Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The true face of the EU is presently on display in Greece, not in Germany or Holland or France. Brussels must first fix what’s going wrong in Athens and the Aegean, and there’s a lot going wrong, before it can move on towards the future, indeed towards any future at all. It has a very tough job in Italy as well, which it’s trying hard to ignore.
Authored by Altay Atli via The Strategic Culture Foundation blog,
As the diplomatic squabble between Turkey and the Netherlands continues to fester, concerns are raised about whether — and to what extent — the tensions will harm bilateral relations, particularly in economics where the two countries have robust trade and investment connections.
Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
The Dutch elections on Wednesday have provided a whole bunch of Orwellian narratives. PM Mark Rutte’s right wing VVD party, actually the ‘business’ -or should we say ‘rent-seekers’ in 2017- party, who lost some 20% of the seats they had obtained in the previous parliamentary election in November 2012, down from 41 to 33 seats, is declared the big winner. While Geert Wilders’ very right wing party, PVV, won 25% more seats -it went from 16 to 20- and is the big loser.
Turkey claims that a holy war “to end all holy wars” will soon begin in Europe following the defeat of far-right leader Geert Wilders in the Netherlands elections. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said he did not welcome the victory for Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s centre-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). “Now the election is over in the Netherlands…when you look at the many parties you see there is no difference between the social democrats and fascist Wilders,” he said. “All have the same mentality. Where will you go? Where are you taking Europe?
Dutch citizens will vote today for a new government in one of the most-watched elections in years. While polls have tilted towards PM Rutte's VVD Party in recent days, the euroskeptic leader of the Freedom Party, Geert Wilders, looks set to gain the most seats but the necessary coalition will be anything but clean (since World War II, it’s taken an average of 72 days to form a government).