JULY 2017 / NO. 1
TAGS: PRESIDENT MACRON, EU, CHARLES MAURRAS, EUROBONDS, STIGLITZ SYNDROME, ELITE

President Macron and the EU

“What is the impact of newly elected President Macron on France and on the EU? We are increasingly ruled by an intellectual, political, economic, and cultural elite, that does not bear the consequences of the decisions it makes on our behalf”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The French writer Charles Maurras (1868-1952) believed there were ‘Two Frances’: one was the ‘real’ France, and the other the ‘legal’ France. The ‘real country’ is the rural France of church clocks, traditions and native people fused with their ancestral soil, versus the ‘legal country’ which is the secular republic run by functionaries conspiring for foreign interests. When sufficient people in the country come to understand the failure of ‘legal’ France, they will want the ‘real’ France back. That will be true in countries all over Europe. As Marine Le Pen stated: “France will be led by a woman, either me or Mrs. Merkel”

Will Macron succeed in reforming the EU?

Macron wants to reform the EU. Firstly, he wants the EU to get its own budget, financed partly from VAT-revenues, from social security funds, and from the pension funds of all of the 27-member countries of the EU. Secondly, he wants to appoint an EU Minister of Finance. Thirdly, he wants to have Eurobonds. In other words, he wants to reform the EU with more integration, in contradiction to what European citizens really want.

So, will he succeed in reforming France?

The French Government is controlled by an elite consisting of politicians, bureaucrats and the military, all centralized in Paris. They all benefit from numerous privileges, which they clearly do not wish to relinquish. The elite still sticks to the illusion that it is Paris that determines what should happen in France as well as in the rest of the world. It still refuses to understand what is going on in and around France: globalization, six million Muslims in France, structurally high unemployment rates, the euro and the EU. The suburbs in French cities are ‘no-go areas’ beyond the control of the authorities. The unions block every reform. The country has essentially been in a state of emergency since the late 1980s.

What is the impact on the EU?

The elite in Paris who behave as ‘kingdoms with financial privileges’ are still unable to face reality. Former Presidents Mitterrand, Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande all tried to reform the country, and all failed. These are the ‘hard facts’, and we foresee that the new President Macron will also be not unable to realize the necessary reforms. This implies that Macron, together with Angela Merkel, will move for more integration within the EU: shifting more sovereignty to Brussels means that Brussels will get even more power.
“The ‘Stiglitz Syndrome’ is the process whereby public intellectuals suffer no financial or career consequences for being spectacularly wrong in their predictions”, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the right question to ask. For once I knew the right question, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes”, Albert Einstein
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