After the election is before the election. Even if France’s head of state Emmanuel Macron kept his challenger Marine Le Pen at a distance in the first round of the presidential election, Europe cannot yet breathe a sigh of relief. A head-to-head race between the two candidates threatens in the decisive runoff election in two weeks. The danger that the right-wing populist will end up in the Elysée Palace is all too real.
For the EU and NATO, a President Le Pen would be a catastrophe. The politician has moderated her rhetoric in recent years in order to appeal to a broader range of voters. It is now leaving hatred of Islam to its even more radical competitors, and it has also given up the fight against the euro.
But their positions remain highly dangerous. She wants to tear down several cornerstones of the European order. She rejects Franco-German cooperation as well as borderless Europe. She also wants to remove the only remaining EU military power from NATO’s command structures.
block of preventers
Anyone who thinks that such a shock would be good for the EU has already forgotten Donald Trump’s lesson. In Brussels, the memory of the former disrupter-in-chief in the White House is still fresh.
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It is feared that Le Pen, like Trump, would paralyze the international structures of the West for years. The first thing that would probably collapse was the united front against Russia in the Ukraine war. Le Pen has never hidden her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, even though she recently condemned his war of aggression.
The blockade by the EU would probably intensify. Together with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Polish PiS government, which has been torpedoing European projects for years, Le Pen could form a powerful block of obstructors. Orbán also feels freshly strengthened by his recent election victory.
The elections in France, Hungary and Serbia show that the problem of right-wing nationalist parties in Europe is by no means over. No wonder Luxembourg’s foreign minister and super-European Jean Asselborn is “very concerned”. Le Pen would put the EU “on a completely different track,” he says.
So far, the EU has met the challenge posed by the nationalists to some extent. It also survived the Brexit test relatively unscathed because Great Britain was already on the periphery. It would be different, however, if France, one of the engines of the European project, failed.
More: This is how Europe reacted to the French election.