POLITICO.- Recent debates over Europe’s future are permeated by a sense of impending doom. The eurozone is an economic basket case, we’re told. The Continent is flooded with Muslim asylum-seekers, and inept political elites are about to be replaced by political extremists.Seguir leyendo...
There are good reasons to be concerned about the Continent’s future. But the claims of an imminent catastrophe in Europe are greatly exaggerated. For one, the eurozone is growing, albeit at a modest rate of 1.5 percent. Refugees are arriving at a lower rate than they were last year. And while the likes of the National Front, Alternative for Germany (AfD), or Hungary’s Jobbik, have indeed captured the imaginations of some segments of the European electorate, they are far from commanding anything close to popular majorities.
As Europe slowly but surely runs out of options, the tendency will be toward a revival of thoughtful reformist thinking and leadership.
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El momento Macron
POLITICO.- After dabbling with French left-leaning think tanks, Macron met Hollande through friends in 2006 and started working with him four years later. Meanwhile he had joined Rothschild, the advisory bank — a move that eventually made him a millionaire but now provides fodder for the far left and part of the Socialist Party to sneer at the “banker” who won’t ever feel real people’s pain.Seguir leyendo...
Ferracci remembers that his choice at the time surprised some of his friends. “Tantamount for him was financial independence. That was key. We talked about it, some of us may have told him that it might be a drag on a future political career, but he wanted independence and freedom.”
He didn’t lose contact with Hollande, and during the 2012 presidential campaign started coordinating the work of a group of economists who wrote papers for the Socialist candidate. Hollande, once elected, made Macron his top economic adviser, and a deputy chief of staff.
'Esto es Cuba sin sol'
Four years later Macron is unsparing in his assessment of Hollande’s then-platform and the way it evolved. His goal, he told me, is that the same mistakes — he used a stronger word — aren’t repeated next year. When Hollande, in the heat of the campaign, made the surprise announcement that he wanted to tax income above €1 million a year at a 75 percent rate, Macron was heard to quip: “It’s Cuba, without the sun.”
