Reason Magazine - Topics > European Union

• Crown Heights, France; Caracas, Bolivia
  Rioting erupted last night in the "crime-ridden" French district of Villiers-le-Bel, located some 20 miles from Paris, after a police car collided with a stolen moped piloted by a local teenager, killing him and his passenger. What seemed initially to be an unfortunate accident—witnesses said the boys were travelling "'at very high speed' when it cut across the path of the police car"—ended in Yankel Rosenbaum territory, with rioting locals torching cars and hurling Molotov cocktails at police responding to the call. The BBC has more:
  

  Police said 21 officers were injured in the rioting in the northern suburbs of Villiers-le-Bel and Arnouville. A prosecutor has ordered an internal police inquiry into possible manslaughter and "non-assistance to persons in danger". The violence - reminiscent of riots in 2005 - lasted for more than six hours.
  
  [...]
  
  A brother of one of the dead teenagers, Omar Sehhouli, said the rioting "was not violence but an expression of rage".

  In Bolivia's political capital of Sucre, protesters rioted after allies of President Evo Morales, in a nod to the December 2 vote in Caracas, passed a preliminary bill through parliament that would undo constitutional limits on presidential re-election. It still must be approved by referendum, which a Morales spokesman said is forthcoming, though declined to give a specific date. From Bloomberg:

  Two anti- government demonstrators and a police officer were killed in the past two days, Efe said, adding that calm was restored after the police yesterday withdrew from Sucre's streets.

  The riots began Nov. 24, when members of the government- controlled assembly barred opposition delegates and passed the draft version without having read its content, Efe said. One protester remains in a coma and several others suffered serious injuries, Efe said, citing medical reports.

  Earlier today, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement expressing concern over the state of democracy and human rights in Bolivia.
  

• Fogh More Years
  Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, author of the libertarian tract From Welfare State to Minimal State, was reelected to a third straight term as Denmark's prime minister, which will be the longest consecutive run of a center-right government in modern Danish history. It appears that Naser Khader, the Syrian-born leader of the New Alliance party, who bravely defended the rights of Jyllands-Posten to offend radical Muslims, will likely support the ruling coalition, which includes Rasmussen's Liberal Party (Venstre), the Conservatives and the anti-immigration Danish People's Party. It's a somewhat disappointing showing for Khader's new party—the New Alliance managed five seats in parliament, significantly lower than previous poll predictions—who campaigned a pro-immigration, tax-cutting platform (Khader proposed lowering the top income tax from 63 percent to 40 percent). In the first election since the "cartoon crisis," Pia Kjærsgaard's anti-immigration, pro-welfare state Danish People's Party increased their representation in Parliament by a single seat, garnering 13.8 percent of the vote, the party's highest total since its 1998 electoral debut.
  
  The Economistleads today with a story on Denmark, playing up the immigration and Danish People's Party angle (headline: "Fear of Foreigners"), but conceded that "in the end...Danes are more concerned about welfare than immigrants, although the two issues are often mixed in voters' minds." But Europe as a whole, The Economist argues, is experiencing a wave of xenophobia unprecedented in the post-war period:
  Where xenophobic parties are not flourishing it is sometimes because centre-right parties-and even some others-have taken up their themes. Nicolas Sarkozy, who won the presidency of France earlier in the year, imitated the policies of the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen over law-and-order and immigration. He also promised to oppose Turkish membership of the EU. A block on further EU enlargement may be one consequence Europe's worries about foreigners.
  
  Back in Denmark, Mr Rasmussen's razor-thin majority may be more or less dependent on the DPP. Denmark has a consensus-based tradition, so he may have the option of fishing for votes among a left-wing party instead, and from Mr Khader's small party. In any case Mr Rasmussen may be thinking of moving on soon, perhaps to a European post. Given the prevailing anxiety about foreigners in the midst, he would find familiar themes of xenophobia to occupy his time, whether in Brussels or in Copenhagen.
  
  For those who speak a Scandinavian language, I made a similar case when interviewed by the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen last week, which can be read here.
• Achtung: Your Commute is Killing the Planet
  Via the International Herald Tribune, another stroke of regulatory genius from the folks in Brussels, the same people who brought mind-boggling horticultural rules on banana curvature to the continent's green grocers:

  The European Parliament proposed last Wednesday that car advertisements in the European Union carry tobacco-style labels, warning of the environmental impact they cause. Under the plan, 20 percent of the space or time of any auto ad would have to be set aside for information on a car's fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, cited as a contributor to global climate change.

  As could be expected from the bureaucrat-heavy EU, such a measure (proposed by the European Parliament and only enforceable by the European Commission) is likely to languish in some obscure committee. The measure was meant, says EU environment commissioner Stavros Dimas, as "a warning shot across the bow." The auto industry is taking the hint:

  Still, automakers and their ad agencies are taking the matter seriously, for fear that cars might go the way of tobacco or junk food. Cigarette advertising has been almost entirely stubbed out across Europe, and several countries have placed restrictions on ads for unhealthy fare.
  
  Automakers account for more than €6 billion, or $8.6 billion, a year in annual ad spending in Western Europe, according to the European Association of Communications Agencies, a trade organization based in Brussels for the marketing industry. Lobbyists argue that some of that could dry up, hurtingcarmakers, ad agencies and media owners, if marketers were required to place a prominent environmental warning in their ads.

  Full story here.

• Xenophobes Win, Homophobes Lose
  

  Good news and bad news from Europe this weekend. First, the good news from Poland, where the free-market Civic Platform, led by Donald Tusk, received 41 percent of the vote in Sunday's general election. The outgoing government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski—co-founder of the Euroskeptic, hyper-nationalist, homophobic Law and Justice Party—won't be missed by many in Brussels (or, it seems, among Poland's young, urban voters). Tusk promised that, if elected, his party would push for a 15 percent flat tax on both corporate and individual income and ease restrictions on the hiring and firing of employees. For all of Law and Justice's reprehensible policies (like that delightful suggestion that gays should not be allowed teaching positions), I'll give them a some—but not much—credit for its aggressive lustration policies, aimed at purging Polish politics of collaborators with the Soviet puppet government. The right idea, poorly executed.
  
  And now for the bad news: In Switzerland, the anti-immigration SVP trounced the oppo