European Student Think Tank

Liberté, égal­ité, fra­tern­ité. The fam­ous motto to pre­sum­ably epi­tom­ize the cor­rect model and stage of soci­etal and eco­nomic devel­op­ment. Admit­tedly, a great por­tion of the West­ern world owes their suc­cess and pro­gress to this power­ful ideo­logy. How­ever, today’s France under the left­ist lead­er­ship cap­tained by Pres­id­ent Fran­cois Hol­lande has taken the premise of égal­ité to another level. Con­sequently, his­tory may remem­ber Hollande’s reign dif­fer­ently: as a time of fisc­al­ité, mis­ere, faillite.

As out­go­ing Sec­ret­ary of State Hil­lary Clin­ton test­i­fies before the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee on the 23rd of Janu­ary, the coun­try is reminded of a sober­ing truth: the chaos in North Africa spells bad for­tunes for the United States. Four months have passed since Amer­ican ambas­sador Chris­topher Stevens and three oth­ers were killed in a jihadist attack in Libya. Just as Clin­ton gives a testi­mony tak­ing respons­ib­il­ity for the secur­ity fail­ures in Benghazi, France con­tin­ues to be engaged in a ground con­flict by the side of the Malian gov­ern­ment. Regional tur­bu­lence threatens to expand north­wards as the after­math from the Algerian host­age crisis unfolds. With the US renew­ing its vows to find those respons­ible for the Libya attacks, and French mil­it­ary engage­ments deep­en­ing in Mali, these crises show no signs of let­ting up.

What was the government’s incent­ive in rais­ing such hos­til­ity towards the French lib­eral doc­tors? Why such reform? The answer is fairly simple: money, and draw­ing the public’s atten­tion away from where the social­ists get their funding.

While protests and demon­stra­tions have never been unusual in France, one cur­rently tak­ing place might just be stand­ing out. As of Novem­ber 12th, French doc­tors in clin­ics have engaged in an illim­it­able strike to express their anger against the health­care reform con­cern­ing top-up med­ical fees (les “dépasse­ments d’honoraires”) in sec­tor 2, signed on Octo­ber 25th. Many sur­geons have since refused to per­form any more sur­ger­ies until an agree­ment can be reached, while some med school interns are also refus­ing to work any­more. Protests and marches have been ini­ti­ated all around the coun­try, affect­ing more than 70% of the French health­care facilities.

Today the new pres­id­ent of France was sworn in. Who is the new pres­id­ent of France, and what will his rule mean for Europe? [Con­tinu­ation] The Agenda – Inter­na­tional Polit­ics and the Franco-German Axis Less rosy seems the inter­na­tional field, where Hol­lande will soon have to demon­strate, if he can assert France’s interests among the [...]

The vic­tory of the rebel forces in Libya is often con­ceived as not only their vic­tory, but as a vic­tory of European dip­lomacy as well. Though this might be true for the rela­tions between Europe and the United States, it is doubt­ful whether it is the case for the rela­tions with the Arab world as well. The eco­nomic and polit­ical real­ity must lead to the con­clu­sion that the effects might not be as last­ing as one would hope.

France’s bombs on Gbagbo and Italy’s bombs on Khadafi show that Europe’s coun­tries dare to act in their former colon­ies. Accus­a­tions of neo­co­lo­ni­al­ism by evil­do­ers should be accep­ted as com­pli­ments, as it means stand­ing up for human rights, even in coun­tries where act­ing mil­it­ar­ily is sensitive.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, 2011 the French Pres­id­ent vis­ited Tur­key and he stayed in Ank­ara for 300 minutes. Even though the offi­cial pur­pose of the visit was a work meet­ing to dis­cuss regional and inter­na­tional issues as G-20 mem­bers, the Turk­ish bid for EU acces­sion dom­in­ated the atmo­sphere. What does this “300-minutes” mean for Tur­key, France and the EU? The short time of the visit was long enough to cre­ate many implic­a­tions for all the sides around the table.