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In Paris on Sunday, supporters of newly elected president Francois Hollande celebrated.
Joel Saget /AFP/Getty Images
In Paris on Sunday, supporters of newly elected president Francois Hollande celebrated.
A victory Sunday by Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande in France and the rejection by voters in Greece of that country’s austerity policies have caused a “seismic shift” that threatens the future of the euro, The Guardian writes this morning.
The news has also sent financial markets down.
“Greece’s vote, combined with the victory of Socialist Francois Hollande over incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in a French presidential election, will raise pressure on Europe’s paymaster Germany to pursue a more growth-oriented approach to the crisis. But it is far from clear whether Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose insistence on tough deficit reduction in vulnerable southern euro members is popular in Germany, will take more than symbolic steps in that direction, even after Sunday’s elections.
” ‘This shows that politics is getting out of control in Europe, the gap between politicians and voters is widening, that’s what you see in Greece, that’s what you see in France,’ said Steen Jakobsen, chief economist at Saxo Bank in Copenhagen.”
In the Greek parliamentary elections, according to NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli, voters “sent a strong message to their country’s international creditors … rejecting their strict austerity policies.”
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Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/05/07/152177839/seismic-shift-in-europe-after-french-and-greek-elections?ft=1&f=1004