r.t. dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at abby martin. the issue is that so much of the taxpayers' money i mean if you would like to give it a real train it is hard to deny something or news out of anything in french politics with president bush was not oppose the fighting for his political life what is the future.

please. liz. limitation of free credit take should free zones for charges free arrangement free. free studio time free. download free broadcast clothing videos for your media project a free media don carty dot com you. can. follow and welcome to cross talk on people about a cosmetic change or historic paradigm shift take your pick but it's hard to deny

something important is happening in french politics with president nicolas sarkozy fighting for his political life what is the future of france the european right and the entire euro project. live. to cross talk the elections in france i'm joined by robert oulds in london he is director of the bruges group also in london we have been he is the managing director at the european policy information center and in stockholm we go to richard he is a member of the swedish parliament for the sweden democrats all right gentlemen this is cross-eyed that means you can jump in anytime you want and race in london first i'd like to go to you a lot of people said that after the first round of the presidential election in france that the choices were dismal but and whoever wins france still loses how do you feel about that. yes that's probably that's probably a good call i mean if sarkozy very unlikely but it's because he does win the second

round we have to keep in mind that in the first round of the elections three quarters of french voters actually voted against sarkozy so that in itself is an indictment and if what is new looks like very likely all on will come in we will get a whole new shake up in the way europe is likely to pursue solving the eurozone crisis alone has indicated that this austerity package you know advocated by chancellor merkel of germany is not necessarily one thing so we might get someone who is not that popular or we might get someone who in the future will be very unpopular ok robert in london if i can go to you how do you think the of the political situation has changed in france and maybe as we go through this program its ramifications for the rest of europe. warsaw cozy is finished we've known for quite some time on the call being on cross talk many months ago arguing that if france loses its aaa rating then tacos he will be finished he'll lose

a president or elections that's happened and it will lose what is really interesting in france is it hasn't been mentioned as yet is the party which has the greatest support amongst young people is the national the national front as it translates in english that is the party that is of the most support amongst the young people and that's a real change for the future so it's not what's necessarily going to happen with this election coming up the presidential runoff is what could well happen in the future unless of course french politics changes and we have the in france the two people who are in the runoff for the presidency they're both of the same clique really they have different political persuasions in their different parties but really they're from the same french establishment that french establishment will be broken perhaps sometime in the future richard in stockholm it's quite interesting to me is there do you know we still we have a socialist that won the first round but there seems to be a very perceptible shift to the right in france i mean it's kind of ironic here because we have a socialist in the lead right now most likely will be elected but the electorate is

moving to the right. well it's true actually i don't care much about mr sarkozy or holland at all and i think. the reason for this shows your socialist victory is more or less you know i think you could accuse misako c. for that because he's been quite bad for france and i have to say that i'm quite happy for my pen and the success of front and i think it's a good thing i've had my doubts over the years when it comes to front you know but i think that marion le pen actually has started some kind of change within the party and i think that's good because france needs is needing a democratic you know nationalistic party and i think that the change that marie le pen has initiated within the party is very good and i think that if she continues this process and i'm quite sure that. could be a future president of france which is something good if you ask me ok entries what

do you think about that i mean it's interesting i mean we look at these two candidates are going in the runoff but everyone's looking at le pen and the right and you know i'm in this is one of the reasons why i wanted to do this program is the national front really changing itself or is it just cosmetic i mean you scratch a little deeper and it's still very much the party of the father le pen. are not quite i mean marine le pen did change the rhetoric and also you know the substance of the program so it was much more about the nationalistic attitude towards france and you know the entire french way of life it was anti immigration it was not what was not necessarily anti-semitic so if you want to use an example of the british political party scene they move more into the direction of the united kingdom independence party that argues for more critical attitude towards the european union more critical attitude in particular towards the euro which lopin actually would like to exit so you know there is a shift it is not necessarily an extremist party based on a ticket of seeing

a phobia or anti-semitism but more and you are and how eurozone and anti-establishment to get robert if i can go to you or how do you think i'm going to deal with the if he wins the presidency how he's going to deal with the european union and the euro because he still can i please come unstuck in many ways go ahead . well he they would have to be valid to call break in in the structures of the european union which has been many much to really dependent upon the power of east berlin access the franco german axis which is driven european integration and driven the euro and i want to clean the euro was largely a french idea to me to arms price to chancellor kohl the price of german reunification so yes you can have german raef unification if you give up the doj mark and go into what they were then calling. course that translates badly in germany they called it the euro and now of course we're finding that the euro is

helping germany and hurting france's course are hurting other countries particularly spain and we know about the pigs and how the damage it's cause it was also hurting france as well and france is suffering as a result of the e.u. imposed austerity program so really so cosy years where did himself too and chancellor angela merkel in germany and really if hollande is going to break from that will be a major paradigm shift within the european union and it will take a very bold man a very bold french politician to do that and he's hollande the guy that will do that well will he break with the german axis which is really forcing austerity along many nations within the european union and that's what's causing the economic harm now richard it's interesting because one is now considered a man being told ok he's considered boring and maybe that's what the french one compared is that of course the what do you think of are there is he a bold politician i mean he's a socialist he's a socialist. here but. for me he is nothing i mean.

my knowledge of him is rather shallow and you i have to admit but i mean here i think is boring and the reason for him being you know being number one at the moment is not what mr holland himself it's so i can see all his failures i'm quite sure about and that is that a lot of it really is a good direction for france so go ahead jump in go ahead. yes i agree with the assessment of the lawn and we also have to keep in mind that is hands practically tied that's what i'm getting it on yes when bitter are implemented what he thought was socialism whatever you know thirty years ago within the year the country was bankrupt you know capital moved you know all the way all the way to germany and middle came to the realization we already have one dominating currency in europe that is the doj mark so we might as well just try and rope germany in into a single currency but the economic policies of meet on resulted in a massive capital flight so if for long it's going to do the same thing meaning you

know tax increases and increase in spending then the money markets will respond to this they will raise interest rates which means it will be difficult for france to refinance itself capital will go again you know into germany which will make it very easy for the germans to refinance themselves and then of course we will take a step back there's this wonderful quote by the doors first prime minister who said i know how to drive a car but you would force me to drive a car on ice here the keys and that's exactly what's going to happen so all loaned will be stuck there's really no english that he can actually do robert you know a lot of people blamed for is his personality is panache and all of that but i think it's in some ways it's because he he tied himself to merkel and austerity and this is what hurt him a lot to. yes exactly that's exactly where he went wrong he tied himself to the german really policy of having having the euro in restricted amounts and

having a high valued currency which is hurt the french economy as well and really the austerity which is largely driven by german fears of inflation and arguing that the problem with the economy of the eurozone is the debt vava than of course the overly strong euro and that the overly strong german economy which is dominated the markets of the eurozone states has really been something which is distracted attention from what has actually been going on and that is that france is really it's second playing second fiddle to german economic policy and really that has to change and until that does change france will not be able to get out of the economic problems that it's in you know richard if i go back to you and start on one of the things that i find very interesting is that of course the he's he's really really muddled through his presidency because he wants to move to the right well you can have a real writers we have the pen ok i mean this is one of his problems is that he's

not really been a defining politician beyond his personality it's totally correct. i think it's hard to have a hard time putting my you know pulling my finger and sarkozy is trying to figure out what he really wants to do it and i think it's hard time because he's changing over the last two years i mean he's been talking a lot about you know issues like islamization and multiculturalism and immigration and stuff like that but i don't think it's an as is just a way of him you know it's just his way of trying to you know steal voters from molly and le pen and the front. and i'm not sure if psycho see really knows which way to go. had a hard time holding it all together and we can see it out now in the election that the french voters are actually. getting punished at the moment so. all right before we go to the break andres what do you think that causes biggest mistake in his presidency has been. running for office in two thousand and seven which is about

one or two years before the financial crisis it's it's very difficult it's also a little bit you know i wouldn't say you'd use the term unfair but you know you come into office and you have this agenda you turn france into a right of center countries you treasure you know the business of business friendly environment and then in comes the big recession and you know first the subprime crisis and then followed followed by the southern debt crisis your hands are somewhat tied in particular when you are part of an economic bloc that is so dominated by germany why it's germany able to dominate this blog because of the french policy the euro which was organized in a catastrophic fashion so i'm going to jump in right here we're going to go to a short break gentlemen and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the election in france today. and if you. want

to. get along sometimes you see a story and it seems so bleak you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. wealthy british science. because.

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welcome back across dot com carol back to my job we're talking about what's happening in french politics. and you can. see the full. ok if i go back to you robert in london well it's an interesting fact that one out of three voters in france voted for what would be called an extreme party ok and you know we have talked to people have talked about the national front as being a protest vote i think those days are basically coming to an end ok you can't keep saying it's a protest vote ok what does this say about democracy in europe ok in your mind and ideology if it means anything anymore. well what it means is that the french people are quite clearly frustrated if you vote for one party or another one candidate or another of the main parties the anoxia we're just going to get really the same result because they're wedded to the situation where the european union is dictating many of their loot much of their legislation and of course largely tax

and spend policy is also coming under the sphere of the european union we've had this treaty that was signed recently this fiscal compact which gives more power to institutions of the european union to dictate what the tax and spend policies should be so not to one up large deficits so the french people are quite clearly frustrated so they're what they are voting for is trying to reclaim their democracy by voting for the extremes it's not a threat to democracy the people are going off to the left or to the vie they clearly frustrated with the center until the center we gained democratic principles where countries become self-governing people will go off to extremes it's an inevitable consequence when power is centralized and taken away form the people that they're express themselves in ways of voting for parties such as the front national or of course these are these neo communists in fonts for stray ssion that

we're seeing and really the center has to address this and end the situation where the european union has far too much power over states internal affairs ok richard spreads very interesting analysis from our dear do we say are we seeing the end of the center as we've called it since the end of the cold war here we've had eight governments collapse in europe since the advent of the financial crisis here and there are more or less been in the center of the center of center left center right but in the center ok we've seen those days coming to an end and can mr online reinvent socialism ok he says he can i can't understand how he would do it when he's so tied to the eurozone and to the policies coming out of berlin. what was the question again well. things are changing back and forth all the time that's the way politics works i mean. i think it's far too easy saying the people are angry or whatever and that's why they are voting for a for example million lappin and i mean perhaps they just like what she's saying

perhaps they just find her answers to be the correct ones and actually i think it's a good thing for democracy with its extremes i'm not sure if i should call front. stream at all but it's good for democracy because politics need its extremes to be interesting we need to to have those interesting. fights between the parties it's quite boring when everyone is saying just the same thing so i think this is a good thing for france actually they need to shake in things up a little bit and i think that. for example has done that and that that's a good thing ok and greece you think all on is going to shake up france because he again i mean he doesn't strike me as some of the does that everyone says he's a consensus builder he moves slowly he's a thinker he's an intellectual that's not what france needs right now and i would agree with our other guest here i mean the country needs to be shaken up because its unemployment situation its debt problems are just getting worse and his

campaign doesn't have any solutions ok other than dislike things out across the. i mean this is just allude to a point that was raised earlier about you know nontraditional if we call it not extremist vote i mean france you said you know one third of the electorate went for four candidates not from the political mainstream in greece in a couple of weeks time that would be even more interesting you know at the moment we have one third undecided one third with the traditional parties and one third with the extremist parties so at the moment you could say the vote is fifty fifty between these two and i think what's happening in france but also in other countries it's not necessarily a protest vote is that it's a reaction vote you react to austerity you react to the economic crisis and this reaction you know has to be channeled through the european union or your perception of the european union because you know the e.u. governs our economic and monetary affairs but the next reaction is also that of

immigration or notions of of multiculturalism the notion of a national identity within a globalized economy and here this is not necessarily where the european union comes into play it's apart from the free movement of people within the european union it is national countries that said immigration quotas that allow other you know member citizens from other countries to come in and even within the e.u. there are certain there are geishas of the free movement of people you know for instance poland or other countries that joined the e.u. in two thousand and four were only allowed to freely move around the european union last year in two thousand and eleven so i think we have to differentiate what you can actually do in order to need to more the wishes well you see are now emerging just saying robert if i go back you in line and i mean it seems to me i mean if we look at all of these elections we've had a last three years or so you know you can you we can take each party and each candidate in each country and all that but there seems to be one similarity there

almost uniformly there's a rejection of the status quo and the entire euro project to one degree or another . well the opinion elite favor more european integration whenever there's a problem they favor a european wide solution they favor the european commission with proposed legislation which would govern their own countries really and that's got to stop because too much for how it always was solved along the lines of merkel see the new commission hardly had a role in all of this so you can't just say that european leaders of course it is because you feel as if you are in commission has the sole white of legist proposing legislation within the indian shows and if you look here you can use the name of course if you have course five. of your i mean only a politician has been centered around germany and france are not by the european commission we've seen a move back towards intergovernmental isn't it's not is there supporting the use of force in the completely incorrect because the mirco z. of the fiscal pact would have with gives more power to the european commission to

dictate to national countries the deficits that they can be running it can make it makes the european court of justice have a say in those areas that you have the. cozy pact. that you have and you limited driving this largely and they're going to pay the price those who say a lot of people are paying the price or richard if i go back to you in stockholm i mean again our kind of reiterate my point here it seems like the entire euro project is being punished here and not rejected maybe for some it's a rejection but being punished much along the lines of what robert said. i think it's correct i mean as i see it more and more people are actually getting fed up with the whole european union and in the usa if you and it's not surprising i mean they have a hard time holding it all together i mean the crisis in greece it's just one factor i mean when i talk to people about it i used to be very positive positive to

the union myself i actually voted yes in the referendum back in one thousand nine hundred four here in sweden but i changed my mind over the years and the european union is turning into some kind of i don't know supranational monster state you know and i don't like it and people in general don't like and definitely don't like when for example germany and france sarkozy and merkel is trying to tell people what to think tell people what to do and that excuse me but it pisses people off and. that maybe that's the main problem with sarkozy because on the one hand he's trying to please the french voters on the other hand he's trying to please you know merkel and trying to hold the whole project together and it's a hard time doing that and i think that he's getting punished now. mainly also because his work with merkel and the european union and how they are treating people and how they are treating other member states it's not really you know and

as i always tend to think of the european union is like a tube of toothpaste once you squeeze the the paste out you can't get it back in and that's how i look at the european union it it's almost impossible to do it ok maybe you can slow it down but you can't undo it. yeah but you can shifted you know this is europe is not the european union the european union is not europe the european union or to be the vehicle that makes sense of europe now you know they have done in the past made tremendous sense of europe you know the fifty's the reproach it between france and germany the single market even the euro in the times of boom was fantastic every one of those were my words those were our political projects ok they were had different agendas well there's a debate to that but what what my point is that the european union undoubtedly in agree with the other two panelists has to change fundamentally a lot of people have been arguing this ever since the issue of you know turkey joining the e.u. remember that a couple of years ago that the e.u.

will not be able to actually take on board you know such a country as diverse as turkey but it is in the economic and you might even say you know do security interest of the e.u. to take this on board so the e.u. has to change you know the euro is a good idea but not certainly for an entire block of seventeen or eventually whatever you want twenty five or twenty seven countries so it was a good policy that was way you know out of proportion and certainly not in an area that simply doesn't represent an optimum currency area you know that has to be changed go ahead jump in. yeah i actually agree that. the project has to change but i'm not sure if we have the same same views about the changed self but as i said trying to say earlier when i voted yes for the for the whole project back in ninety four i voted yes for what i believed in some kind of intergovernmental cooperation and that is what europe is needing we need to talk to each other we need to stop fighting we need to work together about but that the e.u.

today's as i said earlier is some kind of supernatural monster state and that that's a completely different freeing and the whole. use not talking to people is dictating to other countries what should be happening and that's why per year died out on the street at protesting. that they're there and they're saying the only way forward is to wire it because the government the political parties the part of the european allayed are just busy kowtow ing to brussels doing what they're told and particularly the cap to the franco german alliance which is pushing more european union more supranational governments on the people of europe and that's just gone far too far ok going what i agree thank you very much gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in london and in stockholm and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember.

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