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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldsnow who wrote (11818)	6/14/1999 6:20:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 17770

The Kosovo war seems to have driven most Europeans skeptical about the EU bureaucracy's relevance... At random: Turnout at the polls in the UK was the lowest ever: 23%!! Even in Germany, where people usually are big polling fans, turnout was about 45% (if I remember); Italian Romano Prodi, EU's current President of the Commission took a bath... France's turnout was about 55% --not that bad for a country whose most people disdain Brussels' eurocracy... While the far-rightist mobs didn't succeed in making it in the double-digit scores (Jean-Marie Le Pen's FN hit 6% and Bruno Megret's MN hit 3.4%), the so-called sovereignty trend got galvanized: the de Villiers/Pasqua duo, nicknamed ''Laurel and Hardy'' hit an impressive 12.8% --better than mainstream, Gaullist RPR party's 12.4%-- while parochial Chasse, Pêche et Traditions reaped about 6%. In Spain, rightist Jose-Maria Aznar (Premier) seems to have benefitted from his country's high-profile in the NATO campaign (a ''Jose Solana effect''). In Belgium, I suspect there'll be a tripartite coalition (note that Belgians voted simultaneously for three different suffrages: the legislature [ie renewal of Parliament], the regions [Flemish/Walloon/Brussels], and the European Parliament). Despite the rise of extreme-right Vlaams Blok in the Flanders (about 30% in Antwerp, 20% in Ghent,...), the Flemish Vlaamse Raad will likely agree on a VLD-SP-Agalev coalition, that is an alliance of rightist free-marketeers, leftist welfarists, and ecologists. In French-speaking Wallonia, there'll likely be a symetrical composite: PS-PRL/FDF/MCC-Ecolo... So, all in all, we'll end up with a 6-party government (3 Flemish and 3 francophone). Regards, Gustave.