EU will 'collapse like the Soviet Union' warns French leader

Friday, October 18, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: European Union, collapse, Soviet Union

(NaturalNews) Another European politician says the continent is heading towards the same fate as the former Soviet Union - "collapse" - if economic and political conditions don't change.

Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right party, says the European Union will "collapse like the Soviet Union" as she "conspired to form what would be the most radical faction yet seen in the European Parliament," Britain's Telegraph reported.

Bolstered by a recent election triumph in the south of France, Le Pen hammered the EU as a "global anomaly" and vowed to return the union of countries to a "cooperation of sovereign states." At present, she said, Europe's people had "no control" over their economies and currencies, nor the movement of people within their territory.

"I believe that the EU is like the Soviet Union now: it is not improvable," she said. "The EU will collapse like the Soviet Union collapsed."

Garnering continental support

Next month Le Pen travels to Holland to plan a joint campaign with Geert Wilders, "whose anti-Islamic Freedom Party (PVV) currently tops national opinion polls for May's European elections," the Telegraph reported.

More from the paper:

Together they aim to establish a pan-European, far-Right parliamentary grouping that would run on an anti-immigrant, anti-integration platform. Once in office its overriding aim would be to be as disruptive as possible.

Even ardent European federalists now concede that as much as 30 per cent of the new parliament will comprise Euro-skeptics capitalizing on economic misery and record levels of unemployment across Europe.

"If Eurosceptic parties are successful in 2014, this would create the most extreme European parliament ever," Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democrat minister of the European Parliament, told the paper. "I'm alarmed at not only their racist and discriminatory attitudes but also their protectionism and hostility to the European single market to which three million British jobs are linked."

The existing order is shaken

Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has urged mainstream political parties across the continent to reject and stand firm against what he describes as the same kind of extremism that fueled World War II.

"If we allow these forces to gain a foothold once again on our continent we will have wasted a century of building closer ties and condemned history to repeat itself," he said.

Parties like those of Le Pen's have been gaining influence among Europeans victimized in part by globalization and by profligate overpromising of government benefits.

As government revenues have fallen off, pensions and other entitlement programs have been trimmed in order to meet budget requirements.

At the same time, with some countries experiencing more than 50 percent unemployment, many European countries have seen an influx of immigrants, most from Islamic countries, which has created increased competition for jobs as well as cultural conflicts.

The people are speaking

Norway is a case in point, as reported by Reuters:

From spats over halal meat in Danish schools to asylum seekers in Sweden, anger about immigration has fuelled the march of populist parties across Nordic countries, leading one such group to the brink of government in prosperous Norway.

The backlash has surfaced even though Nordic economies have outperformed languishing southern European countries. Their success has attracted thousands of "euro refugees", vying for scarce jobs as their home states endure grinding austerity.

According to the Telegraph Le Pen is branching out to other right-centered parties in Europe; she has reached out recently as well to Austria's Freedom Party, which gained 21 percent of the vote in a general election last month.

Clearly the political gains of the right-leaning parties, as well as the politicians who lead them, are upsetting the traditional order throughout Europe. But it's not stopping those seeking change.

"We want to do whatever we can to turn the forthcoming European elections into a Europe-wide electoral landslide against Brussels," said Wilders, referring to the Belgian city where the EU has its key organizations.

Sources:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

http://www.voanews.com

http://www.intercultural-europe.org