Sunday, April 23, 2017

"Tous avec Macron:" all with Macron

I would have liked that a pro-European socialist candidate finished in the first position in the French election. But it will not happen. At this hour it seems that Macron and Le Pen will dispute the second round of the French presidential election. The choice is clear: either a pro-reform agenda of France in Europe, or a europhobic racist option. In the last hours before the election it was sad but not surprising to see the current holder of the US presidency cheering for Le Pen from Twitter after a terrorist attack. It was also sad to see a leftist Spanish politician (Pablo Iglesias of Podemos) supporting a euro-sceptic candidate in the last hours of the campaign. Of course two of the losers of the first round, the socialist candidate Hamon and the conservative Fillon, have done the decent thing of asking their voters to support Macron in the second round. The favourite to win the second round has been the only candidate to argue that France must transfer more sovereignty to the European Union. That is very good news. But now all the energies should go to support him in the second round. The left has a future in trying to advance its agenda in a European context, and accept that the nation-state is obsolete in Europe. France needs reforms, and needs to present more energetically a pro-European frame of mind to defeat the extreme right. Trump, Putin, and all the national-populists in Europe and the world would be very happy with a victory of Le Pen in France. It will not happen because the young and the decent majority of French voters will stop the demagogs. Let's make with our energies and support the next two weeks a period to remember in the fight to mobilize everybody in France, and especially the young, in favor of a better and united Europe.

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