Greetings From Paris

Fa-Raon & Kléopatre from Le Bristol Hotel

This morning’s Le Figaro headline: “Migrants: Paris confrontee a la multiplication des campements.” It doesn’t take much command of French to get the picture that the words migrants, multiplication, and campments paint. Yes, it’s a mess. Anne Hidalgo is Paris’ ultra-liberal socialist mayor and is not up to the task of stemming the refugee horde. Paris now faces significant refugee encampments in the northern 18^th and 19^th arrondissements (districts) and even one in the inner-city 13^th arrondissement on Paris’ artsy left bank (our favorite).

In a Le Figaro sub-head: “Une jungle entre des murs” (a jungle between the walls), the paper outlines the takeover of an abandoned school flying a refugees welcome flag. The catastrophic problem I lay out for you here is a real time reflection of what is taking place all over the 26-country European Union.

Germany has announced that EU funds will be withheld from members who do not support binding refugee quotas. This line in the sand is going to result in significant internal discord among EU members. There are a number of initial dissenters against refugee quotas, including the Czech Republic, Denmark, Holland, and Hungary. Britain and Ireland, as well as Denmark, are not bound to the quota plan due to a previous agreement re their borders.