Marco Respinti writes from Milan. He is a senior fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, and an independent cultural journalist, essayst, lecturer, translator, and scholar on Anglo-American conservative thought.
Recent Articles by Marco Respinti
Marine Le Pen succeeded by 'breaching into the Left'
On Sunday, Emmanuel Macron won the first round of the French presidential elections and is the odds-on favorite to become le president de la République. However, under French law, a candidate takes up residence in Élysée Palace only after winning an absolute majority of popular votes; if no candidate reaches that threshold in the first round, the two most popular candidates go on to a second ballot in two weeks.
Macron has been able to beat the candidate-to-be-beaten, Marine Le Pen, by two percent of the vote. But the Le Pen is the real political winner of the competition, even if she fails to get the majority of votes on May 7. She took a party of the “far-Right” and successfully appealed to the Left.
Le Pen has been the leader of National Front (FN) since 2011, after she succeeded in wrestling its leadership out of the hands of her own father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded it in 1972 as a neo-fascist party of sorts. He had previously anointed her as his successor, but Marine saw that her father’s reputation limited her ambitions, so she joined in the chorus of those calling him an extremist and anti-Semite. (Such...
Temporary jobs put young Europeans' dreams permanently on hold
Temporary employment is permanent in Europe, especially for the young.
A recent article by Liz Alderman for the New York Times rips the veil on an increasingly worrisome trend that, given the general economic landscape, seems to be here to stay.
Her article paints a picture of deep pain and uncertainty: Alessandra Sisco, an Italian, is a medical doctor who treats patients for cancer – but only on separate contracts that last three months each. Charles Terraz from Lyon, France, has a master’s degree in human resources and is just one of that 80 percent of new hires that in his country can’t get a permanent job. Joost Minaar, a Dutch scientist, has survived on an endless stream of one-year-long renewable contracts abroad.
The main reason young people cannot find full-time, gainful employment has been known nearly as long as the problem has been ingrained in the European economic culture: artificially high wages and benefits for workers, inflexible labor regulations, steep taxes on profits and productivity, and an outlook that generally discourages entrepreneurship. Employing someone for a temporary job is less onerous for an employer, even if this means doing without the most skilled labor for a given position.
What’s...
