Europe Is Coming Apart
Euro shouldn't be controlled by the hegemony of west. Its the big mistake for Euro. If euro could stand it self, we are sure that euro will never face crisis.
Anti-euro party set for gains in German state polls
Germany's new anti-euro party is poised to win seats in two eastern state elections Sunday, heightening an emerging threat for Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD), only formed early last year, looks set to enter state parliaments in Thuringia and Brandenburg, two weeks after it scored almost 10 percent in eastern Saxony.
Headed by economics professor Bernd Lucke, the ascendant party only narrowly missed out on entering the national parliament last September and won seven seats in European Parliament elections in May.
The party, which wants Germany to leave the euro and return to the Deutschmark, denies seeking right-wing voters but flirts with populist ideas on issues such as law and order, immigration and "family values".
Among its policy demands are "direct democracy", including, at the state level, a referendum that would seek to block plans to build a mosque in the eastern city of Dresden.
In the polls Sunday the AfD is set to draw much of the "protest vote" in the former East, which still lags western states in wealth, jobs and wages 25 years after the Berlin Wall fell, analysts say.
Merkel, worried about the AfD's growing ballot box appeal, this week said that "we must address the problems that concern the people", including "crime and rising numbers of asylum seekers".
- 'Not a transient protest party' -
Analysts say the AfD is seeking to occupy the political ground to the right of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) while keeping its distance from the far-right fringe, represented by the openly xenophobic National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).
"The CDU is slowly starting to understand what the AfD really is -- not a transient protest movement, not an 'NPD-light', but a party that is drawing significant support ... from former CDU voters" among other groups, said Werner Patzelt of Dresden Technical University.
The political scientist said it is too early to tell whether the AfD -- now in its political "puberty" and benefiting from a string of victories in a tight electoral calendar -- is here to stay, a question that he said depends on how its new lawmakers perform.
But Patzelt pointed out that the AfD's central theme -- railing against eurozone bailouts and an emerging EU "super state" -- is unlikely to go away soon and that such fears are mirrored in other European countries.
In Germany, he said, "the playing field is open... on the right of the spectrum, and that is where the AfD is now gaining strength".
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The big news at the moment is in the UK, where it looks like there's a real chance that Scotland might vote to leave Great Britain in a referendum that's coming up on Sept. 18. Up until very recently, the conventional wisdom was that it would be a fairly close vote, but that really the pro-independence campaign had very little shot. Now people are treating it more like a coin flip.
But you shouldn't let the possible breakup of the Sterling-zone distract you from the mess elsewhere.
In France, a new poll shows that Marine Le Pen is the current favorite in the 2017 Presidential elections. 2017 is a long time from now, but for those who don't know, Le Pen is the head of France's ultra-right National Front party, which was founded by her anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying father Jean-Marie Le Pen. Marine is not as extreme as her father, but she's sharply anti-eurozone and holds other right-wing views.
Meanwhile in Germany, the anti-eurozone party AfD (Alternative For Deutschland) won a shocking 10% of the vote in the Eastern German state of Saxony. It became the first anti-eurozone party to win a seat in a regional parliament, according to the BBC.
All of this comes, of course, amid dismal economic numbers pretty much everywhere in Europe, which is a result of austerity, a broken monetary system, and a flat-footed European Central Bank (ECB). Last week European ECB President Mario Draghi unveiled new measures to revive the eurozone. Hopefully they're effective. In the meantime, it appears Europe is working against some strong centrifugal forces.
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