If ever enacted, proposals by Marine Le Pen and the AfD leader, Alice Weidel, to hollow out EU institutions would be a continental act of self-harm<\/p>\n
Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, Marine\u00a0Le\u00a0Pen was in a predictably celebratory mood.\u00a0Britain\u2019s vote to leave the European Union, she told<\/a> one interviewer, was the first breach in the \u201cBrussels Wall\u201d. Ms Le Pen\u2019s Front National party was\u00a0at that point committed to taking France down\u00a0the\u00a0same path, given the chance. But as the UK\u2019s\u00a0self-inflicted economic wounds became a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe, the notion of\u00a0Frexit was put on ice.<\/p>\n Instead, Ms Le Pen now hopes to lead far-right allies\u00a0in hollowing out the EU from within. This month, both she and the leader of Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland, Alice Weidel, outlined their visions<\/a> of a\u00a0\u201cEurope of nations\u201d in which EU institutions would be stripped of both cash and power. Ms Weidel\u2019s \u201cnew deal for Europe\u201d would abolish elections to the European parliament, and seek German opt-outs in areas such as migration, defence and common borrowing. Ms Le Pen\u2019s party, now called National\u00a0Rally, proposes<\/a> slashing French contributions to the EU budget by 60% over a five-year\u00a0presidential term, and ending the role of Brussels\u00a0in proposing common policies for the 27\u00a0member states.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If ever enacted, proposals by Marine Le Pen and the AfD leader, Alice Weidel, to hollow out EU institutions would be a continental act of self-harm Following the Brexit referendum in 2016, Marine\u00a0Le\u00a0Pen was in a predictably celebratory mood.\u00a0Britain\u2019s vote to leave the European Union, she told one interviewer, was the first breach in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}