another move would be to have all EU and member states institutions collectively leave Twitter.
Obligatory reminder that https://ec.social-network.europa.eu/explore Is already a thing, you can already follow EU instance on mastodon if you like
It’s been an everlasting cycle. I remember seeing in a museum French made playing cards with Chinese characters. From a time where China did outsource/bought to Europe
Long story short
following the European elections, Macron used his constitutional right to call for new parliamentary elections, a risky moved that hasn’t been used since 1997.
European elections led to 3 similar sized block : A left wing union from with communists, green and social-democrats, a Center-right pro Macron block, and a far-right block
Macron appointed former EU brexit negotiator Barnier as a prime minister, he is from a right wing party who’s done a pretty low score at the election, and he bought a government with centre-right liberals and some more conservative to show the far-right that it could have been worse.
The parliament struggled to vote a budget, so Barnier used the trust me bro technique, a constitutional trick which allows you to bypass a parliament vote on a law but triggers a confidence vote.
The Far-right decided that the current wasn’t right wing enough and vote the non confidence with the left-wing, meaning that the budget is rejected and the prime minister has to resign
Direct consequences is that France has no budget for 2025 (I assume it means that they’ll re-use the 2024 budget until they vote something) and that Macron will have to appoint a new PM. With some luck French politicians will start behaving like in any democratic nation and build a coalition over a given coaltion contract rather than blaming each other on the TV
Europe needs to step up on Ukraine.
Realistically, I doubt the western european public opinions are ready to accept 20 year old kids coming home in a coffin. If we put boots on the ground, I expect the war to be more deadly than recent middle-east operations.
So while we could kick of Russia ass, I don’t think we’re ready to pay the political price, at least for Ukraine.
Even though they claim to be moderate, pragmatic, anchored in real-life, what they vote and what they say, looks like pretty Trumpian, at least in the French political spectrum. Guess who voted against the gay-marriage ? Guess who voted against banning conversion therapies ? Guess who proposed to ban gender affirming care for minor ? Guess who wants stricter immigrations rules (without hiring civil servant and judge to apply the existing laws) Guess who goes into anti-woke rant (Actually, we can even extend to some centrists from renew, especially when crossing the belgian border , Guess who pass law to increase the weight of private insurance over public healthcare ?
ow many districts they have the majority in and the right was manipulating the district borders in their favour
To be fair, it’s already an issue in some European countries, may-be not as much as the US, but I’ve seen weird electoral district in France too
How Europe did actually vote
Sauce Considering that Harris would more or less match renew Europe + Green + S&D, and that Trump would match the huge blue block at the right, I don’t think we’re doing much better than our American friends
Is there a place where cars crash commonly into buildings? Looks like an incredibly rare event
Countries have been “temporarily suspending shengen agreement” for tons of reason without putting the EU at risk. I remember being stuck in trafic over 1h when crossing the French border in the summer 2016, where between a football cup, and the terror attacks, the police was “checking the border” ( to be understood as, police kept only one lane open on the highway, and even as setup a tent and a parking so they can “randomly check” some cars.
I also remember covid time when travelling within EU was involving a lot of paperwork.
Not sure what’s happening right now in Germany, but it’s not the first nor the last time, that the open-borders are suspended.
The trick here is that nobody had the majority at the parliament. Which is quite unusual in France compared to let’s say Belgium where spending over 6 month to build a coalition is the norm.
Macron and moderate right say they don’t wanna work with leftist killing the hypothesis of left wing government that moderate right can remove at any time. However, if Barnier allies with Macron party, and get at least the passive support of far right, he has a majority. But basically the kind of majority that far right can remove at any time. Not sure what deal with Le Pen was negotiated
Oh Great, we’ll see teen pregnancies skyrocketing in these conditions
Interesting, I always thought the Schufa was a government service. But isn’t it way lighter than the US “rating” ?
pretty sure that having “credit agencies” keeping track of people credit history is a huge violation of GDPR and would be illegal in the EU. At least I never heard about that. The only similar things I know is the central bank keeping a listing of “unpaid credit” which make ban you from getting any new credit for a certain time. (And as it’s a public institution, you have the right to contest any writing there in court if it 's not justified, stuff like identity theft being a classic one)
A TV scenarist would have written that plot, we would have thought it’s not realistic, especially that part on the right wing, with that posh lady (Ms Pecresse, head of the Parisian region) rolling up her sleeve to kick traitor Ciotti out.
Plot twist, in most of these cities, it was already hard to reach 30 due to the traffic. However, a similar movement happens in rural area too with a speed limit at 30, a big speed-bump, and a speed camera to make sure you don’t go faster
What the fuck ? Quoi la baise ?
Looks like that at best France won’t have a majority, at worst we’ll have Ms Le Pen as a Prime minister (France is a semi presidential regime, and if the President doesn’t have the majority, most of the power shifts toward the prime minister, with a president only relevant for international policy)
In the East sea of China
I don’t want to sound like a tankie supporting winnie the poo, but I assume the Dutch would do the same if a Chinese frigate passes by the North Sea.
Dutch have the right to sail in international waters, and Chinese have the right to send a fighter to check them out
High interest rate,
Competition starts to offer decent electric car
People who can afford a fancy car already got one
Musk behaves like a fascists
Not a surprise
Actually, the french secularist law were written more than 100 years ago to kick out nun and priest from public school.
Asking whether they write sir or madam on the ticket as a form of politeness. Sure it helps collecting statistics too.
Conservative are weird, the will be fine with asking sir or madam, but would throw a tantrum if you ask them a pronoum which is exactly the same question