The people on France are not happy.

Police clash with pension demonstrators for second night in Paris.

Macron's leadership at risk amid tensions over pension plan.

While the people in Greece are feeling the same way, but for different reasons.

Greece sacks police chief after train tragedy protests.

It's not getting any better in France.

France ‘burning’ as violent pension reform protests cause fuel shortages, mass arrests.

I reckon that Macron went the totally wrong way about implementing his decision.

We are coming into the "Strike and riot" season in France. Each year they choose a different topic and for the next six months they strike and riot.

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

More friction?

France-Germany tensions overshadow EU leaders' summit.

A burgeoning row between France and Germany fired by differences over nuclear energy and combustion engines threatened to spill over into a gathering of the 27 European Union leaders Thursday.

Existing strains between the European Union's two biggest players after Berlin upset some of its partners by blocking -- at the last minute -- a landmark deal to prohibit new sales of fossil fuel cars from 2035.

The ban is key to Brussels' ambitious plan to become a "climate neutral" economy by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.

In an unprecedented action this month, Germany intervened after the car ban had already been approved under the EU legislative process. It demanded that Brussels provide assurances the law would allow the sales of new cars with combustion engines that run on synthetic fuels.

While the last-minute block frustrated many EU capitals, Paris had in turn already irked Berlin by insisting on giving nuclear energy a starring role in European plans to produce more green technology in Europe....

Not a good look and certainly not good for the future economically.

Spain clean energy case shakes confidence in EU investment.

Renewable energy investors who lost subsidies promised by Spain are heading to a London court to try to claw back $125 million from the government — a decadelong dispute with ramifications for clean energy financing across the European Union.

The outcome will be closely watched by investors after the U.S. passed a new law offering incentives for homegrown green technology. Experts say the Inflation Reduction Act is already drawing clean energy investment away from EU countries like Spain, leaving the 27-nation bloc much less competitive globally.....

More friction?

France-Germany tensions overshadow EU leaders' summit.

Yes, more friction!!!

And it is absolutely necessary to discuss these things instead of covering them up with the typical ideological babble. First, bans and technology requirements are botch. The desired goal of CO2 savings is better and much cheaper achieved through taxation, emission certificates, price incentives, etc. In the past, it was the UK government who insisted on favoring liberal market principles over French-type state dirigisme. Unfortunately, we now lack the British corrective.
Then there is an extremely weak German chancellor who is unable to resolve internal political conflicts within his governing coalition. Instead, he watches passively as his "dwarfs" take their conflicts to the EU level and annoy 26 other governments. German politics 2023 - embarrassing.
Second, it is also not helpful from the German side to constantly ignore the French approach to consider nuclear energy as a low-CO2 technology. For many years now they are annoying the French, overlooking the topic in pique... pointing fingers pityingly at French nuclear power plants and ugh.... those dirty, nasty, obsolete technology... when at the same time Germany shuts down the previously most reliable NPPs on earth ("Konvoi"-type: 1300...1400 MW each) and instead urgently buys as much coal as possible from Australia, South Africa, Colombia... Crazy.
Energy policy in the EU isn't a matter of the EU commission but for the individual states. And the loudest opponents of nuclear energy in Europe, next to Germany, are the freeloaders Luxembourg and Austria, who simply import their electricity needs. This has to be discussed and the smaller EU states should unite and oppose unrealistic German energy policy, which unfortunately is also regularly repeated by the EU Commission (whose President, von der Leyen, is a German too).