France: Le Pen calls it right on the Euro

As Sarkozy snuggles into German arms and plans fiscal and ultimate political union.

Eurosceptics have prospered from the muddling through. They've gained support from each recent much-heralded yet fruitless European meeting, each of which has at first calmed and then fueled investor angst.

And none more so than Marie Le Pen of the National Front in France. Before French president Nicolas Sarkozy joins German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Brussels next week, Le Pen stridently asserts that France should pursue an organised and dignified exit from the failing single currency, before the Euro collapses causing maximum mayhem.

She can't be so very wrong when one of the Euro's chief architects, former European Commission President Jaques Delors, told the Telegraph that the Euro was always vulnerable unless "common economic policies“ founded on the co-operation of the member states”" were not (contrary to his stern advice) enshined from the outset. 

Respecting the French rejection of the European constitution in a 2005 referendum, she promotes her 2012 Élysée bid by reminding voters that European Monetary Union has "asphyxiated our economies, killed our industries and choked our jobs” as the Financial Times reported. She couldn't be more correct, as it happens. Suspicions of the NF's ultimate aims aside, her honed presentational skills win plaudits and her points ring home.

Sarkozy's Socialist challenger, Francois Hollande, will have his work cut out to counter Le Pen's claims. And Sarkozy could likely, by the the time of the April vote, be either floored by the Euro's collapse, or having to explain away his hand in its demise. Hollande ruled out treaty changes to deal with the ongoing Euro crisis. Yet that's precisely what's required (much to UK PM David Cameron's irritation, for he's conceded that such changes will trigger a British referendum which might hamper European efforts to solve the Continent's debt and credit problems and hold back UK growth). 

Le Pen is calling the right card at the right time for Right reasons. It's a shame that France might be the first significant European country to entrust over-arching power to an untested and potentially divisive far-right politician.

The Euro project might yet produce far-reaching, long-lasting and undoubtedly dire political consequences to accompany dreadfully damaging economic ones.

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