Macron: Europe is too slow, blind to dangers of nationalism
PARIS (AP) — Calling Europe slow, weak and ineffective, French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday said the EU should embrace a joint budget, shared military force and harmonized taxes to stay globally relevant.
With Brexit looming, Macron warned the rest of Europe against the dangers of anti-immigrant nationalism and fragmentation, saying it goes against the principles of a shared Europe born from the tragedy of world wars.
“We thought the past would not come back ... we thought we had learned the lessons,” Macron told a crowd of European students at the Sorbonne university Tuesday.
After a far-right party entered the German parliament for the first time in 60 years, Macron said this isolationist attitude has resurfaced “because of blindness ... because we forgot to defend Europe.”
“The Europe that we know is too slow, too weak, too ineffective,” he said.
To change that, he proposed a joint budget for European countries sharing the euro currency that would allow investment in European projects and help stabilize the eurozone in case of economic crisis. This budget would at some point need to come from national budgets of countries sharing the euro currency, for instance using domestic taxes on businesses.
Macron said the only way to make Europe strong in a globalized world is to reshape “a sovereign, united and democratic Europe.”
While re-elected German Chancellor Angela Merkel has signaled openness to some of Macron’s ideas, one potential ally in her new government is deeply skeptical about a eurozone budget. Macron’s office says he wants his Europe strategy to play a role in Germany’s coalition-building talks.
To reduce inequalities across the EU, Macron also suggested greater harmonization of EU tax policies — notably on corporate taxes, and taxing internet giants where they make money and not where they are registered.
Macron is also proposing that every EU country guarantee a minimum wage and payroll charges.
Macron said, “I believe deeply in this innovation economy,” but insisted that “we must have this debate” about making taxation more fair.
Macron also proposed a shared European military intervention force and defense budget. He suggested the creation of a European intelligence academy to better fight terrorism, and a joint civil protection force.
He wants to open the French military to European soldiers and proposed other EU member states do the same on a voluntary basis.
To deal with Europe’s migration flux, Macron wants a European asylum agency and standard EU identity documents.
Macron’s policies have met resistance at home, and riot police held back a few dozen protesters outside the Sorbonne.
Macron doesn’t want to wait for Britain to leave the EU in 2019 to tie European economies closer together.
He’s well-placed to kickstart those efforts: at just 39, he came of age under the EU, and won a strong electoral mandate this year. And he’s already held one-on-one meetings with 22 of the union’s 27 other leaders to market his EU strategy.
Macron recalled he won the presidential election on a pro-European platform, against anti-European, anti-immigration far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
His biggest challenge may be the German political calendar. The outgoing government there goes into caretaker status in a few weeks and is not going to be taking any major decisions on the future of Europe, and it may take months for Merkel to form a viable coalition.
The pro-business Free Democrats, a key potential partner for Merkel, is against a joint budget because the party says that would result in automatic, uncontrolled money transfers from Germany to struggling eurozone partners.
It was a love story in homage to a glamorous mother.
In a show brimming with joy, 27-year-old French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus dedicated his retro spring-summer 2018 collection to the style of his late mother, who died a decade ago.
Her death hit while he was a teenager and spurned him on to launch his own fashion house at the tender age of 20. He named it Jacquemus — her maiden name.
In Monday’s collection in the grand Picasso Museum, clothes exuded elegant sexual confidence and riffed on beach styles from the 1950s. A retro off-white bodice top sported large black polka dots against a surreally oversized straw sun hat with a stylish curl at one side.
Indeed, deceptively-simple curls, twists, drapes and gatherings in the fabric were ubiquitous in the thoughtful clothes, betraying a real skill in construction.
With a floppy oversize cuff detail, a diaphanous skirt in pale yellow that was draped on the diagonal evoked a shirt his mother might have tied loosely around her waist.
Hips were emphasized in tonal dresses that were gathered from the midriff or in loosely slung sarong-styles. Retro micro
It was an extravaganza in pastel — ruched, gathered and bound.
The fashion-forward house of Tokyo designer Kunihiko Morinaga has built up a huge fan base in Japan for its intellectual designs and original use of techno-fabrics. This was on full display Tuesday as Morinaga used strapping, in tonal or contrasting colors, to bind loose silhouettes to the models’ body.
It began with the baroque — billowing sleeves and high collars on silken fabric dresses in exaggerated proportions — and the occasional jumpsuit. They were, of course, paired with on-trend white banded sneakers.
At times, crisscross strapping evoked an almost kinky, exo-skeleton restraining the body— such as in a peach, knee-length dress with a gray lattice exterior.
The show was highly original.
The color pink has — so far — been heralded as the color of the season.
But fashion editors generally agree that Paris Fashion Week has the ultimate say in what going to be a trend, so all eyes are on the French capital’s runway collections to see if this continues.
On the first day of shows in Paris, pink made a moderate splash.