French President Emmanuel Macron Faces Run-Off With Right-Wing Candidate Marine Le Pen
April 20, 2022—This Sunday’s French election happens in the midst of various crises. For one, while most of Europe has loosened Covid-related restrictions, the pandemic and its economic damage are still present. At the same time the continent is dealing with the biggest war it’s seen since the 1990s when Yugoslavia imploded.
In that regard, the two candidates for the top job of the French government couldn’t be more different. On one side is Emmanuel Macron, the incumbent president who at the age of 44 has become the heir-apparent to Germany’s Angela Merkel for leading European diplomacy. (Merkel retired at the end of 2021, making way for a new German leadership.)
On the other side is Marine Le Pen, a 53-year old right-wing politician is on her third attempt to reach the French presidency.
Le Pen said she would replace Macron’s style of “open and talkative diplomacy” with “silent and secret” diplomacy.
4/13/2022 PRESS CONFERENCE
Le Pen’s Views on French Foreign Policy
What makes Le Pen “right-wing?” For one, she openly talks about leaving the European Union. What’s more, the 2022 election gives that talk power. As the Financial Times noted today, she has a chance of “delivering a nationalist body blow to western liberal democracy akin” to the Brexit breakup in 2020.
Second, Le Pen proposes to remove France from NATO. At a recent press conference on foreign policy, Le Pen said she would replace Macron’s style of “open and talkative diplomacy” with “silent” and “secret” diplomacy. Furthermore, she would put bilateral relations ahead of multilateral ones, such as the dealings within the EU.
Finally, according to several news reports, including one in El Mundo, Le Pen wants to form closer ties between France and Russia. (That’s assuming Russia’s war against Ukraine ends.)
“After the war in Ukraine, I will speak out for a rapprochement between Russia and NATO, which is also in the interest of the United States,” the news site quoted Le Pen as saying.
With France First, What Happens To Europe?
Of course Le Pen cut back her pro-Russian rhetoric since the war in Ukraine started. But she isn’t strengthening her relationship with the West in light of Russia’s aggression. She still shows herself as a critic of both NATO and the EU in the run up to the war.
What’s more, she’s suggested in the past that France should leave the European Union just like the UK did. Along with that, she would drastically change the long-standing Franco-German partnership standing at the center of the EU.
In her own words at an April 13 press conference, Le Pen’s promised to the people is a “national interest” style of leadership. At home, that means a preference for giving jobs, housing and welfare to the French, news reports in The Guardian noted.
Family Baggage
Le Pen also has to deal with baggage from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. And that is pretty heavy baggage. The elder Le Pen is the former president of the National Front (now called National Rally since Marine changed the name). He has fined and been convicted by French courts for downplaying the Holocaust, The Guardian reported in 2016.
In his time in the limelight he was even referred by his opponents as “The Devil of the Republic.” Yet he never won the presidency. Notably, Marine adopted strong stands against the Islamic headscarf, an area of contention between her and Macron, France 24 reported this week.
Today’s Debate And Sunday’s Election
That being said Marine Le Pen has decent chances in the 2022 election.
Macron is the favorite. But he’s is a weaker position than in 2017. Remember that just a few years ago the “yellow vest” protest movement shaked the country, especially the city of Paris. More recently the president has been criticized for his changes to pension and tax laws in the country.
At the same time that he is attacked inside of France, Macron has become one of the most important western leaders in the world. He was one of the first to talk directly to Russia’s Vladimir Putin directly since the war started, trying to talk peace. Furthermore, Macron is seen as a bridge between Europe and the United States.
The rise of populism in France is a warning sign for other European leaders. They are trying to understand how a figure like Le Pen has risen so much in the polls.
Face of the West
With all the jokes we make about the French always losing wars, they don’t apply in this case. Macron has been probably the face of the west outside of Ukraine since the war started, for good and ill.
He beat Marine Le Pen in the previous election (by a wide margin too) and in the first round of the current one, with most parties calling for their members to vote for him on Sunday.
And despite high inflation everywhere, the economy is an asset. (Editor’s note: For Macron, the economy is stronger than many European neighbors; it rebounded by nearly 7 percent in 2021; unemployment is at a 13-year low.)
Editor’s Note: Macron, notably, addressed populist sentiment in 2019. Facing an uncertain future in the wake of the United Kingdom’s Brexit dilemma and the rise of nationalist politics in Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron published a letter to EU citizens that outlined a “roadmap for European renewal.”
A Close Race
Still the race is looking closer than it did by the start of the year, where he had about 90 percent chance to win the election. According to Five Thirty Eight’s poll analysis he has a 75 percent chance of winning, but that’s enough to make the rest of us scared. After all, it’s about the same chance a soccer player has of missing a Penalty shot. And Europeans know how scary a penalty shootout can be.
In any case, we’ll know who the president will be by Monday, and that could change the whole map for both NATO and the EU, so we could be talking about a whole different continent by May. But even if Macron wins, this election shows that European elites and parties in the center need to be careful. The rise of populism in France is a warning sign for other European leaders. They are trying to understand how a figure like Le Pen has risen so much in the polls.
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