treacherous terrain to reach the scene of the sukhoi superjet crash in indonesia they are now just meters from the main disaster zone with little hope of survivors being. recent elections in france and greece showed that extreme left and right wing groups are gaining popularity so what's the future of europe. now debates with his guests on crosstalk. to keep. a low in welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle going to the extremes what is

happening in europe french voters appear to be moving to the left while greece is leaning hard to the right what is causing the collapse of the political center of europe and does the european project have a meaningful and united future. in it. to process the future of european politics i'm joined by rachel martin in paris she's a political communications strategist and syndicated columnist in brussels we have graham watson he is a liberal democrat member of the european parliament for southwest england and gibraltar and in london we have dion he says the meter a couple less he is a senior lecturer at the department of politics at birkbeck college at the university of london all right folks this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want rachel you wrote a very interesting article wise out across the was defeated in the presidential election what does this mean about centrist politics in europe in your opinion because as i pointed out in the beginning of the program we see going to the left

in france we see going to the right in greece and we see a lot of governments following and a lot of people are dissatisfied with the center is the center collapsing. no not at all we have to be really careful how we interpret a socialist president or a socialist party president getting elected in france because. judging by his thirty years of public office and politics all we can really tell from that background is that he's a pragmatist best the best we can see there's really no hard evidence of. heavy ideological socialist leanings of any kind and when they were stood next to paul the day of the election and they were able to find that fifty five percent of people who voted for false loans or didn't vote for him necessarily because he was alone than they and they appreciated him but it was it was more because they wanted sarkozy out and i think in this age of. economic turmoil what we're seeing in france as well as in greece and other countries isn't necessarily people hungering

for a change of ideology of any kind it's more just the cycling of government they want to just keep cycling through them here and francis as i like to say until they find . a crew that can do it right and i'm not really sure if that's the right strategy but. it can be a messy thing that's what we're ending up with ok graham but the crew that's been running the show for the last few decades has been the center ok and they're doing very well i think that of course he was the tenth leader in europe since the beginning of the financial crisis to fall i mean the center is under threat i think many people source sarkozy's being on the right more than illness and center and in fact the last two weeks of the campaigning between the first round of voting and the second round he showed his true colors what he was trying to poach the votes of and this is the look on the leader of the extreme right and i suspect the center in french politics might reemerge because i would expect mr sarkozy's policy. actually

to break. that they are no longer running the country but if you look at a lot of elections we had last week we had national. elections in france in serbia in armenia we had local elections in germany in italy and in the united kingdom you see the center of the liberal democratic party's polling pretty well compared to recent years what i think we are seeing in europe and this is a concern for all democratic parties is we're seeing a reduction in the vote of the established parties and we're seeing new parties emerge whether it is sometimes parties on the extreme left as in greece on the extreme right as in france or the pirate parties in germany and elsewhere and we're seeing a kind of at some of the political scene i think that is a reaction to economic distress and i think it's

a reaction to the failure of established governments to deal with the problems that people perceive chinese's in london what do you think about that i mean look at it ok i know i know rachel you disagree let me let me go to our other third guest and then we can have our. exchange here then if i go back to you first go to you in london what do you think about that and i want to talk about your own country greece i mean where is the center there and we have a lot of extremes going on there. well the center is imploding greece and i think i don't think that it is the center will give a response to the problems of europe is facing if there is one common thread that links development electoral development and policy development in the last few months across europe is that people who want change and there's a clear sense of that their action or that change change in terms of economic policy it means some kind of not necessarily complete end to a split or steady but some kind of active promotion of growth because we know that

there is to be there has been put in place in being utilized on that now actually is not working so i wouldn't necessarily link the kind of change that is happening to a particular aspect or of the political spectrum in the case of greece the main conclusion drawn from last sunday's election is not then hance mint off the far right and the emergence of the far right as a party that is now represented in parliament but primarily the implosion of the two main centrist party this on the first hand and then hands front of the vote the share of the vote off there are because i left and people want change again in policy terms as well as in terms of personnel where they are established parties be they of that i'd the center or the left will manage to a all for a credible alternative as in them's of policy and b. and that's another common thread across europe new faces that people need and one

well you may mean it again i mean new faces rachel if i can go to you i mean can you have a functioning democracy in the european union with the eurozone crisis ok i mean really uncover means come into power their hands are tied all right well. go ahead . i i view greece's elections a lot differently than die and he says he believes that there apparently a sign that people want change what i see is a sign that people don't want change they want the maintenance of the welfare state and the new democracy party granted they were elected the first party in these in this last election but still they that's a party that. had to be had to be dragged had to be dragged kicking and screaming towards our sterile so there's no party that would be like that in greece today on a platform of austerity so i don't see how it's a bit on the greeks want change they want they want the status quo ok it's very in balance you know there's a line in the back to london here it looks to me rachel saying is everyone. really

wants their cake and eat it just go ahead in london i disagree with wooldridge and said i disagree with the world richard said in the sense that people want at least in greece definitely to remain within the eurozone but they also want different sort of political leaders the old leaders are completely discredited the two main parties are completely. and essential the action in policy terms that they want is a more rational approach to. the problems of greece is facing and one of them. allusion to that is why they are rational decision to let me let me finish this particular point which is important nobody's saying that they want to move away from the welfare state but the one for state of the existing greece is not effective that's why there is real poverty in greece so i took my argument is basically people do change and that's expected what graeme

jumping graeme jump in i was going to say this is one of the contradictions you have people in greece saying according to the opinion polls sixty percent of them saying they want to stay in the euro but at the same time sixty percent of them vote for parties which are policies that will make it impossible for them. to stay in the euro and and when you when other europeans look at the greece the view that's taken is well look you know we've either had to go through some very difficult years of getting the public finances back on track or we're having to do it no why shouldn't the greeks have to do it too you know the greek government must start to learn to collect its taxes the greek government must start to look at how many people are employed in the public sector and on what salaries everyone else is having to do that we're not against helping greece we're not against bailing them out if need be but we want to see them taking those measures to deal with their own

problems. anybody who takes a bird's eye view on what is happening greece is bound to make an error of the make it the main there that is being made by by graham in this case is that he's missing not only the appetite for reform that exists in greece but also the fact that whatever reform is put in place has to combine two elements one is popular legitimacy the backbone of this legitimacy has to be participation in the eurozone and there is there is broad consensus amongst greece greeks endorsed in that end and political parties on this with some exceptions that were defeated last sunday and secondly a sense of justice what has been happening up on good now is a very clumsy out there on the part of greece's partners to resolve a problem that has accumulated over many years in a couple of years this this will never going to work so in order to achieve the desired objective which is to improve relations finances and to bring it back from

the the end. and the old basically living on dead one has to build a sense of justice that our senior members of the european royko or the troika should say the international troika the three lenders i.m.f. they see b. and the european. that contributes to this program and manage the program with a great goal for this who has come out publicly along with good politicians and said look some of their wage cuts and pension cuts we have implemented we have had to implement because there has been no progress in terms of structural reforms so very good listeners in the nation realize look if they don't want the structural reforms just leave the eurozone ok i don't see why everybody else in europe who has to pay for bad habits of a population like greece rachel go ahead jump in but it's not the population it's not no i mean it's just driving a very i don't know you drag zachary body else down rachel go ahead. you know i think i think the french people for example already tired of of paying for the

problems in greece and i think that's the general concept of the eurozone is now everybody's frustrated paying for everyone else's mismanagement and i question whether any party in greece at this point is capable of making the drastic changes necessary for example hundred fifty thousand public sector jobs were supposed to have been cut and now we're dealing with what six thousand the have it just had to happen if i was in it and i was already has about our lucian and i i think the fact that we're seeing skinny i think is the fact it's going to appraise i mean a lot of is a simple excuse me sir i just can you excuse me sir can you just let me finish please i think the problem why what we're seeing right now with with extremist parties being elected is simply is symptomatic of the fact that people realize that let me jump in here we're going to have to go to where short break after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the european project stay our.

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back across time to mind you were talking about the situation in here. ok i'd like to go back to graham in brussels you know graham we've been doing on cross talk so many programs on the eurozone and the crisis over the last couple of years and you know i can't help but get the feeling that you know i've been demented a new word kick can a stand that's what the european union is kick can a stand because i just see so little political will it is everyone wants to blame everybody but you know i you know and i don't always i very rarely agree with rachel but on this one i really actually feel much closer to her i mean people know because you know you can't have something for nothing forever ok and this is the play this is the pain that you have to go through for a living off of the future ok now it's time to reckon with you know crossed the

rubicon and it has it's going to be tough but nobody wants the responsibility right now we'll see what kind of relationship the difference president will have with the german chancellor but you know i still seek it can a stand convinced me i'm wrong well you know no i mean look i think if you look at much of what has happened most of what's happened here over the last two years it has actually been putting in place the kind of structures and mechanisms that will ensure that we never have to go through the situation of two thousand and eight ever again in other words that our banks do not lend irresponsibly that our governments do not spend more than they're taking in and go on and on increasing their debt but when you come to the case of greece you know greece can no longer no more leave the eurozone than california and leave the dollars on both states are bankrupt greece thankfully is only about two percent of europe's total economy i think california has probably ten percent or more of america's. me but leaving the

eurozone would mean introducing their own currency. pairs it isn't a very good deal because cal of the california i think. i can learn the language had to write off their debts you could see a series of banks no longer lending to each other it's an old we have to do things greece has to remain graeme it's a totally process it's a totally different banking system ok rachel how would you respond to what we just heard from graeme. well i'm hearing a lot of this scenario and it's the one that's most of the one about greece leaving the euro zone but what about two other scenarios i've considered the first being that germany stops paying for everyone and the second being that individual countries decide to trade amongst each other and to to solidify pox between each other and basically ignore what's going on the other countries to just for their own survival sake are those possible scenarios i mean i. and how feasible this

grand think those might be of course has to deal with is our own public opinion and the germans still want to have to bail out the greeks and then perhaps later on the spanish if the spanish government is unable to get a grip on its economy but at the same time germany recognizes that it has benefited tremendously from the introduction of the euro because it's been able to sell its high quality motor cars right across the european market without any difficulty in germany is going to and it's going to do it but it couldn't do without. you know you could do without it it's going to london one of the things that the eurozone is based on it's based on protecting banks and that's what we've seen here is one of the most fundamental interesting things that have come out of this crisis that the financial crisis is over for the banks but it's not over for sovereign countries i mean that's the irony of the whole thing is this wall street's the same situation you know bonuses are being paid again but there's not a lot of job generation so if you go back to london you know i mean it's the way

that the eurozone is structured in the way it's around banks and not around sovereignty. well i don't know whether these stuck to their own banks or do i agree with you in the sense that. there is an issue that needs to be is on the buying king and element in my view has not been there's on the need to be his own look at what is happening in spain guess that then today as a good example i would like to go back toward graham said that he's completely right what many call me and they don't stand for get when it comes to the euro and the eurozone is a basically the euro is a political project and many commentators and i know only two exceptions amongst economists who say journalism or actually here the city who realize that this is a political project that there are successive generations including the current one of politicians who have invested a huge amount of copy that in some here think this project does not want to keep it is not only benevolence like working but what it's not hurt again. looking at it

that there are there are six months of the eurozone has to be done not on the basis of what is actually happening today but all graham said a couple of minutes ago on the progress that has been made since two thousand and eight come on that decision we all say he doesn't help me etc money so i mean today that didn't make any sense at all rachel taking over. you this is the thing the whole project is you surrender your saw and we'll keep you safe we'll give you a job and we'll give you a pension ok that's a political project it's a failure across the entire eurozone if it's petering whereas the very very i think you need to remember and i think you know larry i want to raise your first general exemption and ritual first i think at this point you know the euro was founded on a pie in the sky idea that ended up being an economic straight jacket and nobody can escape at this point that's the problem and working against the economy for

political reasons just because everyone has a great political will i'm not sure how long that can last when people aren't working their. you're going hungry you know what point do you know i think we're seeing it already with some of the election results that the people of just how do we don't we don't have people going hungry in europe in big numbers no no come on that's not there times are hard i really people are unable to find jobs believing there's nobody there there's nobody research issues there's no e-mail really if you're willing to tell these anybody that there's nobody going hungry you know they're saying there's nobody in grilling of the issues but we're not back into the 1930's no no i really am going to say no it was the reason that greece is the very room where any trouble if the euro were in trouble it would be trading lower than the dollar and it's not it's trading to i against the dollar in my view it's still at about one thirty two against the dollar it was introduced to see if we have difficulties north america has difficulties and the rest of the world is picking up

the chinese by buying our debt for example we have to resolve it just as the united states has the result of its problems. every day and i think he. isn't necessarily measured by that value of it out of its currency i mean a country can be for example canada and the us. didn't have as good a good trade is as one canada's dollar was weaker so i mean you can't really i think state the economic. value of a zone or a country on the value of its currency its go to london go ahead jump in. i think that was absolutely right he spoke on this and one thing to say about greece specifically because there's quite a lot of talk about greece's problems being due to its membership or head membership of the eurozone he said by the seriously suggesting that greece outside the eurozone would do but there are look at that he slid off with a comic you saw. the value of the drachma before. the euro but argued my

view on and i'm going to focus. the problem is how does the problem have remained in place so outside of the eurozone greece that it will move around even the chance that it has now ok ok i know that is that this is going to happen to you and let me ask you a question here martin ike i would agree with you that maybe greece would go through some very hard times if it left the euro but if it stays in the euro then we have this cascade effect we have a contained issue and we have spain we have the other pigs here i mean what some people are saying is that greece should have left a year ago ok because you discontinue the contagion they are going with the entire argument with the banks again ok ok they jennifer here with my paralyzed if greece withdraws from the eurozone that's when the contagion effect will commence because the markets will commence will start saying well what about portugal what about spain what about eataly no but if you see if you believe that we cut that speculation rachel go ahead and jump in. i don't believe i don't he just use an

analogy that maybe maybe the viewers understand if you have an unruly teenager who's really lazy and doesn't do anything and is draining your bank account what do you do you kick him out of the house and generally get his act together so that's the same kind of approach that could be taken to greece and i think they without this this safety net that the eurozone provides they might actually get around to realizing oh my goodness we have an issue here and we can't just elect experiments we can't just screw around we have to actually get our act together and do something productive and tangible to change our situation ok i don't want to ruin. your home ok grammar you are. proposing to take him out of the house i'm trying to get him to mend his ways and try to get them to regulate you also you also don't want to lease simply i was going to. be honest with you so you're saying you know the same with graham here graham something was mentioned earlier program and i want to i want to change gears here a little bit the advent of new political parties is that

a good thing for europe's democracy because we started out by the program sort of the program out by looking at the political center and how it's changing and maybe dissolving in some ways but then there are some new trends and you see that as a positive thing we have to remember there are some on both extremes but maybe can the center reinvent itself. i think it is important because it shows that democracy is capable of dealing with people's frustrations and you have new parties emerge they will perhaps in turn be faced with the responsibility of governing or having a share in governing through coalition and they will have to deal with the real world that may change their policies but it's a healthy sign that democracy is able to respond to the frustrations people feel and of course it will mean that the established parties if they want to maintain their position of dominance will have to look far more closely at what they're doing in office they need to you in london one of the biggest criticisms of the year is that euro zone is a differential the germans tell everybody else what to do with the new french

president will that be different. i think it's likely to be different not only because the new president has different views on mr sarkozy and rightly in my view the changes we go in there and their action but also because a number of people who have not been speaking up up until now amongst political leaders will comment saying there are there are obvious thing that basically there is simply there has been put. out has been implemented thus far that has been used thus far is not actually working and what is interesting about this is that. the german opposition at the moment opposition parties like the social democrats or or the greens. will have another opportunity to express their own views in other words what we are beginning to see is yet another step in the direction of the explicit politicize ation of the european project the european project has never been value free has always been value laden and it is time and i think this time commenced

back in two thousand in may two thousand specifically to begin to discuss the broad ject the european project in terms of less so i run out of time folks and i was really hoping for a regional rebuttal thanks very much to my guest today in paris brussels and in london thanks to our viewers for watching if you are to see you next time remember . still. to.

there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. the source material is worth hopes he journalism on this we. we want to present. something real.

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