During his recent visit to Washington French president François Hollande surprised many observers by calling for a speeding up of the negotiations for a EU-US free trade agreement, the biggest deal of its kind in the world. The president's demands are in sharp contrast with France's earlier caution over the free trade zone, an issue which has provoked concern and opposition across Europe. For some, it also seems a curious stance to adopt just weeks before important European elections at which the proposed deal is set to be a controversial issue. Ludovic Lamant reports.
According to many financial experts, last year marked a turning point in which the world finally began to put the financial crisis behind it. But if 2013 was the year when stock and property markets recovered to pre-crisis levels, it was also a period when the gap between the super rich and everyone else widened to levels not seen for practically a century. In the United States, as much as half of national income went to the very rich, a concentration of wealth last seen in 1917. In Europe poverty has made a comeback, and the most disadvantaged are scrambling to feed themselves and their families. Martine Orange reports.
The United States and France – though no longer Britain, it seems- are poised to intervene militarily in Syria. While helping to remove the Assad regime is an urgent priority, the expected campaign of air strikes seems like a headlong rush without legal basis. And one which is a form of camouflage for past errors and acts of cowardice, the opportunistic management of public opinion and a possible trigger for a regional cataclysm with incalculable consequences. Yet, argues Mediapart editor François Bonnet, there are alternatives.
After days of hesitation, the United States finally seems poised to intervene militarily following Syria's use of chemical weapons against its own people. But until then, faced with the enduring crises in Syria and Egypt, the White House had sometimes given the impression that the entire administration was on its summer holiday. More generally, during the first five years of his presidency Barack Obama has shown indecision and muddle in his handling of international issues. To the point, argues Thomas Cantaloube, that the United States is in danger of slipping towards insignificance on the world stage.
The revelation that the United States has been spying on European Union offices in America – and possibly in Brussels too – has sparked outrage across the continent. French president François Hollande has called for an 'immediate' end to such snooping and he and others have suggested the scandal could affect the imminent negotiations over transatlantic trade. There have also been calls from the Right and Left in France for Paris to offer the whistleblower Edward Snowden political asylum. However, as Ludovic Lamant and Stéphane Alliès report, the reaction from EU leaders in Brussels to the affair has so far been much more restrained.
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