Macron offends Ukraine and Bulgaria
In an interview with the magazine Valeurs Actuelles, which is seen as a far-right publication, French President Emmanuel Macron said he preferred legal migrants from Guinea or Ivory Coast to "clandestine networks of Bulgarians and Ukrainians". Kiev and Sofia have reacted with fury and summoned the French ambassadors. Bulgarian media are also incensed.
France's president a modern colonialist?
France is returning to its colonialist-imperialist tradition, Club Z suspects:
“France has no deep connection with Central and Eastern Europe. Its colonial past, its history of friendship and enmity, played out in Western Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa. France allowed the EU to expand eastwards, but never enjoyed the new format of European unity. Macron's words, which we are commenting on here, are a testimony to France's return to its traditional geopolitical instincts at a time when superpower politics and the struggle for spheres of influence are making a comeback.”
Indiscriminatory denigration
Macron's statements don't stand up to the facts, e-vestnik explains:
“There are certainly a few pickpockets from Bulgaria in France, but unlike in Sofia, they are quickly put out of business. The Bulgarians' criminal networks consist of a few fraudsters who skim credit cards, but they're all caught sooner or later. Bulgarian immigrants are usually as quiet and deep as water. They don't form communities like the Ukrainians and Russians do. There is no Bulgarian mafia abroad. Even the Bulgarian prostitutes work for foreign pimps. ... To portray the Bulgarians as criminals and refer to them as gangs is a deliberate and open display of xenophobia aimed at denigrating Bulgarian immigrants across the board.”