." Then she delivered a scathing rhetorical question : "What are you protecting us from? Freedom? Democracy?" ~~~~~~ In his roadmap speech, Jean-Claude Junker exressed his "regret" at the BREXIT vote, but insisted the EU is "not at risk." But he warned the next 12 months will be a "crucial time to deliver a better Europe." A "better Europe" is absolutely necessary if the EU is to survive. It is not only France that is talking about following Britain out of the EU. Who's next? Six other European countries want to hold their own EU referendum : (1) NEXIT : Dutch far-right Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders pledged to make the EU membership a key issue in the next general election. A huge 88% of people polled by a major Dutch newspaper said they would be in favor of an in/out vote along the British model. (2) AUXIT : Former right-wing Austrian Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer said his country should have a referendum within a year. (3) PEXIT : Poland's Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said :"The conclusion is obvious. We need a new European treaty." (4) SWEXIT : Before BREXIT, Swedish MEP Peter Lundgren said Denmark and Sweden were already 'on the brink' of quitting, suggesting a 'Nordic trading bloc' led by Britain could be born. Denmark held a referendum last December, although with a much more limited impact : Danes decided against handing over more powers to the EU. (5) HEXIT : Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, warned that Europe needs to change its ways. In addition, a Luxembourg leader has suggested that Hungary ought to be tossed out of the EU for its refusal to take in migrants. (6) IXIT : Italy’s Northern League leader Matteo Salvin will start a petition calling for an EU referendum, however his party scored a poor 4% at the last election, so it may be that Prime Minister Renzi's October referendum and Soros' Five Star party invervention on the future of the Euro in Italy will have more clout. As Marine Le Pen told Junker : "It is time to move on and I think that people need a project for the future. Let's be democrats, finally, and let the people decide." ~~~~~~ Dear readers, while the Eurosceptic parties in Europe are often portrayed as far-right populists with no real chance of changing the EU -- they are ordinary Europeans who want their countries freed of Middle East and African economic migrants who are not able to be culturally assimilated, as well as EU interference in their national affairs -- it was the populist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) that beat Chancellor Merkel and her center-right party in her home state recently. Europscepticism has been increasing in France in recent years. A French poll taken just before the BREXIT vote showed that 61% of French people viewed the EU unfavorably, angered by the migrant crisis and deadly islamist terror attacks in France, including the horrific Paris massacre. Today, the European Union is divided into pro-EU and Eurosceptic camps that are politically bent on "ever greater union" or disintegration, respectively. Juncker talks as if he doesn't understand the depth of the EU crisis. He needs to present programs that address the major problem -- "that Europe is scaring people rather than protecting them," as analyst Mark Leonard puts it. People in the UK were afraid of migration over which they had no control because the EU decided everything. France is afraid its cherished, distinct and sought-after culture will be obliterated. Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece are afraid of the Euro and its fiscal regulations that are built for Germany and northern European industrial economies, not southern Europe's agriculture-and-tourist-based economies. Different cultures and economies could have different sets of EU regulations, but the central unelected bureaucracy in Brussels storms forward to "ever greater union." That way leads to disintegration, sooner than Junker & Co can imagine. Instead of changing, Junker hurls insults : “There are splits out there and often fragmentation exists....That is leaving scope for galloping populism.” Junker and his cronies are threatening the UK with no access to the EU common market unless it allows free movement of migrants, and with British needing some sort of visa to travel in Europe -- the very issues that drove the UK to leave the EU in the first place. There is no EU learning curve. None. Disintegration seems inevitable.