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The government crisis in France should be a lesson to politicians in Germany. If the centrist parties give up their ability to work together, we will soon find ourselves in a similar situation.
Should we really be concerned about the fall of the government in France? Now that we have enough on our plate with a broken coalition and impending new elections?
Unfortunately yes. Because the simultaneous government crises in France and Germany are pure poison for the stability of the entire EU. The situation in France is even more serious than ours: the political center there has already crumbled and the edges on the right and left have long been so strong that the country is at risk of becoming ungovernable.
Without his own majority in parliament, no matter how powerfully his head of state behaves, he can no longer shape anything politically in France. President Macron made Michel Barnier prime minister. His downfall is another major defeat for the president himself.
If Macron fails, all of Europe could feel it
And France is dangerously indebted: without a government there is no balancing of the budget. And without them, the high interest rates on the financial markets will gradually choke the country. Against the crisis that could lie ahead for France, Greece's debt crisis was a child's birthday. And that has already shaken the euro and the EU considerably.
President Macron must now try again to build bridges in the fragmented political landscape in his homeland. So far he hasn't been particularly clever at it. If he fails again, all of Europe could feel it.
The turbulence in our most important neighbor and ally should be a lesson for politics in Germany: If the centrist parties give up their ability to work together because they hope for short-term advantages in the political mood, we will soon be in a similar situation. The dictators and autocrats around us should only like that!
