Tomorrow, the French will elect their president in a contest between incumbent centrist Emanuel Macron and far-right leader Marine le Pen. While opinion polls predict a narrow victory for Macron, many expect the election to be a nail-biting finale for France as well as for the rest of Europe.
The first round of elections saw the former ruling parties suffering humiliating defeats. Candidates from both the Socialist Party and Les Republicains received less than five per cent of the votes, confirming the steady decline of traditional parties in many EU member states.
On the other hand, the far-right continues to make significant gains in France as in other parts of Europe.
The Ukraine war will probably dent the prospects of Le Pen being elected as her endorsement of Putin in the last few years will probably work against her. Macron’s most significant risk is of an increase in voter absenteeism, even if all centre and left parties have asked their supporters to back the outgoing president.
When Macron urged voters to cast their votes in the second round, he argued: “I do not want a France which, having left Europe, would have the international populists and xenophobes as its only allies. That is not us. I want a France faithful to humanism, to the spirit of enlightenment.”
Like former German chancellor Angela Merkel, Macron is for a more united Europe with an ambition for creating European strategic autonomy and defence.
While abandoning her plans of exiting the eurozone and the EU, Le Pen wants to cut France’s contribution to the EU and give primacy to French national law over the EU’s laws.
She proclaimed herself a “Gaullist”, after the wartime leader and founding president of the Fifth French Republic. Like De Gaulle, Le Pen, if elected, would pull France out of NATO’s integrated command. The dramatic changes in political thinking in the EU due to the Ukraine war make Le Pen’s defence strategies unpopular – 67 per cent of the French do not believe France should leave NATO.
Still, Le Pen has raised her popularity among the masses by proposing some populist measures, including reducing the minimum requirement age to 60 and cutting VAT on energy to 5.5 per cent. Her concern for domestic issues, especially rising inflation, explains why she did so well in the first round of voting.
Le Pen’s new focus on protectionism and domestic problems has also won her substantial support in rural areas.
Macron’s strong foreign policy credentials and his leadership in European affairs could work in his favour in this difficult geopolitical phase of European politics. But while he may be the favourite to win the presidency for a second time, the rise of right-wing parties in Europe remains a consistent concern to those who would like to see the European project succeed and its values prevail.
The future of European governance relies heavily on the outcome of the French elections.
At a time when the EU member states need to achieve cohesiveness in their policies against Russia, a victory for Le Pen could play a decisive role in reshaping political thinking in Brussels.
As the outcome of the Ukraine war remains shrouded in uncertainty, the EU needs political stability and cohesiveness to address the structural weaknesses that have dented the Union’s geopolitical clout in the last few decades.
The political decisions taken in France and Germany are likely to continue to shape EU politics for many more years.