The finances of a Post-Brexit EU may be more strained than first thought....
"Minister of Finance Kristian Jensen says he is determined that Britain’s imminent exit from the EU will not mean more expensive membership for Denmark."
Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz said Vienna would not increase its payments to the EU budget after Britain quits the block, leaving it without one of its main net contributors.
“Net contributions will not go up,” he insisted. “There will have to be savings.”
Macron's chief financial advisor, Jean Pisani-Ferry , thinks;
EU-UK cooperation will therefore remain profoundly important. Ways must be found to put it on a new and secure footing. Different approaches will no doubt be needed to reflect the substantive differences between, for example, trade and security issues. But any new framework will need to recognise that economics and politics are not neatly segmented. For example, they are interwoven in decisions on economic sanctions designed to help maintain international order. The new arrangements will need to be able to cope with the fuzzy boundaries of different public policy spheres.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz said Vienna would not increase its payments to the EU budget after Britain quits the block, leaving it without one of its main net contributors.
“Net contributions will not go up,” he insisted. “There will have to be savings.”
The EU could always impose additional tariffs/costs on the UK for access to the common market so as to make up for its former share of the EU contribution. Withdrawal from Brussels's authority is not going to be cost-free to the British government or the nation's industries.
Sue U wrote:The EU could always impose additional tariffs/costs on the UK for access to the common market so as to make up for its former share of the EU contribution. Withdrawal from Brussels's authority is not going to be cost-free to the British government or the nation's industries.
It's that which makes me regret the Brexit vote: and in particular to blame those entities (UKIP, Boris Johnson) who were so hell bent on it. If the British people had been presented with realistic data on the actual financial costs and social upheaval entailed, they could have made an informed decision, instead of a 'This might be cool' knee jerk. Like most people here, I have otherwise reasonably sane friends (OK, acquaintances) who voted for Trump, and in the same way I have some whom I love dearly, but who voted for Brexit. They are (mostly) sane enough to now say WTF, we didn't vote for this.
Sue U wrote:The EU could always impose additional tariffs/costs on the UK for access to the common market so as to make up for its former share of the EU contribution. Withdrawal from Brussels's authority is not going to be cost-free to the British government or the nation's industries.
True, but the UK is a net importer from the EU, so any restrictive tariffs could have knock on effects.
ETA: Good old French election argy bargy as per norm
Meanwhile, clashes broke out between police and protesters on the sidelines of a traditional May Day labour march in Paris.
Four officers were hurt when masked demonstrators threw petrol bombs at police who responded with tear gas, authorities said.
The violence happened near Place de la Bastille as the march, led by three trade unions, headed towards another square.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Maybe this was done by a 400 pound guy sitting on his bed in New Jersey...
Emmanuel Macron's French presidential campaign hacked
(CNN)The front-runner in France's presidential race, Emmanuel Macron, has been the victim of a "massive and coordinated hacking operation," his campaign team said, slamming the attack as a last-ditch attempt to undermine the candidate's lead.
The document dump happened Friday night, less than 48 hours before the country votes in the final round of the presidential election, which pits the independent centrist Macron against the far-right Marine Le Pen.
The files were released just before 2 p.m. ET Friday, around four hours before the election campaign period officially closed with its restrictions on campaigning, reporting and polling. These restrictions are aimed at preventing last-minute scandals from emerging and influencing the election's outcome.
Around 14.5 gigabytes of emails, personal and business documents were posted to the text-sharing site Pastebin through links to more than 70,000 files, a CNN look at the data shows.
Officials from Macron's En Marche! party said in a statement that the perpetrators of the hack had mixed fake documents with authentic ones "to create confusion and misinformation."
"The leak happened in the last hours of the campaign. This operation is clearly meant to undermine democracy, just like what happened in the US during the last presidential campaign," the statement read.
US intelligence officials have said Russia meddled in the November elections, and Congress is investigating the allegations. Russia has denied any interference.
En Marche! said that some of the files circulating were obtained several weeks ago after personal and professional email accounts were hacked.
It was not clear who was behind the document dump, but the hack targeting Macron's campaign used methods similar to the suspected Russian hacks of the Democratic National Committee last year in United States, according to a report issued in April by cybersecurity researchers.
Despite the last minute hacked documents dump, and an effort by some of the more more petulant lefties to organize a vote boycott, it appears that Mr. Macron has delivered a solid thumping to Madame Le Pen:
French election results: Emmanuel Macron beats Marine Le Pen with 65 per cent of vote - exit polls
Emmanuel Macron has beaten Marine Le Pen in Sunday's French election and taken more than 65 per cent of the vote, according to exit polls.
Polling conducted by Ipsos, Ifop and BVA all gave Mr Macron, the pro-business candidate, a strong lead over Front National leader Marine Le Pen.
It comes after a massive hacking attack on Mr Macron's campaign database over the weekend which saw hundreds of thousands of private emails and official documents dumped online.
rubato wrote:I am glad that the French have resoundingly rejected the nativist racism which swept the UK with Brexit and the US with Trump madness.
Vive La France!
yrs,
rubato
In spite of Des FuitesWiki better thinking prevailed in this election.
The French, obviously, are smarter than many Americans.
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
Okay, so we (and I mean France) get a bland corporatist technocrat instead of a deranged racist fascist nutjob, and this is considered a great victory for democracy. Pretty low bar.
Sue U wrote:Okay, so we (and I mean France) get a bland corporatist technocrat instead of a deranged racist fascist nutjob, and this is considered a great victory for democracy. Pretty low bar.
You can thank the Tea Baggers' agenda, the Republican Party that embraced it, and the end result — Dumb'old Trump — for doing that. -"BB"-
Yes, I suppose I could agree with you ... but then we'd both be wrong, wouldn't we?
Sue U wrote:Okay, so we (and I mean France) get a bland corporatist technocrat instead of a deranged racist fascist nutjob, and this is considered a great victory for democracy. Pretty low bar.
Were there three, or only two, choices in the final round?
“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.” ~ Ruth Bader Ginsburg, paraphrasing Sarah Moore Grimké
Andy Borowitz wrote:But, sitting a few tables away, Helene Commonceau, another Parisian, admitted that she did not understand what all of the celebrating was about. “We are smarter than the Americans, true, but they have set the bar very low, no?” she said.
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
