Marine Le Pen and the Golden Dawn

The leader of the Greek "Golden Dawn" political party was released from prison three days ago as his maximum prison detention limit was exhausted, probably just in time to watch the French communal elections on Sunday from his comfortable couch at home. It must have felt like an immense moral compensation for him and for all other Golden Dawn members in Greece as it must have offered great justification to their political cause and their vision for an individual-State defined Europe to see the outcome of the French local elections, which brought the sister party of Marine Le Pen's "Front National" to the second place of political choice in France. Though Marine Le Pen has distanced herself and her party from the Golden Dawn in the past there is more common ideological mass that unites the two than there is that separates them. Both stand against globalisation and both share common ideas about the immigration policy that should be pursued in Europe. Marine Le Pen probably perceives herself and her political movement as the more "refined" version of its Greek counterpart, and who would blame her, given the overall aesthetic performance of both parties by comparison. And while the international political arena thought that they have the means to control these kind of undesired political faults (just as a reminder - the Golden Dawn party was holistically accused to constitute an "organised crime" in Greece and thus its leaders were imprisoned) it remains to be seen how the reaction and what the measures will be that can be executed against Marine Le Pen and her party. And with the entire focus of Berlin and Brussels on the "Grexit" or "Grexident" the past few weeks there seems to be so much more that is shaking the common foundations in Europe besides the Greek problem, which has completely escaped the attention of the policy-makers in Europe. And when the earth trembles in Greece, you feel it all the way up to Italy, at best. But when the earth trembles in France, the magnitude is a lot bigger and a lot stronger and Berlin feels its windows breaking. It doesn't look like there is a quiet day for Angela Merkel or Francois Hollande in the cards in the forthcoming period. It is one crisis after the other and soon enough Greece may really look like a small grain in the bigger picture of issues facing Europe. Seems like rule no. 1 of strategic thinking...you solve one problem only by creating a bigger problem. Well done austerity!