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Last Sunday the French remained calm and chose wisely for Macron with a significant majority. Europe held her breath during the day because Le Pen still could have a chance. But reasonably, if both incumbants had not made such a mess of their campaigns, Le Pen probably would not have survived at all in the first round. Well, we will never know but la douce France and Europe is saved for the time being although we have to wait until Macron's "revolutionary changes" plan sees the daylight.
Meanwhile everybody congratulated Macron and his victory and prime ministers and presidents from all over the world tumble over each other for a first meeting. Why, well because all of a sudden France is the key to a stable Europe. Germany can't pull the wagon alone, the UK is gone, the rest is to weak or just to small.
I can only hope the young shoulders of Macron can carry that load. Fortunately he has an experienced coach, the new First Lady of France :D
(thanks to Taylor Jones for a great cartoon)
23 
The stockmarkets cheered on Monday after the first round in France Macron won and polls show that Macron will win again with big numbers on May 7th. Obviously investors believe that it's good for France that Marie Le Pen (and also anti-Europe communist candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon) lost. Good for France means good for business so good for the economy, employment of people and stability. After all, when companies thrive and grow in free European and global markets, they employ more co-workers, pay them more and create better opportunities.
Apparently, voters for Le Pen, Trump, Wilders, Brexit and many others are happy with their "economics" and choose for "protection from foreign influences", whatever that may be: Immigrants, imports of goods and services, different cultures, other currencies ...
They most striking recent event reflecting "heart over brain" was last weekend when co-workers of Alitalia, the Italian national airline, chose to revoke the restructuring plans. Effectively it means, that they all will probably not get paid next month, will be fired soon and that Alitalia will stop to exist this year. It's hard to imagine why people chose to commit suicide collectively like a slice of lemmings jumping from a cliff. Obviously there are reasons why people in the US, UK, France and many other countries drive themselves to decisions sound minds would not make.
The only reason I can think of is "proganda". KellyAnn Conway, senior Trump advisor, coined "alternative facts" as new Scrabble word, in fact a synonym for propaganda. Alternative facts are information items that focus on the hearts of people, creating an emotion that will prevail over any other real fact. They leave away the real nuanced world and context, create another virtual world and make people believe they are better off following that tale. Russian, North Korean, US, UK and many other "tales" don not differ from each other in terms of "alternative facts". They only differ in their enemies.
Even worse is that these tales are fueled by hard to eliminate feelings of discrimination and protectionism. And all of this happens in the "democratic free world". It's quite amazing how the definition of that has changed over the last decades since WOII and the Cold War. Obviously collaborations like NATO, UN and the EU are in dispute and priorities have changed from "Together we are strong" to "Me, me, me first". Or maybe the former was propaganda too :)
Stay calm, believe in yourself, friends and family. That is where your life is all about :D
(big thanks to Peter Schrank for the great cartoon)
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After some exciting weeks with a Holland-Turkey clash and serious fear around the uprise of populism, Dutch PM Rutte can call himself the winner with 33 seats of 150 in the house and the next 3 runner ups at 19-20. According to international newspapers he is the "hero of Europe" having drawn a line to "the wrong populism". Although his party lost 8 seats too, cabinet partner and left-winger PvdA took a very hard punishment of 29 seats to 9 for helping the Netherlands out of the crisis. Obviously their original supporters felt that they had to pay the price. Not entirely untrue, but unfair it is. The price would have been a lot higher without the impopular measures the now dimissionary cabinet had to take.
Populist Wilders, second in a tight race with christians (CDA) and democrats (D66), was disappointed and acknowledged already that he will take another round of opposition where he would "oppose the new cabinet as hard as possible".
Among others, German BK Merkel congratulated Rutte and is looking forward to continue the cooperation for a stronger Europe. However, the new cabinet is not there yet and it might take quite some time. Formation is only possible with 4 parties or more. Rutte's VVD would like to cooperate with close allies CDA and D66 but together they fall 5 seats short for majorities in the house and senate. A left coalition is possible but only with 6 and if the heavily hit PvdA is willing to step in again. Not very likely. So the King might have to wait a while before taking pictures.
I wish "agile development" could be a format for cabinet formation as well. That would be some "democratic reformation" :) ... Stay tuned.
(big thanks again to Mirjam Vissers for another awesome cartoon)
56 
Bulgaria had an exciting weekend. Not only they humiliated the Dutch in a football world cup qualification match with 2-0 but last Sunday the advanced Bulgarian parliament elections came to a result. The GERB, conservative and pro-EU, won the elections. Not that surprisingly but still delicate because their leader Borisov resigned as PM after the loss of his candidate Tacheva to socialist and Russia focused Radev in the presidential elections in November last year.
However, GERB only won about a third of parliament seats so a (probably long) coalition negotiation is on its way. But, like most Bulgarians, even Borisov has a weak spot for Russia and Putin so maybe that will drive coalition success together with Ninova of the BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party).
Deal maker or breaker could be Karadya of the MDL (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) representing the 700.000 Turkish minority. In a only 7 MIO population country this is something to take care about. The Ottoman sword of Erdogan as a neighbour reaches most definitely into EU borders here.
I was priviledged to drive through the Bulgarian inlands recently and was struck by its beauty but by its torn apart nature as well. Completely abandoned villages where older people moved to big cities like Sofia and the younger even left the country were interspersed with flowering EU sponsored towns looking to the future in good spirits. This country really deserves some good leadership and some help to flower again as it did centuries ago.
Election season is not over. Vote with your mind, heart and soul (in that order :)))
(many thanks to the great cartoons of STASKL)
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Last Saturday the relationship between the Netherlands and Turkey escalated. Turkish ministers wanted to campaign in the Netherlands about the coming referendum giving Erdogan more power. Not only like many others the Dutch government believes this is a step back in democratic development, but didn’t want violent uproars like happened many times earlier with minority groups with a Turkish background at specific Turkish political gatherings. The Dutch PM kindly asked the Turks to stay away or keep it neat and on a small scale. The Turks immediately started to insult and threat and after various attempts to come to an agreement, the Dutch PM decided that “this kind of verbal aggression was not acceptable anymore” and as a consequence to withdraw the right to land an airplane with Turkish ministers. Of course more insults and threats and moreover another Turkish minister entered the Netherlands by car with several decoy convoys to mislead the Dutch police. Meanwhile the Turkish consul lied to the Dutch government about what he knew and his communication to the people. The Turkish minister was stopped 30 meters before the Turkish consulate and after hours of negotiations escorted back to Germany as persona non grata. As expected the Turkish demonstrants misbehaved and after a violent night 14 people were arrested en 7 were injured one policeman included. Not surpisinglyTurkey responded with more insults and threats.
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