The day after the success of the extreme right in the first round of the French legislative elections, the European and international press highlighted on Monday the resounding “failure” of French President Emmanuel Macron, who was deemed responsible.
On Sunday, June 30, 2024, the National Rally (RN, far right) and its allies came out on top and obtained their best first-round electoral result in their history, with 33.14% of the vote and 10.6 million votes. Followed by the New Popular Front (NFP), with 28%, and Emmanuel Macron’s camp, with 20.8% of the vote. Thirty-nine RN candidates – including Marine Le Pen – and thirty-two NFP candidates were elected in the first round.
German media are not sparing any criticism after the political confusion caused by Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly on the evening of the European elections. Bild speaks of an “electoral earthquake” and a “Le Pen shock for President Macron”.
“The far right beats Macron and shocks Europe” is the headline in the Spanish daily El Mundo and sums up the sentiment of many media outlets in the Old Continent. On Monday, July 1, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister declared that he remained “hopeful that the French left will mobilize” after the first round of the legislative elections, believing that the far right had to be beaten “by governing (…) as Spain has been doing for six years.”
In Belgium, the media spoke of a day that “will undoubtedly go down in history.”
In the United Kingdom, the French legislative elections have been front page news in most newspapers, which have not held back their criticism of the executive. “The French right humiliates Macron,” writes the Times. An opinion shared by the tabloid Daily Mail, which writes that the French head of state has “opened the door to economic and political instability.”
In Italy, the country of far-right leader Giorgia Meloni, the country’s main newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, is scathing: “The French right has gone from the heirs of de Gaulle to those of Vichy and French Algeria, a provincial and resentful France that thought itself defeated by History.” “History will tell whether Macron is the one who delayed this worrying metamorphosis or the one who delivered France to the new right,” the newspaper sums up.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Monday: “It’s really starting to look like a big danger. Not only the results of the first round of the French elections (but also) information about Russian influence and Russian services in many radical right-wing parties in Europe.”
In Switzerland, the leading German-language daily TagesAnzeiger ran the headline: “Le Pen wave erases Macron’s aura of power.” It laments that “the country of Enlightenment, human rights and cosmopolitanism is drifting further to the right than ever – and perhaps towards darkness, isolation and xenophobia.” “French democracy speaks and it frightens,” states an editorial in the leading Swiss Romande daily Le Temps.
The EU is concerned
Officially, the European institutions and authorities have remained silent and there has been no reaction from Brussels.
The arrival of the anti-European National Rally at the head of the government of one of the founding members of the EU is feared by Brussels. All the more so since France is both the second largest contributor to the EU budget and the second most populous country. Moreover, power-sharing at the top of the French executive could weaken the position of President Emmanuel Macron, who will continue to sit on the European Council. Ukraine is a subject of concern for Brussels, because French President Emmanuel Macron is considered one of the most fervent European supporters of Ukraine in its war against Russia, and yet the National Rally has never supported Ukraine and has shown its closeness to Russia, whether through loans from Russian banks or when Marine Le Pen was received by President Vladimir Putin.
From the US – A constitutional and financial crisis in France? According to CNN, “a far-right government could lead to a financial crisis as well as a constitutional crisis. The RN has made big spending promises […] at a time when the French budget could come under heavy fire from Brussels.”
For the American channel CBS: “The National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen and founded by her Holocaust denier father, has renounced its anti-Semitic past to play the Islamophobic card for several years, where migrants are presented as a threat, especially to women.” He points out that in Italy Giorgia Meloni has been in power for two years and that in Germany, the far-right AFD party – one of whose leaders was convicted for using a Nazi slogan – achieved a record in the European elections. Soon, Viktor Orban’s Hungary will take over the Council of the European Union for several months with the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”, in homage to “his friend” Donald Trump. The question CBS asks: “What can happen when democracies bring to power leaders who flirt with anti-democratic ideas?”
Originally published in The European Times.
source link eu news
