From the UK Telegraph:
Europe's crisis is about to get a whole lot worse
Here's your starter for ten. The European People's Party is the largest bloc in the European Council, as measured by voting weight; can you guess the second largest?
Congratulations to anyone who plumped for the European Conservatives and Reformists, who edge ahead of both the Liberals and the Socialists.
Euro-Lefties have been having a thin time of it recently. Only three per cent of EU citizens live under socialist or socialist-led governments. That, though, is about to change. France, where the state already consumes 56 per cent of GDP, and whose budget was last in balance in 1974, seems likely to elect Francois Hollande on a platform of 'growth, not austerity'. (Who knew it was that easy?) Greece, which also votes on Sunday, is inclining toward a pack of communist parties; the politicians there who talk openly of the need for cuts currently command less than seven per cent in the polls. Romania, too, is about to install a Leftist ministry, following the defeat of the last government's austerity platform. As other elections follow around Europe, we can expect more of the same.
What will be the impact? Europe will accelerate all the policies that brought it to its present unhappy condition: wastrel spending, unsustainable borrowing, punitive taxation, deeper integration. Voters are in no mood to accept less generous perks and pensions. They'd rather be told that the money can somehow be got out of the rich. A politician who admits the truth - namely that the rich have nothing like enough to pay for all the things that modern governments want to do - is liable to have dead animals lobbed in his direction.
More at the site. It will be interesting to see what happens if Francois Hollande gets elected. He is an avowed socialist. France and Germany are the two 'healthiest' nations in the EU and if France goes down, the whole house of cards will soon follow.
