A wake-up call for the Brussels sleepwalkers
A bunch of sleepwalkers. That's what the 95 y.o. former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt dubbed all the establishment Eurocrats in an interview for Der Bild a few days before the European parliamentary election. He accused them of "knowing too little" of international politics, and being responsible for the dangerous turn of the crisis in Ukraine. Because they had put Kiev in a position where the Ukrainians had to choose between the East and West. "The risk of deterioration of the situation like it happened in 1914 increases by the day", the German political veteran warned. He said the actions of the Brussels emissaries reminded him of the book of Australian historian Christopher Clarke which won all possible awards this year. It's about the fucked up behavior of the European politicians who 100 years ago missed all chances to prevent WW1. The title of the book, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War In 1914, makes a parallel to the inadequacy of the current political elites. Yes, I'm talking of those top bureaucrats and Euro commissioners from the, well, European Commission, and all that horde of minor bureaucrats trotting around beneath them. On top of that, the old German social-democrat has called for a "coup" against the Eurocrats, which is to be initiated by the only real democratic institution within the EU, the European Parliament that's still being directly elected by the citizens of Europe.
...And the coup against the sleepwalkers didn't come late. The thing that happened was exactly what most analysts with more than two brain cells in their skulls had been warning about for years - since the last Euro elections, actually. What happened could've been easily foreseen by any ordinary citizen walking the streets of the continent, awe-stricken by the deep social contrasts manifesting themselves through protests on streets and squares. Unlike the costumed bureaucrats, hurrying around with serious, stone-cold faces and nice-looking folders full of very important documents in hand, traversing the shiny corridors of the polygonal mastodon of Berlaymont, EU's headquarters in Brussels.
The election result has rung the alarm and shown that a turning point has come. It should be shaking and waking up those most affected by political lunatism. That's become pretty urgent now: the citizens of Europe want to get Europe back, and they reject the status quo. They're fed up with hearing the same nice populist speeches full of worthless nonsensical PC terms. They don't believe the Third-Way sleepwalkers any more, who seem fully capable of killing the EU with their social and moral insensitivity and ineptitude. They reject the convenient mutual pact between the social-democratic pathos and the neo-liberal "economization". The threshold of their tolerance has been crossed. And the result is logical: both opposite fringes of the political spectrum are bouncing up. The influence of various nationalists and Eurosceptics is swelling. Most notably that of Marine Le Pen's National Front in France, and Nigel Farage's UKIP. The leftist alternative is also progressing: its idol in Greece, Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza have shown the way in South Europe, Italy has witnessed the breakthrough of a similar movement called The Other Europe, and Spain, that of Podemos (We Can). Like, well, "Yes-We-Can". Except they really could. They could shake the whole structure of the EU, which they believe is rotten and flawed from the onset. They mean to dismantle it from within, lest it fundamentally reforms itself. But don't hold your breath about the latter.
The signal is loud and clear: Hello Brussels, get back to reality and hear the Europeans! If you don't do it, the radicalization will intensify. And the shadow of times long past, of which the old Herr Schmidt is warning in that interview, will turn out even more dangerous than the Ukrainian debacle eventually.
Still, some encouraging signs started arriving right after the results were known. It seems some minds have started ticking at long last, after this loud and humiliating cake in the face of the political establishment. The first EC summit after the vote witnessed some opinions and assessments being made, which hadn't echoed around the Brussels corridors like, ever. Those guys were initially supposed to be negotiating the usual bargains about the status quo candidates for leadership, like Jean-Claude Juncker of the ENP and Martin Schulz of the PES. But the debate soon moved on to something much more important: the direction Europe is headed to. A new Italian-French axis was formed, opposing the straightforward and obviously despised course of social austerity that has been pushed by the likes of Angela Merkel. A different agenda for Europe, a Keynesian reorientation of some sorts was proposed, including government stimulus and investment, and emphasis on economic growth, and tackling unemployment, and finally a constitutional agreement on the rules within the Euro zone.
The young Italian PM Matteo Renzi made the proposition, now from the strong position of someone whose party had triumphed on the election with 40+%. By the way, his personal dynamism and charisma is quite remarkable, especially at the background of the sluggish, leadership-challenged Eurocratic status quo. He's already being mentioned as one of the possible candidates for chairman of the European Commission (the equivalent of prime-minister of Europe).
In turn, the European Council suddenly saw the ascent of Hollande who's been suffering the lowest domestic approval ever, and whose socialist party suffered a humiliating slide down to the 3rd place in France with just 25%. Obviously worried by this development, Hollande started talking what had been expected of him for a long time: "Europe has become unreadable, distant and frankly incomprehensible even for governments". And this cannot continue for too long. The European project should be much simpler and clearer, and it shouldn't be poking its nose in matters that are none of its concern. So Hollande vowed to make it his priority to reform France and help re-orientate Europe. Whether that's yet another hollow promise, or he truly means it, is yet to be established.
Cameron spoke too. He said the EU cannot ignore the election result and presume to proceed as usual. A change is necessary, in that Europe should focus on essential issues like growth and employment, rather than dispersing its efforts in all directions. Right now Brussels is too bloated bureaucratically, too authoritarian, too centralized, and too boring. Right, Cameron. Seems like you've changed your mind about austerity, then.
Of course, such a meeting wouldn't have been complete without Frau Merkel's two cents. Because she is the one who holds the keys to everything. Including for the important nomination of EC chairperson. Mrs Chancellor has typically avoided the revolutionary rhetoric for the time being, but she did clearly show that she's prepared to show flexibility. On one side, she seemed to support the nomination of her ideological ally Juncker, but she did it half-assedly and immediately emphasized that an automatic equating of the election results with the choice of EC chairman would be counter-productive. She even said Germany has had "many heads of state who weren't necessarily from the party with the most votes", and she hinted that the priorities of EC's new term could be implemented by any chairperson, not necessarily Juncker himself. She made it clear that she'd rather prefer a much broader coalition, perhaps one fashioned after the ruling one in Germany, which could see both ENP and PES at one side of a pro-European alliance within the European Parliament. And Juncker, who basically personifies the stagnated status quo and who's being categorically rejected by Cameron and by Victor Orban who made quite an impact in Hungary, is hardly the most suitable figure for the task. The search for consensus that's so typical for this part of the world, could take a while, granted. But that'd be by far the better response to the voters' preferences, as stated on the May 25 eleciton. A slow but adequate response is more productive than a hasty one that everyone would later regret.
Btw, Merkel's obvious coalition proneness is also in conflict with the clearly shaped affinity of the European voters to a more differentiated political behavior. For example, analysts like Mark Leonard and Jose Ignacio Torreblanca notice some new tendencies, as explained in their co-authored essay The Eurosceptic Surge And How To Respond To It:
"The danger is that the response of the mainstream parties will be to retreat into technocratic co-operation and seek to continue business as usual. Instead, rather than forming a pro-European bloc, they should try to create the space for political battles between competing visions of Europe and thereby try to preserve left-right competition at both national and European levels. That will mean developing a new agenda for social Europe and responsible capitalism, more imaginative ideas on migration, solidarity and responsibility, and a policy agenda that shows how the EU is part of the solution to the problems of the twenty-first century - from dealing with big data to the rise of China.
"The challenge is to drive wedges between the Eurosceptics rather than encouraging them to form an anti-elite bloc. In order to do this, the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties will need to do much more to acknowledge the Eurosceptic critique of Europe while rejecting the solutions the Eurosceptics propose. Whether they blame it for austerity or uncontrolled immigration, a significant number of Europeans are angry at the EU because it has not worked as they expected. The euro has been saved, but at a great cost in growth, jobs, and divisions between citizens and elites, debtors and creditors, and euro-ins and euro-outs.
"If Europe is to defeat the Eurosceptics, it has to confront them at home, where they will be stronger, and not only in Brussels, where they will be weaker. They will also need to pay attention to the new cleavages that have emerged throughout the crisis, such as the one dividing debtors and creditors and euro-ins and euro-outs. In short, Europe needs more politics and more disagreements. Rather than huddling together, mainstream parties need to give people real choices and address the issues that really concern people."
But in order to fulfill these tasks, someone very different from both Juncker and Schulz will be needed. The role would hardly be suitable for the two ladies who are being mentioned among the candidates either, IMF chairlady Christine Lagarde who entered politics with the help of her mentor and ideological ally Nicolas Sarkozy, and Danish socialist and PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt (known in the US as the lady who made "those selfies" with Obama), nicknamed Helle Gucci for her obsession with the luxurious fashion brand. For the time being, the European Council has slipped the hot potato into the hands of EU president Herman van Rompuy, authorizing him to preside over the consultations for new EC president. But if things get stuck into the painfully familiar Eurobureaucratic impasse and yet another tasteless Brussels broccoli of the Van Rompuy sort is again picked up (or similar to the dull Catherine Ashton who emerged along with him), that'd mean the EU would continue to merrily dig further down its own grave.
As for the change of discourse, it's clearly personified by people like Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage. This means that their rhetoric will be joined by more traditional rightist parties like the ENP and even the Third-Way wing of the socialists and social-democrats, who'd want to adjust to the new realities, lest they lose more of their positions. This is most visible in France. We've already seen how leftists like Manuel Valls who's the current French PM, in his former position of foreign minister used to adopt a stance on the immigration issue that perfectly matched that of the far-right, i.e. he was trying to ride the wave of the predominant public opinions. The same flirting with the far-right was seen in Sarkozy. Just before the latest presidential election he suddenly started advocating for abolishing the Schengen agreement for the sake of a "reformed EU". He wanted to "prevent foreigners from perverting the procedures that allow them to enter the Schengen space and choose the country where they'd be granted the most generous aid". "There is not one Europe but two ... In the euro zone, we must stop believing in the myth of equal rights between all members", Sarko used to argue. It's hard to read this Le-Penization of his otherwise than as a somewhat cultivated version of the old segregationist idea of "Europe of the two speeds", where some are obviously supposed to be "more equal" than others.
We shouldn't also overlook another curious element in the newly found weight of the European nationalists: the obvious love and sympathy of the most influential among them (Le Pen, Farage & Co) to Russia and its leadership, namely comrade Putin, as stated here recently. This is already adding a geopolitical taste to the new balance of powers on this continent. The leader of the French list of the National Front, Aymeric Chauprade is quite a curious specimen in this respect. It's him who'll be serving as the spearhead of the party in the new European Parliament, not Marine Le Pen who didn't even run, obviously saving herself for the next presidential standoff in France. Chauprade is a writer, political scientist and geopolitics professor at several universities and military academies across France, Morocco, Tunisia and here in Switzerland. He's a fan of Realpolitik, a staunch opponent to the free-trade agreement between the EU and the US, and generally considers the alliance of continental Europe with the "Atlantic states" USA and UK detrimental to the former, because the interests of the latter conflict with the European ones. Meanwhile, he's a passionate supporter of a closer partnership of the leading European powers like France and Germany with Russia - and all that, based exactly on Putin's Eurasian pipe dreams. Chauprade sees great potential in a possible alliance between Europe and Russia, and a mighty Eurasian superpower emerging as a result of that marriage. It's curious how a hypothetical merge of those political systems would look like: autocratic democracy? Oligarchic free market? Not very sure. For the time being, the most interesting thing about Chauprade is what development his ideas would undergo, now that the National Front will have the high tribune of the European Parliament at their disposal to promote these ideas.
The opposite corner is occupied by the European leftist bloc, which is also forming a strong and influential alternative to the current impotent status quo. Here, of course, everybody's darling is young Tsipras and his Syriza, which emerged the topmost political force in Greece after this election. It's a new type of leftist party, one that the EU hasn't seen before - an anarchist, nihilistic, and extremely Eurosceptic one.
Predictably, Tsipras has already called for immediate national elections in his country, and has warned Greece's PM Andonis Samaras that he should refrain from introducing further austerity measures, and he should forget about his plans to privatize the water sector (think of what happened in Bolivia), and to appoint a European commissioner as chairman of the Greek national bank without consulting with Syriza. The government (the ruling New Democracy party coming out 2nd on the EU election) and the former socialist juggernaut PASOK (which ended up a humiliating 4th) reject the idea of snap elections. But at least it's obvious that there'll be major changes in the cabinet. But no one can shut their eyes to reality any more.
This reality, which has been screaming in the face of Europe for a long time that the endless tightening of the belts is already leaving South Europe breathless and this can't be taken any more, has caused a furious blossoming of various leftist alternatives in Spain. The Euro-vote there completely buried the incumbent bipolar model, showing the middle finger to the center-right People's Party, and the presumed leftist Socialist Workers Party, and condemned them to a political free-fall. The socialist leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba announced that he's taking the political responsibility for his party's worst election result ever, he threw his resignation and summoned an urgent party congress which is to elect a new leadership. That's how a responsible but ultimately failed leader should do.
The rightist PM Mariano Rajoy did nothing of the sort in his NP, but that doesn't mean his life won't turn sour in the next battles with the new opposition factors: the surging United Left and the shocking new kid on the block, Podemos of former socialist member, TV host and political sciences professor Pablo Iglesias Turrión. He was recognized as the mouthpiece of the Indignados movement which emerged in 2011 with the Spanish economic collapse, and now it has infused its energy into the new movement Podemos. Another six leftist and nationalist parties will enter the European Parliament from Spain alone - all of them determined to make their voice loudly heard, and to keep the European political sleepwalkers constantly awake and alert. Alas, that won't necessarily guarantee a detour away from the edge of the abyss.
So... good morning, Brussels! Did you have a nice sleep?
...And the coup against the sleepwalkers didn't come late. The thing that happened was exactly what most analysts with more than two brain cells in their skulls had been warning about for years - since the last Euro elections, actually. What happened could've been easily foreseen by any ordinary citizen walking the streets of the continent, awe-stricken by the deep social contrasts manifesting themselves through protests on streets and squares. Unlike the costumed bureaucrats, hurrying around with serious, stone-cold faces and nice-looking folders full of very important documents in hand, traversing the shiny corridors of the polygonal mastodon of Berlaymont, EU's headquarters in Brussels.
The election result has rung the alarm and shown that a turning point has come. It should be shaking and waking up those most affected by political lunatism. That's become pretty urgent now: the citizens of Europe want to get Europe back, and they reject the status quo. They're fed up with hearing the same nice populist speeches full of worthless nonsensical PC terms. They don't believe the Third-Way sleepwalkers any more, who seem fully capable of killing the EU with their social and moral insensitivity and ineptitude. They reject the convenient mutual pact between the social-democratic pathos and the neo-liberal "economization". The threshold of their tolerance has been crossed. And the result is logical: both opposite fringes of the political spectrum are bouncing up. The influence of various nationalists and Eurosceptics is swelling. Most notably that of Marine Le Pen's National Front in France, and Nigel Farage's UKIP. The leftist alternative is also progressing: its idol in Greece, Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza have shown the way in South Europe, Italy has witnessed the breakthrough of a similar movement called The Other Europe, and Spain, that of Podemos (We Can). Like, well, "Yes-We-Can". Except they really could. They could shake the whole structure of the EU, which they believe is rotten and flawed from the onset. They mean to dismantle it from within, lest it fundamentally reforms itself. But don't hold your breath about the latter.
The signal is loud and clear: Hello Brussels, get back to reality and hear the Europeans! If you don't do it, the radicalization will intensify. And the shadow of times long past, of which the old Herr Schmidt is warning in that interview, will turn out even more dangerous than the Ukrainian debacle eventually.
Still, some encouraging signs started arriving right after the results were known. It seems some minds have started ticking at long last, after this loud and humiliating cake in the face of the political establishment. The first EC summit after the vote witnessed some opinions and assessments being made, which hadn't echoed around the Brussels corridors like, ever. Those guys were initially supposed to be negotiating the usual bargains about the status quo candidates for leadership, like Jean-Claude Juncker of the ENP and Martin Schulz of the PES. But the debate soon moved on to something much more important: the direction Europe is headed to. A new Italian-French axis was formed, opposing the straightforward and obviously despised course of social austerity that has been pushed by the likes of Angela Merkel. A different agenda for Europe, a Keynesian reorientation of some sorts was proposed, including government stimulus and investment, and emphasis on economic growth, and tackling unemployment, and finally a constitutional agreement on the rules within the Euro zone.
The young Italian PM Matteo Renzi made the proposition, now from the strong position of someone whose party had triumphed on the election with 40+%. By the way, his personal dynamism and charisma is quite remarkable, especially at the background of the sluggish, leadership-challenged Eurocratic status quo. He's already being mentioned as one of the possible candidates for chairman of the European Commission (the equivalent of prime-minister of Europe).
In turn, the European Council suddenly saw the ascent of Hollande who's been suffering the lowest domestic approval ever, and whose socialist party suffered a humiliating slide down to the 3rd place in France with just 25%. Obviously worried by this development, Hollande started talking what had been expected of him for a long time: "Europe has become unreadable, distant and frankly incomprehensible even for governments". And this cannot continue for too long. The European project should be much simpler and clearer, and it shouldn't be poking its nose in matters that are none of its concern. So Hollande vowed to make it his priority to reform France and help re-orientate Europe. Whether that's yet another hollow promise, or he truly means it, is yet to be established.
Cameron spoke too. He said the EU cannot ignore the election result and presume to proceed as usual. A change is necessary, in that Europe should focus on essential issues like growth and employment, rather than dispersing its efforts in all directions. Right now Brussels is too bloated bureaucratically, too authoritarian, too centralized, and too boring. Right, Cameron. Seems like you've changed your mind about austerity, then.
Of course, such a meeting wouldn't have been complete without Frau Merkel's two cents. Because she is the one who holds the keys to everything. Including for the important nomination of EC chairperson. Mrs Chancellor has typically avoided the revolutionary rhetoric for the time being, but she did clearly show that she's prepared to show flexibility. On one side, she seemed to support the nomination of her ideological ally Juncker, but she did it half-assedly and immediately emphasized that an automatic equating of the election results with the choice of EC chairman would be counter-productive. She even said Germany has had "many heads of state who weren't necessarily from the party with the most votes", and she hinted that the priorities of EC's new term could be implemented by any chairperson, not necessarily Juncker himself. She made it clear that she'd rather prefer a much broader coalition, perhaps one fashioned after the ruling one in Germany, which could see both ENP and PES at one side of a pro-European alliance within the European Parliament. And Juncker, who basically personifies the stagnated status quo and who's being categorically rejected by Cameron and by Victor Orban who made quite an impact in Hungary, is hardly the most suitable figure for the task. The search for consensus that's so typical for this part of the world, could take a while, granted. But that'd be by far the better response to the voters' preferences, as stated on the May 25 eleciton. A slow but adequate response is more productive than a hasty one that everyone would later regret.
Btw, Merkel's obvious coalition proneness is also in conflict with the clearly shaped affinity of the European voters to a more differentiated political behavior. For example, analysts like Mark Leonard and Jose Ignacio Torreblanca notice some new tendencies, as explained in their co-authored essay The Eurosceptic Surge And How To Respond To It:
"The danger is that the response of the mainstream parties will be to retreat into technocratic co-operation and seek to continue business as usual. Instead, rather than forming a pro-European bloc, they should try to create the space for political battles between competing visions of Europe and thereby try to preserve left-right competition at both national and European levels. That will mean developing a new agenda for social Europe and responsible capitalism, more imaginative ideas on migration, solidarity and responsibility, and a policy agenda that shows how the EU is part of the solution to the problems of the twenty-first century - from dealing with big data to the rise of China.
"The challenge is to drive wedges between the Eurosceptics rather than encouraging them to form an anti-elite bloc. In order to do this, the mainstream centre-left and centre-right parties will need to do much more to acknowledge the Eurosceptic critique of Europe while rejecting the solutions the Eurosceptics propose. Whether they blame it for austerity or uncontrolled immigration, a significant number of Europeans are angry at the EU because it has not worked as they expected. The euro has been saved, but at a great cost in growth, jobs, and divisions between citizens and elites, debtors and creditors, and euro-ins and euro-outs.
"If Europe is to defeat the Eurosceptics, it has to confront them at home, where they will be stronger, and not only in Brussels, where they will be weaker. They will also need to pay attention to the new cleavages that have emerged throughout the crisis, such as the one dividing debtors and creditors and euro-ins and euro-outs. In short, Europe needs more politics and more disagreements. Rather than huddling together, mainstream parties need to give people real choices and address the issues that really concern people."
But in order to fulfill these tasks, someone very different from both Juncker and Schulz will be needed. The role would hardly be suitable for the two ladies who are being mentioned among the candidates either, IMF chairlady Christine Lagarde who entered politics with the help of her mentor and ideological ally Nicolas Sarkozy, and Danish socialist and PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt (known in the US as the lady who made "those selfies" with Obama), nicknamed Helle Gucci for her obsession with the luxurious fashion brand. For the time being, the European Council has slipped the hot potato into the hands of EU president Herman van Rompuy, authorizing him to preside over the consultations for new EC president. But if things get stuck into the painfully familiar Eurobureaucratic impasse and yet another tasteless Brussels broccoli of the Van Rompuy sort is again picked up (or similar to the dull Catherine Ashton who emerged along with him), that'd mean the EU would continue to merrily dig further down its own grave.
As for the change of discourse, it's clearly personified by people like Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage. This means that their rhetoric will be joined by more traditional rightist parties like the ENP and even the Third-Way wing of the socialists and social-democrats, who'd want to adjust to the new realities, lest they lose more of their positions. This is most visible in France. We've already seen how leftists like Manuel Valls who's the current French PM, in his former position of foreign minister used to adopt a stance on the immigration issue that perfectly matched that of the far-right, i.e. he was trying to ride the wave of the predominant public opinions. The same flirting with the far-right was seen in Sarkozy. Just before the latest presidential election he suddenly started advocating for abolishing the Schengen agreement for the sake of a "reformed EU". He wanted to "prevent foreigners from perverting the procedures that allow them to enter the Schengen space and choose the country where they'd be granted the most generous aid". "There is not one Europe but two ... In the euro zone, we must stop believing in the myth of equal rights between all members", Sarko used to argue. It's hard to read this Le-Penization of his otherwise than as a somewhat cultivated version of the old segregationist idea of "Europe of the two speeds", where some are obviously supposed to be "more equal" than others.
We shouldn't also overlook another curious element in the newly found weight of the European nationalists: the obvious love and sympathy of the most influential among them (Le Pen, Farage & Co) to Russia and its leadership, namely comrade Putin, as stated here recently. This is already adding a geopolitical taste to the new balance of powers on this continent. The leader of the French list of the National Front, Aymeric Chauprade is quite a curious specimen in this respect. It's him who'll be serving as the spearhead of the party in the new European Parliament, not Marine Le Pen who didn't even run, obviously saving herself for the next presidential standoff in France. Chauprade is a writer, political scientist and geopolitics professor at several universities and military academies across France, Morocco, Tunisia and here in Switzerland. He's a fan of Realpolitik, a staunch opponent to the free-trade agreement between the EU and the US, and generally considers the alliance of continental Europe with the "Atlantic states" USA and UK detrimental to the former, because the interests of the latter conflict with the European ones. Meanwhile, he's a passionate supporter of a closer partnership of the leading European powers like France and Germany with Russia - and all that, based exactly on Putin's Eurasian pipe dreams. Chauprade sees great potential in a possible alliance between Europe and Russia, and a mighty Eurasian superpower emerging as a result of that marriage. It's curious how a hypothetical merge of those political systems would look like: autocratic democracy? Oligarchic free market? Not very sure. For the time being, the most interesting thing about Chauprade is what development his ideas would undergo, now that the National Front will have the high tribune of the European Parliament at their disposal to promote these ideas.
The opposite corner is occupied by the European leftist bloc, which is also forming a strong and influential alternative to the current impotent status quo. Here, of course, everybody's darling is young Tsipras and his Syriza, which emerged the topmost political force in Greece after this election. It's a new type of leftist party, one that the EU hasn't seen before - an anarchist, nihilistic, and extremely Eurosceptic one.
Predictably, Tsipras has already called for immediate national elections in his country, and has warned Greece's PM Andonis Samaras that he should refrain from introducing further austerity measures, and he should forget about his plans to privatize the water sector (think of what happened in Bolivia), and to appoint a European commissioner as chairman of the Greek national bank without consulting with Syriza. The government (the ruling New Democracy party coming out 2nd on the EU election) and the former socialist juggernaut PASOK (which ended up a humiliating 4th) reject the idea of snap elections. But at least it's obvious that there'll be major changes in the cabinet. But no one can shut their eyes to reality any more.
This reality, which has been screaming in the face of Europe for a long time that the endless tightening of the belts is already leaving South Europe breathless and this can't be taken any more, has caused a furious blossoming of various leftist alternatives in Spain. The Euro-vote there completely buried the incumbent bipolar model, showing the middle finger to the center-right People's Party, and the presumed leftist Socialist Workers Party, and condemned them to a political free-fall. The socialist leader Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba announced that he's taking the political responsibility for his party's worst election result ever, he threw his resignation and summoned an urgent party congress which is to elect a new leadership. That's how a responsible but ultimately failed leader should do.
The rightist PM Mariano Rajoy did nothing of the sort in his NP, but that doesn't mean his life won't turn sour in the next battles with the new opposition factors: the surging United Left and the shocking new kid on the block, Podemos of former socialist member, TV host and political sciences professor Pablo Iglesias Turrión. He was recognized as the mouthpiece of the Indignados movement which emerged in 2011 with the Spanish economic collapse, and now it has infused its energy into the new movement Podemos. Another six leftist and nationalist parties will enter the European Parliament from Spain alone - all of them determined to make their voice loudly heard, and to keep the European political sleepwalkers constantly awake and alert. Alas, that won't necessarily guarantee a detour away from the edge of the abyss.
So... good morning, Brussels! Did you have a nice sleep?