Algemeen·NRC·23 okt

How France became ungovernable at home yet unstoppable in Brussels

There are better ways to vaunt the merits of your economic model than setting fire to your capital. But tell that to the French. In recent years protests have become such a fixture of national life it is hard to see when one set of manifestations ends and the next begins. Everyone from students to pensioners seems to walk about in a perennial huff. The political class is at war with itself, wondering if an unloved president will soon make way for a populist rabble-rouser. Bond vigilantes are giving a bloody nose to the over-indebted government in Paris, demanding ever-higher yields to finance its runaway budgets. The recent spate of violence gives the impression of a state at once bloated and overmatched. As always, the situation looks somewhat less dire from inside France than it does to outsiders. Still, who would want to emulate the policies of a place that seems so firmly on the skids?