When Emmanuel Macron warned, at the end of April, that “Europe can die,” few thought that the worst stab could come, shortly after, from Paris. The decision of the French president to call early legislative elections after the victory of the extreme right in the European elections on June 9 has caused deep vertigo not only in his country: the high probability that the eurosceptic National Regrouping (RN) of Marine Le Pen taking power also in France, forcing Macron into a complicated government of cohabitation, also makes a European Union very nervous, which in that case must prepare for a head-on clash with a country that until now it counted on as a pro-European ally. .
This is particularly complicated at a time when the far right is on the rise across Europe and already has several heads of government at its European summits, notably Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and the always difficult Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister who is now also set to take over the rotating presidency of the EU Council, starting next Monday. If the RN candidate, Jordan Bardella, succeeds in becoming prime minister, he will sit alongside Macron at meetings of EU heads of state and government, such as the one held this Thursday in Brussels. The ministers appointed by the far-right government would in the meantime represent France in the Council of Ministers, where European laws are adopted and their policies are coordinated.
Bardella’s arrival at Matignon, the residence of the French prime minister, will also have reverberations in Berlin: it would put additional pressure on the traditional Franco-German European engine, which is already quite seized up and could become even more bogged down. The German Social Democrat Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in whose country the ultra-right AfD party climbed to second place in the European elections, ahead of the SPD and its coalition partners, has already expressed his “concern about the elections in France”.
The far right has learned well the lesson of 2017, when the promise of leaving the euro was one of the main causes of Marine Le Pen’s defeat in the second round of the presidential elections. Since then, it has been very careful to talk about a Frexit, although part of Bardella’s new programme smacks of it, as various experts have pointed out. His Euroscepticism, reflected in Brussels in his membership in Identity and Democracy (ID), the most hardline anti-EU group in the European Parliament, where Bardella has renewed his seat, is now more discreet. As is the fact that the European flag is nowhere to be seen at RN campaign events.
But his sovereignty, his France first or “national preference” as he calls it, as well as several of his economic and political campaign promises, especially on migration, are a path to conflict with the European project, as is his traditional opposition to the Green Deal, whose laws he has almost systematically rejected in the European Parliament.
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The recent past of the RN, marked by a strong friendship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia – until shortly before the invasion of Ukraine, Le Pen never missed an opportunity to have her photo taken with the Russian president – is also causing deep concern, both in Brussels and in Paris. Bardella has assured that, if he were prime minister, he would not withdraw, in general terms, support for kyiv, although he has set as a “red line” Macron’s proposal to send French troops on the ground.
But statements by Le Pen on the same day that Macron travelled to Brussels to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have once again set off alarm bells: “The title of head of the army is an honorary title for the president, because it is the prime minister who has his hand on the purse,” recalled the woman who continues to pull all the strings in the RN on Thursday regarding the restrictions on Macron’s presidency that will involve a cohabitation government that will control the budget, potentially limiting the policies of the head of state, even if he remains the international face of France. “It is a very dangerous message that is being sent to the whole world,” the outgoing prime minister, Gabriel Attal, told Bardella in the last campaign debate on Thursday evening.
“If there is anyone who is rubbing their hands right now with everything that is happening [en Francia]”That’s Vladimir Putin,” the French Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, warned this week in another radio interview.
His figure could star in the first internal fight: Macron wanted to take advantage of the summit in Brussels to announce that he is France’s candidate to continue in the Commission, according to what has been announced The World. This is ahead of Bardella, who had made it clear that, if he takes office, he would want to be involved in the decision on the name of the European commissioner assigned to France. This would, in turn, give even more strength to the Eurosceptic wing if he sides with Meloni, who is already furious at feeling excluded from the distribution of the main posts in the European institutions to be decided at the extraordinary summit in Brussels.
A foreshadowing that, if the RN achieves its goal of electing a prime minister after July 7, not only will it be difficult to cohabit with an openly pro-European Macron. The relationship with Brussels also promises to be tense. And soon: among the “urgent” measures that candidate Jordan Bardella has promised since his first moments in government is a reduction of VAT from 20% to 5.5% on energy and fuel and a kind of Iberian energy exemption for France; things that, however, he cannot do unilaterally, but rather require a difficult unanimous agreement from the EU. The same goes for his promise to quickly reduce the French contribution to the EU budget by 2 billion. “It makes no sense that we ask for savings for everyone and rationalise the State accounts and that we do not do it with the EU,” argues Bardella.
The European Commission has so far remained discreetly in the background in the face of these proposals and those of the left-wing alliance of the New Popular Front (NFP), which also faces potential clashes with Brussels. But unlike the RN, no polls give this bloc the victory and its own members recognise that the main objective is not to win, but to prevent an absolute majority for the RN. In addition, it has within its ranks absolutely pro-European forces, such as the alliance of the Socialist Party and Plaza Pública, of the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, who from the beginning have imposed clarity on the NFP on issues such as support for Ukraine.
In any case, Brussels will be very attentive, say community sources. After all, the Commission is the guardian of the treaties and it would not be the first time that it opens an infringement file against a country for not respecting its letter and timing. Ask the friend of the RN, Viktor Orbán.
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