Re: That they don't get along with AGIR indicates there are differences. The author lumps them together. How much support does AGIR actually have?
AGIR has negligible support. It's basically Wallonia's would-be Vlaams Blok, that is, a retaliatory political faction whose purpose is to foster an "independent" Wallonia in front of an independent Flanders... But Wallonia's first political force still is the Socialist Party and the last European election polls on June 13, 1999 showed that if there's any political shift to be accounted for it's the rise of Ecolo, Wallonia's Green party.
As for the Front National, it's rather an obsolete agenda: its leader, Dr Daniel Féret, still longs for the Belgique de grand-papa, that is, your grandpa's Belgium. The problem is that for a growing majority of Flemings, the very concept of "Belgium" has become an historical quaintness... The king, the queen, the ostentatious parades of Kronprinz Philippe and his fiancée Mathilde don't get more than a lukewarm welcome, even among French-speaking Belgians who have less interest in splitting the country.
All in all, the key issue remains the so-called "integration" of immigrants and European citizens with an alien background. It's a problem of social mobility that pervades Europe's social fabric far beyond the native/alien divide --it's a class warfare altogether.
I think that it partly comes from European elites' anachronistic worldview: they still apprehend the world as it was in 1950... Take the New Economy paradigm for instance: it's a well-known fact that, in the US, the Internet and, previously, the whole software/IT industry bred an entire new generation of entrepreneurs and managers who got propelled into upper bourgeoisie overnight. Actually, it merely shows the high perviousness of the American social fabric towards new entrants and outsiders.
Hence the AOL/TimeWarner bombshell, that is, the takeover of an old, venerable corporate icon like TimeWarner by a business parvenu like Steve Case. In Europe, nobody would ever think of Bertelsmann taken over by, say, French portal Infonie. Same with Amazon.com: Jeff Bezos, a former PizzaHut manager, hijacking the whole US bookstore business! Meanwhile, French editors must comply by the "Prix Unique" regulation.... If a French would-be Jeff Bezos were ever to launch a similar venture in France dozens of "intellectuals", members of the Académie Française and freaked-out booksellers would squall the hell out of it!
That's why the European Internet, instead of being a new level playing field for 20-something whizz-kids, was pathetically turned into the corporate Old Guard's plaything. Here's a case study, as reported in Business Week, European edition / July 31, 2000:
Arnault's Shaky E-empire
Europ@web isn't panning out. What will the luxury mogul do next?
When luxury king Bernard Arnault set up Europe's biggest Internet investment fund last summer, he looked ready to build a powerful empire in cyberspace. By taking stakes in dozens of Web startups, the French tycoon planned to create an integrated group of companies called Europ@web that would rival foreign giants such as Softbank and CMGI Inc. But now, those dreams look as flat as a day-old glass of Moët & Chandon champagne. Several key Europ@web ventures have failed to meet expectations. In late June, Arnault pulled the plug on a planned listing of Europ@web, saying he was considering "strategic alternatives".
[...]Arnault's dilemma underscores how dramatically Europe's Internet landscape has changed in the past few months. As in the U.S., tumbling e-stock prices have dimmed the prospects of Web startups. Over the next few months, analysts say, many such companies will shut down or be snatched up by stronger players.
But unlike the U.S., where onetime startups such as America Online Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. became market leaders, Europe's Internet giants are turning out to be telephone companies. Former monopolies such as Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom run the Continent's dominant Internet service providers (ISPs), while mobile operators such as Vodaphone AirTouch PLC are fast cornering the wireless-Web market. These heavyweights are shopping for smaller companies to expand their content and geographic reach. [snip]
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Such a corporate conservatism extends far beyond the business world, to politics, culture, race relations, sports, whatever. And just as with live organisms, social sclerosis will prevent the body social from keeping up....
Gus. |
