Up All Night Europe!

Up All Night Europe!

By: Erreh Svaia

“My mission is to put France back on its feet. The priority is employment. Efforts have to be made, but those efforts must be made fairly.”

Francois Hollande

Up All Night, Sleep All Day, sang the classic 1990 hard rock anthem by American band Slaughter, but Up All Night might be changing connotation these days, is not about hard rock or partying anymore, it's about fighting in the streets in France, it's about raising your fist and yell, is about restarting the fire that was ignited in Southern Europe a couple of years ago, it's the continuation in France of the social Spanish movements known as Indignados or the 15-M, it is called Nuit Debout in French, and now is including not only French and Spanish protesters it's including Italy, Belgium, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and the UK as the nation adding up to the protests taking place at night at Paris' Place de la République.

It is important to mention here first of all Democratic nature of the French, who used the elections to punish the government of Nicholas Sarkozy, at a time when the whole Southern Europe, from Portugal to Greece were taking the streets to protest against what was perceived as an austerity program unfairly imposed by the European Union, but in the specific case of France, a change in the government was not enough to mend the country troubled and stagnated economy, neither the Socialist Party, nor president Francois Hollande and his prime minister Manuel Vals were able to maneuver in order to avoid the crisis that affected the south of Europe, as years ago we were talking about France to be the potent detonator of new protests within the Euro Nation.

Anger detonated by the conjunction of two visible factors, the ongoing economic crisis that started in 2008 and the terrorists attacks of November 2015, the crisis affected directly employment, which the socialist government ironically tried to counterattack with a labor reform that focused on simplifying the hiring and the firing of employees in order to detonate employment, it was seen as a neoliberal policy which enraged the population, that along with the Authoritarian state of emergency set by the government made the proper conditions for social unrest.

Besides the exacerbated fear of terrorism and Islam, there has also been a feel that both the center (Sarkozy) and the left wing (Hollande) are perceived as not competent enough to get France out of stagnation, and coming with the right project of migrant integration (something that the Laborist Party in the UK have showed some light about solving with giving Muslims more representation), opening the door to the far right National Front party, whose main proposal might be the exclusion of Muslim population form the country, proposal that recalls the Nazis blaming the Jews for Germany economic crisis.

Nuit Debout is a potent detonator of social unrest in the south of Europe, very close to the heart of the Euro Zone, an echo of the legendary Occupy Movement or the ill-fated Arab Spring, Nuit Debout is a warning call for governments to consider new ways of attacking the not finished yet crisis, the social frustration and an ongoing process of integration that could bring young blood in the European system, considering that in France convolutes the radical ideas of economist Thomas Piketty, the progressive ideas of Emmanuel Macron, the fear tactics of the National Front, the anti-Austerity European fight of ex Greece finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and even the radical neochavista shadow of Spain's Podemos, who seem to be also taking part in the protests, Nuit Debout could become a new catalyst of anger in Europe and along extremism, could turn into more dramatic events considering the spotlight put in France these days with the upcoming UEFA EURO 2016 and the Tour de France.