French Government Collapses - Twin Towers of Fortress Europe Tottering ?

[Killjoy]

Sacre Bleu, sports fans !
Looks like the the "left ventricle" of the Heart of the Continent has suffered a cardiac arrest of confidence.
Evidently budget battles and ideological differences came to a head, and right and left wing French political parties united - after a fashion - to insure the ouster of Barnier.
Where does this leave the French nation, and the EU as a whole ?


French government collapses in no-confidence vote

The French government has collapsed after Prime Minister Michel Barnier was ousted in a no-confidence vote.

MPs voted overwhelmingly in support of the motion against him - just three months after he was appointed by President Emmanuel Macron.

Opposition parties had tabled the motion after the former Brexit negotiator controversially used special powers to force through his budget without a vote.

It marks the first time the country's government has collapsed in a no-confidence vote since 1962.

Why France's turmoil is grave concern for Europe

At this key moment in geopolitics, leadership in the EU is sorely missing. The bloc is beginning to feel rudderless, with the rise of more autocratic, Russia-sympathising leaders in Hungary, Slovakia and Romania - and French and German focus weakened and distracted.

For France, there's no real end to the political instability in sight.

President Emmanuel Macron will appoint a new prime minister, but even then parliament will remain divided between three mutually-loathing political blocs, able to hold each other hostage over much-needed reforms and a new budget.

And here is another reason why what happens in France matters beyond its borders: It's the second largest economy in the eurozone. Its budget deficit is ballooning way beyond EU norms. French government debt is similarly eyebrow-raising.

This is unsettling for French taxpayers worried about the cost of living, and uncomfortable for the rest of the eurozone, fearing the knock-on effects of damage to their currency’s reputation if Big Beast France appears out of control.

Big Beast Germany, meanwhile, the EU's largest economy, is also in trouble. Its once booming export industry so dented (even before the import tariffs threatened by Trump as of January 2025) that it risks pulling central and eastern European neighbours, long used by Germany as a factory floor, into its economically depressed orbit.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Twin Towers didn't collapse due to bad management. Better analogy would be the Titanic, IMNSHO.

 

[Killjoy]

The Twin Towers didn't collapse due to bad management. Better analogy would be the Titanic, IMNSHO.

My addiction to alliteration struck before I could come up with a more apt analogy.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They should have built the Titanic with wider doors.

 

[sculptor]

They should have built the Titanic with wider doors.

as/re the titanic--Would it have survived if it had hit the iceberg head on instead of trying to avoid that?

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

as/re the titanic--Would it have survived if it had hit the iceberg head on instead of trying to avoid that?

Haven't looked at the lateral bulkheads and the amount of work needed to create a full barrier to the advance of water. The water coming in would have lowered the bow, and that would flooded more decks if not controlled. Water-tight integrity would have to be established at the most forward intact lateral bulkhead. The key to all this is a crew that runs TOWARD trouble instead of away from it, and knows what to do when they get to critical points. Golden rule: TWO intact bulkheads between a breach and the rest of the ship.

Did I mention I'm retired Navy?

 

[Killjoy]

Haven't looked at the lateral bulkheads and the amount of work needed to create a full barrier to the advance of water. The water coming in would have lowered the bow, and that would flooded more decks if not controlled. Water-tight integrity would have to be established at the most forward intact lateral bulkhead. The key to all this is a crew that runs TOWARD trouble instead of away from it, and knows what to do when they get to critical points. Golden rule: TWO intact bulkheads between a breach and the rest of the ship.

Did I mention I'm retired Navy?

I don't think a full barrier to incoming water was possible. The transverse bulkheads were equipped with watertight doors, but the bulkheads themselves didn't extend all the way to Titanic's top decks. The areas of the vessel they "sealed" just filled up and spilled over into the adjacent ones nearer the stern until - blub, blub, blub...

 

[Killjoy]

Meanwhile...

Europe's center is not holding

Two main lessons are to be drawn from the fall of Michel Barnier’s government in France.

The first is that talk of Europe massively re-arming itself and substituting for the U.S. as the chief backer of Ukraine while maintaining existing levels of health care and social security is idiocy. The money is simply not there. The second is that the effort by “mainstream” establishments to exclude populist parties from office is doomed in the long run, and in the short run is a recipe for repeated political crisis and increasing paralysis of government.

Two countries are central to the European Union, the European economy, European defense, and any hope of European strategic autonomy: France and Germany. Within a month of each other, both have seen their governments collapse due to battles over how to reduce their growing budget deficits. In both cases, their fiscal woes have been drastically worsened by a combination of economic stagnation and pressure on welfare budgets with the new costs of rearmament and support for Ukraine.

In both cases, fiscal crisis has fed into the decay of the mainstream political parties that alternated in power for generations — a phenomenon that is to be seen all over Europe (and in the U.S., insofar as Trump represents a revolt against the Republican establishment). This decay is being fed by the growing backlash against dictation by the EU and NATO that is occurring across wide swathes of Europe.

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I don't think a full barrier to incoming water was possible. The transverse bulkheads were equipped with watertight doors, but the bulkheads themselves didn't extend all the way to Titanic's top decks. The areas of the vessel they "sealed" just filled up and spilled over into the adjacent ones nearer the stern until - blub, blub, blub...

I'd have to see the blueprints to say how much damage would be needed. Obviously enough to sink her, but could the crew have saved her enough to limp into port?

Damage control teams, just one of the duties sailors filled. They liked to take idle time to conduct training. We usually got more information than we needed, the rule of Just In Case was always working. I was usually #1 Nozzleman, the pointy end of the stick as it were.

 

[TheVat]

Reading the last posts, it is initially challenging to relate it to the collapse of the French parliament.

President Emmanuel Macron will appoint a new prime minister, but even then parliament will remain divided between three mutually-loathing political blocs, able to hold each other hostage over much-needed reforms and a new budget.

I.e. just business as usual over here in the USA. Yawn. Might go rearrange some deck chairs on the poop deck