France is experiencing heavy social turmoil. Trade unions that were thought to have lost their grip on the working class have shown very strong resilience and proved their capacity of mobilizing very important segments of society. Transportation systems are in shambles due to sporadic strikes. The electricity supply has also become tenuous due to strikes organized at nuclear power stations, which produce more than two-thirds of France's electricity. Gasoline has become scarce due to sporadic strikes by distributors.Street demonstrations have not ceased and the country lives in constant tension since the attempt to reform legislation concerning employment. France has very rigid employment legislation, mainly established in the aftermath of May 1968, which gave important rights to the working class.Over the years, these rights have turned the French employment market into a very rigid, structured market. It is extremely difficult to terminate an employee once they get a contract unless the whole society goes bankrupt or there is a very obvious professional fault. Employers became more reluctant to hire additional people and unemployment rates have always remained higher than in comparable economies like Germany or the U.K.Before current President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls, different governments have attempted to render employment contracts more flexible. Each time there has been a very strong social outcry and governments have caved in each time.This time, Hollande has made the choice to definitely reform this ossified system, to give some flexibility to the market and to create additional jobs. This has been received very badly by a large portion of his electorate and he is being accused to "do the job of the employers" by the trade unions and left movements.The French system of 35 working hours instead of 40 per week, which was heralded back in 1981 by then president François Mitterrand, did not really create additional jobs. The gains of May 1968, almost 50 years later, do not help the unemployed masses in France. Still, society and most political parties try to use yesterday's recipes for today's problems.It is not only in France that there is trouble. Great Britain, obviously a very important member state in the EU, is going to hold a referendum to remain in or quit the EU. This was also a problem in 1974, but today's problems evidently need more interpenetration between member states than isolation. Nonetheless, British Prime Minister David Cameron is taking the risk of totally devastating the EU's stability by holding a referendum, the result of which is unclear at best currently. Within the U.K., the Scottish National Party (SNP) has declared its will to stay in the EU even if England leaves, showing that the outcome of the referendum can have much deeper consequences within the U.K.In the U.S., a clown has succeeded to virtually get the Republican presidential nomination for the November election by using rhetoric sounding like that of well-known historic leaders of European fascist movements. There is no real and tangible governance program in the hands of Donald Trump, but by stirring xenophobic sentiments and insecurity among the population, he has been able to rally enough support to participate in the presidential election.Austria has seen an extreme right-wing politician lose its presidential election by a mere 31,000 votes.These are difficult times, because we are in the middle of a transitional period, the end of the Cold War and the bipolar world has not given birth to any real alternative system. Conventional political forces are disappearing and ideologies tend to evaporate. In such times, doctrinal views or plainly primitive sentiments take the place of more sophisticated ideologies and systems. References to a real or imagined past glory become useful for policymakers. This does not inspire much confidence in anyone for the near future. Democratic debate is more necessary than ever.