French vote dramatises Europe`s lurch to right

The shock first-round result of France`s presidential election on Sunday has dramatised a swing to the right across Western Europe, fuelled by voter fears about crime, immigration and insecurity.

The vote, in which extreme rightist Jean-Marie Le Pen beat Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place, means conservative President Jacques Chirac is almost certain to win re-election in two weeks` time and the centre-right seems well placed to follow that up by recapturing parliament in June.

But it could well tarnish France`s international image as the self-proclaimed homeland of human rights.

It was the latest in a series of blows to the European left that began in Italy last year, spread to Denmark and Portugal and could engulf the Netherlands and Germany next.

A natural swing of the political pendulum against incumbent centre-left governments in an economic slowdown may have been amplified by a heightened sense of insecurity since the September 11 attacks on the United States, analysts say.

Both Chirac and Le Pen made insecurity the number one issue in a lacklustre French campaign. A massacre by a deranged gunman during a suburban Paris council meeting and a wave of anti-Semitic attacks linked to Middle East violence appear to have scared many voters into voting for the right.

The French vote pointed to other common features of recent European elections - sinking turnout, protest votes for far-right or xenophobic groups and an apparent working-class backlash against globalisation and European integration.

It also highlighted the way in which opinion surveys have frequently underestimated the far-right across Europe, perhaps because voters are reluctant to tell pollsters they will vote for parties often treated as pariahs by the media.

Le Pen, a former paratroop officer, played on fears of rising crime, Muslim immigration from North Africa and a loss of national identity due to globalisation and the European Union.

Exit polls suggested he won the most working-class votes, while Communist leader Robert Hue scored a mere 3.5 per cent.

Le Pen`s unprecedented score of around 17 per cent, added to the roughly 2.5 per cent won by breakaway far-rightist Bruno Megret, means the extreme-right won almost one vote in five on a record low turnout for a presidential election.

It was ironic that the far-right should make such gains in France, which was among the most outspoken European advocates of a political boycott of Austria in 2000 after Joerg Haider`s hard-right Freedom Party joined a government coalition with the conservative People`s Party of Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder must be quaking in his boots after a regional vote in eastern Germany on Sunday closely mirrored the French earthquake.

In the poll in the state of Saxony-Anhalt - the last before a September general election, Schroeder`s Social Democrats lost a stunning 16 percentage points while the opposition centre-right Christian Democrats regained almost as much.

In the Netherlands, where a left-liberal government resigned last week over a 1995 massacre in Bosnia, opinion polls show a rightist anti-immigration populist, Pim Fortuyn, is set to shake up the political landscape and probably help the right back to power in a May 15 general election.

With last month`s centre-right victory in Portugal, the centre-left lost its majority among the 15 European Union governments after five years of dominance.

Le Pen`s surge also echoed the rise of the xenophobic, Euro-sceptical Northern League and the post-fascist National Alliance in Italy, junior coalition partners in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi`s government.

In Denmark, gains by the anti-immigration Danish People`s Party helped tip the balance last year and eclipse the Social Democrats in Copenhagen for the first time since the 1920s.