Emmanuel Macron will make Greece the launchpad for a major policy speech on the future of Europe as he starts his first official trip to the country on Thursday.
From the dramatic setting of the ancient Pnyx in Athens, the French president is expected to outline his vision for the continent in what is being called his most important overseas address since taking office in May.
Amid the rocky hills of the Pnyx beneath the Acropolis, the speech will focus on the virtues of democracy as the European Union – and Greece – finally show signs of economic revival.
“It will be a message of confidence in Greece but also a European symbolic message, given that in many ways Greece has been a symbol of Europe’s crisis,” said an Élysée Palace source. “The restart of Greece is the restart of the eurozone.”
The very existence of the eurozone was and is the Greek problem.
That the place went bust, eh, tant pis, it’s been that for 50% of its time as an independent nation. That a decade later GDP is still down by 25% is the fault of the euro. Just as St. Milton pinned the 1930’s debacle in the US on the Federal Reserve. The crash might well have been fiscal, the continued depression is bad monetary policy.
So, what are you going to do about it?
Analysts say Greece is vital to Paris’s long-term goal of forming alliances in Europe’s southern periphery that would ultimately enhance its leadership role in the Mediterranean and recalibrate the Franco-German axis. “France will at some point talk to Germany about the division of labour inside Europe,” said Dr Thanos Dokos, who directs the Greek thinktank Eliamep. “It is the only EU country with the capacity to project military power outside Europe, which gives it a comparative advantage in Europe’s southern neighbourhood.”
Ah, grand Napoleonic designs and sod the economics then is it?
“It is the only EU country with the capacity to project military power outside Europe”.
So that’ll be why they had to borrow heavy lift capacity from the UK for their recent expedition to Mali then?
Frankly this is just another sign that our negotiations with the EU will not yield an agreement. The Greece catastrophy showed us there is literally nothing, no information, no fact, no level of suffering that would cause the EU mandarins to pause even for a moment. So not reaching an agreement with the UK is a dreadful outcome for European PEOPLES? The EU project is the best outcome for the European PEOPLE. So anything that advances the project is good for them, far outweighing their present suffering; however great that is.
@Ironman
As I said somewhere here yesterday- the vote to leave guaranteed that negotiations would come to naught (at least as far as we are concerned). The EU is doing what it does in these talks for the benefit of any waverers in their pack.
The threat of further departures is what they are worried about: the real audience for discussions are for the other 27 states. Britain is just the straight man on the stage.
Granny’s Boy as Napoleon?
In just that spirit :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeNYDwbm9qw
That journalist’s command of written English is none too impressive. Or is it intended as zee joke subtil?
Dr Dokos has already written off the UK.
So that’ll be why they had to borrow heavy lift capacity from the UK for their recent expedition to Mali then?
According to a Frenchman I spoke to recently, the Americans are dependent on France for heavy-lift aircraft. So we’ll probably not see too much domestic scrutiny of Macron’s plans, then.
You can have all the heavy lift aircraft you want but if you haven’t got the resolve it means fuck all. The only thing European nations need C130/A400/C17 etc for these days is to deliver their own children’s food to the children of other people in faraway countries who are being indoctrinated to hate Europeans and are on their way to attempt to replace them. The entire continent is fucked.
‘European Union – and Greece – finally show signs of economic revival.’
Does this come under the infamous ‘green shoots of recovery’ heading?
So signs of economic revival despite years of EU mismanagement is going to play well with the Greek people?
I would think that saying we fucked up and A) here’s how we plan to fix it or B) we need to bin the whole shebang are the only options.
France has a genius for wrapping her own selfish interests in the cloak of Europeanism or internationalism. People fall for it, every time.
Well how do the euroskeptics defend themselves when now we hear the banking and finance sector it moving to Frankfurt?
Will the right wingers who supported nationalist extremism explain the loss of high paid, high taxed jobs for the UK?
Up with Greenock Morton.
I’ve been hearing this dubious claim for at least a year. This isn’t a new thing. Timmy’s also covered this very well. Frankfurt(assuming this is where the shell corporations will get set up) will be British banks version of Apple’s Ireland shell. The profits, minus whatever the EU extracts in rent, will still go to London(Assuming you don’t have the same punitive foreign profit tax structure we use across the pond. If you impose stupid tax those profits will stay in economic limbo).