Marine Le Pen Lost the Battle but not the War, and Macron Can Join Merkel in Ignoring Greece and Spain

Today, Europeans are celebrating Victory Europe, May 8, 1945. They are also wondering what the election of Emmanuel Macron, an untested Socialist economics minister under outgoing Socialist President François Hollande, but who denies that he is a Socialist, will do for or to France and the European Union. It will take some time to answer that question, but the unexpected closeness of the French vote on Sunday suggests that Marine Le Pen and the Front National are stronger than ever and that Macron will have real opposition in the FN and Le Pen, no matter what globalist, elite-favoring policies and positions he takes for France in the next 5 years. • • • THE EU IS IN TROUBLE IN THE SOUTH. • • • SPAIN. The Guardian reported last week that Podemos, Spain’s anti-austerity party, has vowed to press ahead with a vote of no-confidence against the embattled prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, warning that the latest corruption allegations involving his governing People’s party (PP) have crossed “red lines” and risk jeopardising the rule of law. Podemos apparently plans the action in the comong days. Spanish prime minister Rajoy’s People’s party has been linked to a succession of high-profile corruption scandals in recent years, and Podemos’s leader, Pablo Iglesias, said his party had an “ethical obligation” to hold Rajoy to account after Ignacio González, a former PP president of the Madrid region, was arrested as part of an investigation into alleged embezzlement at a state-owed water company. Evidence has also emerged to suggest that the chief anti-corruption prosecutor intervened in the case in an alleged attempt to block a line of inquiry. Iglesias said : “What’s happened over the past two weeks is another step over the red lines by the People’s party. The anti-corruption prosecutor is trying to do the opposite of fighting corruption; he’s trying to stop prosecutors who are fighting corruption from doing their job.It means that the People’s party is behaving like a parasite when it comes to institutions; it’s not just looting them to get richer, it’s also risking citizens’ safety by trying to ensure that the police, the guardia civil, judges and prosecutors don’t go after people who are corrupt.” • Although the no-confidence motion has been used only twice since the 1970s in Spain, Iglesias said the party would go ahead with it. It is unlikely to succeed -- the Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) dismissed the move as irresponsible political “fireworks” while the centre-right Ciudadanos (Citizens) party called it a “circus stunt.” The Podemos leader denied suggestions that he was using the vote to divide the PSOE, which has been leaderless since Pedro Sánchez stepped down last year after refusing to back Rajoy’s return to office following 10 months of political stalemate. Iglesias contends : “We’re not the ones responsible for what’s happened in the past two weeks. We didn’t create that reality but it’s the reality that people are finding out about through the media and thanks to the brave guardia civil and police officers and prosecutors. That is the reality of Spain, and it’s much more important than what happens in any political party.” PSOE's Sánchez, who is hoping to win back his old job, has called for Rajoy to resign but has accused Podemos of letting the PP back into power by failing to support his attempts to form a socialist-led government last year. The PP has been mired in a succession of damaging, high-profile corruption scandals in recent years and Rajoy has been called to testify as a witness in a case involving senior PP members who are alleged to have taken bribes in return for contracts. • Such scandals are not confined to Madrid. The PP president of the south-eastern region of Murcia was forced to resign last month over alleged corruption, while the son of former Catalan regional president Jordi Pujol was sent to prison last week on suspicion of interfering with an investigation and hiding €30m alleged to be part of money laundering. • Fernando Jímenez, a professor of political science and administration at the University of Murcia, told the Guardian that Spain suffered from a particular kind of corruption : “Public services here work pretty efficiently and without any corruption. What we have is grand corruption at high levels and it’s linked to high-level contacts between senior party members and powerful businesspeople.” Jímenez said that while people had turned a blind eye to corruption during Spain’s building boom -- “it wasn’t tolerance of corruption so much as indifference” -- the economic crisis in 2008 had changed attitudes and helped to create new parties such as Podemos and Ciudadanos. Victor Lapuente, associate professor of political science at the University of Gothenberg, said that Spain’s old two-party system had made it difficult for voters to punish corruption -- especially when both the PP and the PSOE were tainted. He says the main problem remained the politicization of local, regional and central administrations : “You’re not exactly creating an boys’ club, but you are definitely creating a group of people at the top of local, regional or central administrations who all share a similar electoral interest." Manuel Villoria, professor of political science at Madrid’s King Juan Carlos University, said although the PP was increasingly paying the price for the post-crisis shift in attitudes to corruption in Spain, its leader is still safe : “For a long time now, Rajoy has been touched and wounded by a lot of corruption allegations but he’s immensely lucky because the Socialist party is in the state it’s in and...Podemos could be seen as a party that’s too radical to form a government in Spain. That’s why he’s still alive. Any other advanced democracy wouldn’t be able to carry on like this. Thanks to these games and the state of the other parties, he’s still alive.” • The only action taken by the EU leadership is to continue to enforce the austerity programs put in place in Spain to salvage its failing banking system after the housing boom bubble burst in 2008. Spain's weak economy and corrupt government do not matter to Mrs. Merkel and her EU elites. • • • GREECE. Reuters reported Friday that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras addressed his lawmakers during a session of the ruling Syriza party parliamentary group at the parliament in Athens, trying to bring his leftist Syriza party on board to approve a deal reached with international lenders, sweetening the pot by saying any above-target savings this year would go to the Greek people. He also said Greece has done its part with austerity and reforms and that it is now time for the lenders -- the European Union and International Monetary Fund -- to meet their promises to consider debt relief. Tsipras told his party lawmakers : "After five years of promises...our lenders are faced with the obligation to immediately adopt substantial measures to reduce the debt. We are standing before a deal which gives us the prospect of an exit (from the debt crisis), a comprehensive deal. It's in our hand to vindicate the trust that Greek people showed to us." On Tuesday, Tsipras closed an initial deal on a package of reforms -- including such unpopular moves as cutting pensions for the 13th time since 2010, and reducing the tax-free income allowance -- between creditors and the government. The agreement ends six months of staff-level haggling and will pave the way for the disbursement of further rescue funds if approved first by the Greek parliament and then by Eurozone finance ministers. • Tsipras's coalition has 153 seats in the 300-seat parliament, which will vote on May 17. He is expected to command his majority, but with major parties such as the conservative New Democracy and the socialist Democratic Alliance-PASOK party opposed, his room for maneuver is not great. To make the deal more palatable for Greece, however, the lenders agreed that if budget savings targets are exceeded in 2019 and 2020, Athens will be allowed to implement relief measures, offsetting the impact of austerity. Tsipras told his party lawmakers that if the country exceeded its primary budget surplus target this year -- that is, the balance excluding debt repayments -- the excess would be returned to the Greek people : "When time comes, this government will hand out...what will be left after having overshot its (primary) surplus(targets)." Greece achieved a 4.2% primary surplus last year, outperforming its 0.5% of GDP target, but Tsipras' decision to hand out benefits to pensioners as a result upset main lender Germany. Greece is hoping to get a deal on further debt relief when Eurozone finance ministers meet on May 22, but it is by no means certain that will happen, however. Germany, forever the wrench in the cogs, for example, was quick to shoot down a report on Thursday that debt relief measures were under consideration. The German finance minister told the media : "No debt relief is being prepared." • The Ekathimerini news outlet says : "Although some lawmakers have expressed reservations about the deal, which foresees further cuts to pensions and more tax increases, along with changes to the energy and labor markets, it is widely expected that Tsipras will get the support he needs to push the bill into law. A raft of so-called countermeasures -- social welfare interventions that will come into effect in 2019 if the government meets budget targets -- will be voted on separately and is sure to get the support of coalition MPs. The government has also appealed to the main political opposition New Democracy to back the offsetting measures but ND has refused to oblige." • Aides to Prime Minister Tsipras say he is considering a cabinet reshuffle to give his government a lift and inspire investors as talks on lightening Greece’s debt and the inclusion of Greek bonds in the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing program are next on the agenda. Ekathimerini sqys : "it appears that the government is keen to send out a message that it is turning a page following the completion of a tough bailout review that dragged on for months. The procrastination of the review, and its contribution to a greater sense of uncertainty, is believed to have played a role in a decision by the European Commission to reconsider its predictions regarding Greece’s economy. The Commission is planning to revise down its growth forecast for Greece this year to around 2% from a previous 2.7%, it emerged last week. According to sources, although pleased with the fact that a deal was finally reached after so many delays, Greece’s creditors are frustrated about the lack of progress in key areas such as privatizations. • • • THE GREEK ISLAND IMMIGRANT CRISIS. Tsipras and, more to the point, the EU have their work cut out for them in trying to manage the illegal immigrant inflow that continues on the Greek Islands closest to Turkey. • The Guardian reported last week : "On a clear day the channel dividing Chios from the Turkish coast does not look like a channel at all. The nooks and crevices of Turkey’s western shores, its wind turbines and summer homes could, to the naked eye, be a promontory of the Greek island itself. For the men, women and children who almost daily make the crossing in dinghies and other smuggler craft, it is a God-given proximity, the gateway to Europe that continues to lure....Refugee flows via Greece were meant to stop when the EU and Turkey announced what was seen as a pioneering agreement to stem the influx in March 2016. In Chios, like other Aegean isles, residents initially welcomed the accord. It was short-lived. The influx -- one that saw more than 850,000 refugees arrive into the country in 2015 -- was soon replaced by a steady flow, with asylum seekers arriving in groups that were sometimes small, sometimes large, but always propelled by the same ambition: to reach Europe by way of its southern shores." • The Guardian reports that on Chios, one of the islands closest to Turkey, more than 825 asylum seekers, the vast majority Syrians, arrived from Turkey in March. In April, 600 arrived. With at least 3,000, according to authorities, housed in two overcrowded camps -- one makeshift, the other a razor-wire topped detention centre in a former factory known as Vial -- it is anger that hangs in the air." This is because Greece’s Aegean isles have become de facto detention facilities -- a dumpling ground for nearly 14,000 stranded souls, unable to move until permits are processed and fearful of what lies ahead. Makis Mylonas, a Chios policy advisor, told the Guardian : “Anything could happen because everything is hanging by a thread. Chios, Samos, Lesvos, Kos, Leros were sacrificed in the name of Europe’s fixation to keep immigrants out.” But, Mylonas claims that the isles continue to bear the brunt of the flows. International aid organisations don't disagree. With Chios’s main detention centre at bursting point and daily arrivals far outstripping deportations or EU relocations (also foreseen under the EU-Turkey deal -- read that Merkel-Turkey deal), immigrants are forced to live in Souda, slatternly tents spreading with each new boatload beyond the castle along the shores that surround Chios town. As on other isles, the great fear on Chios is of a mass rejection of asylum requests, sparking violent reaction from refugees refusing to leave. About 400 second-time requests -- most by young, single men -- are thought to be pending. Nick Millet, a British volunteer, says : “There is no way they will be able to deport people quietly. The situation here is absolutely shameful. It’s Europe’s dirty secret. Why does this place exist? Why are children sleeping on a beach?” In Spring, Chios is a sleepy place, its rhythms punctuated by the noisy arrival of night ferries, now the focus of stowaways determined to leave. But there is also a sense of menace that is impossible to ignore. “Another big wave from Turkey and it would be difficult to cope,” says advisor Mylonas. Millet finds it hard not to agree : “This can’t go on for ever,” he says. “At some point something has to give.” • But, the Greek Aegean Islands don't matter to Germany and the EU elites. Mrs. Merkel got her high fence against illegal immigrants at the Turkisth border. She paid €6 billion for that invisible fence. Greece may be on the wrong side of it, but the EU could not care less. • • • DEAR READERS, Emmanuel Macron took 65% of the French vote, in an election that most experts saw as a vote "against" -- against Hollande and the mess he and the Socialist Party made, against more of the same, against the political elites. He should not have been elected by most crtieria, but he was facing a newly constituted, but suspect, Front National with a new voice. It was also a vote for -- for Marine Le Pen, although she lost. Her vote total shows that a Front National with a patriotic, populist message resonates with many French voters. But, she needs time to prove herself and her "dedemonized" FN. She needs to put yet more space between the FN and its founder, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen. She needs more FN ational assembly lawmakers. She needs, above all, to be open to Europe, although not the EU, which is Europe's latest personification, with a German hegemony. Macron is doomed to follow the EU as now constituted -- he will support the unelected EU elites and let France's mixed economy be dragged further down by the German fully industrialized model. He will favor the Euro that favors Germany and northern Europe but penalizes France and all of southern Europe. The only prediction we can safely make tafter Macron's win is that the French will suffer -- but this time, those who suffer will have a leader and a voice, Marine Le Pen. The battle was lost on Sunday, but not the war.