TCS Daily - The Struggle for 'Open Europe'

TCS Daily - The Struggle for 'Open Europe'

The French, it seems, have finally found a cause for which they are willing to go to war. Unfortunately, in this fight, victory equals defeat.

I'm not referring to the pathetic display of pseudo-revolutionary nostalgia staged for the last several weeks in France by thousands of student demonstrators, fellow-traveling union-activists and assorted troublemakers. They have succeeded -- with this week's decision by French leaders to scrap an exceedingly minor labor market reform package -- in not only subverting the democratic process (the legislation had been passed by the parliament) but also hamstringing yet again the sluggish French economy.

They were fighting for an illusion: the idea that a job -- any job, even the first one you get out of college -- should be guaranteed for life.