French Prime Minister François Bayrou addresses members of parliament before a non-confidence vote on September 08, 2025 in Paris, France. (Photo by Remon Haazen/Getty Images)
Getty Images
A crack-up in Europe is coming. In a remarkable speech delivered to the National Assembly before it voted to overthrow his government, French prime minister Francois Bayrou declared that while members have the power to change governments because they don’t want to deal with difficult financial problems, “You do not have the power to erase reality. Reality will remain relentless….”
The outgoing French prime minister was right about France’s ugly reality—a reality that is true for most of Europe. The continent and Britain are facing a profound crisis and malaise of a kind that’s unprecedented since World War II.
Europe’s establishment parties have failed to deliver dynamic economies in which entrepreneurship can flourish and people feel they can rise up. Individual aspirations and, indeed, the culture have been suffocated by massive and ultimately unaffordable welfare states and extensive regulations that deaden initiative. The corruption of education by acidic far-left ideas is even worse than what we’ve experienced in the U.S.
There is no real faith in a better future; just go and get what you can now.
Smothering rules and procedures make a dynamic high-tech sector impossible. Israel, with its population of 9 million, is a bigger factor in high tech than the European Union with its population of more than 440 million.
With a few exceptions, such as Poland, European governments piled on growth-killing taxes. Some did reduce corporate taxes yet smothered those incentives with higher levies elsewhere. Payrolls taxes are killers, far higher than in the U.S., where the rate is 15.3%—and that applies only up to certain level of income. In France, amazingly, the rate can be more than 60%. The value added tax (VAT), a form of super sales tax, averages almost 22% in the European Union. The average sales tax in the U.S. is around 5%.
Like lemmings, many governments went all in on vastly expensive so-called renewable energy programs that substantially raised energy costs and ignored the actual environmental harm these sources inflict.
The intellectual bankruptcy of Europe’s political class has been astounding as it has ignored the wishes of its voters. A prime example is massive immigration. Most Europeans don’t want it, yet their governments still do little about it. In fact, the political elites seemed to have lost faith in traditional Western values. Effective assimilation programs for immigrants have been virtually nonexistent. Police don’t even enforce the law in various areas.
Government debt in most countries has exploded. Now with the security threat of Russia and U.S. pressure, defense budgets are rising. But where’s the money to come from?
Europe’s status quo is now untenable. The coming crack-up could manifest itself in coming elections. With stagnant, overtaxed, overregulated and demoralized economies, far-left and far-right parties are rising up on a scale not seen since the years before the Second World War. Most of them share anti-American sentiments. Putin is licking his chops.
The crack-up could also be precipitated by a severe financial crisis during which certain governments, such as France, could no longer sell their bonds.
The possible unraveling of Europe is dreadful for our own future security. Two world wars attest to the need for a healthy, democratic Europe.