"The situation will be worse and worse. In the coming years the unemployment will explode even more because of euro and free-exchange model which are imposed by the European Union in Brussels," Bernard Monot, a member of the European Parliament from Marine Le Pen's National Front, said.
The European Union faces a surge in jobless rates that threatens to undermine its economy in the long run. Around 27 million are out of jobs in the 28-nation union, including 21 million in the 19-member Eurozone. Six million of them are in France, according to the National Front's chief economist.
Monot said the EU currency, the euro, was partly to blame. "If we take for example the United Kingdom, they have less unemployment, less economic problems, because they are out of Eurozone," he claimed.
He accused European ultra-liberals of forcing a free-exchange regime on the Eurozone and EU countries, which he said is detrimental to their economies. "So euro and ultra-liberals free-exchange model are two things that deteriorate the situation in the Eurozone," the economist summed up.
Le Pen's National Front, which is a populist anti-EU party that advocates economic protectionism, came out on top with 25 percent of votes during the 2014 national election for the European parliament.
France's vote for the Euroskeptic party underscored the growing disenchantment with the way Brussels has been running the eurozone's economy.
To address this and other concerns, EU central bankers and economists have been meeting in Portugal for two days since last Sunday, although they stopped short of offering a remedy for the EU's high jobless figures.
Brussels must give EU economies some policy leeway and allow for minimal protectionism to increase their competitiveness and curb high jobless rates, the French National Front’s European affairs adviser said.
EU’s statistics agency Eurostat estimates that almost 24 million people, or 9.8 percent, were unemployed in the European Union in March 2015, of whom 18 million were in the euro area.
Marine Le Pen’s EU adviser Ludovic de Danne told Sputnik that the main problem was that EU economies were “lacking oxygen in the European Union.”
“The solution for this problem for each country of the European Union, including France, is to gain its sovereignty back, get out of the European Union, rather than being submitted by the European Union Commission,” he stressed.
De Danne, whose right-wing party has a history of opposing the Brussels-led union, believes that each country in the 28-nation bloc would be better off on their own. “We should take care of our national economies rather than giving money to European Union and being controlled by the EU,” he said.
The lawmaker said EU’s ultra-liberal market policies were hurting its economy as it found hard to compete against markets with protective mechanisms in place – the United States, China, and the BRICS emerging economies.
He added an unfair amount of taxes forced young Europeans to search for jobs abroad. “Here we have a problem of human resources, human brains which have to go to work abroad, which is very damaging,” de Danne said.
On Monday, EU central bankers and economists met in Portugal’s resort town of Sintra to address EU’s economic woes, specifically its long-term unemployment. Despite a consensus to urgently remove all barriers to employment in the Eurozone, economists came up with too few practical ideas on how this could be achieved.
