Editorial|The result of the French election has a wide impact on the whole of Europe.
Ranska plunged into a political crisis after the EU elections, when President Emmanuel Macron decided to measure his own party’s support in the new parliamentary elections after a harsh election defeat.
There were only 20 days left for election campaigning, and the first round of the elections is now on Sunday. Already the first round tells about the mood of the French, but the final result of the election will only be known after the second round on July 7.
Macron is playing a gamble that he can also lose. However, he calculates that the majority of voters will be afraid, before the second round at the latest, of the consequences of the rise to power of the far-right National Alliance on domestic politics and France’s influence in the EU and on the international position more broadly.
However, Macron is not only fighting against the rise of the extreme right. The French political field is divided into three political blocs, of which Macron’s centrist liberals are the smallest.
Mielenmäimaa is dominated by the far-right and Eurosceptic National Alliance. It received a third of the votes in the European elections. A significant part of the votes is also gathered by the unholy coalition of the left, the New People’s Front, where socialists, communists, greens and the left-populist Unyielding France find each other. This bloc also wants to prevent the rise of the extreme right to the leadership of France.
As soon as the EU election result came out, the chairman of the National Alliance, Jordan Bardella, rose to challenge Macron’s position and demanded new parliamentary elections. Support polls for the parliamentary elections also predict a 30–35 percent vote share for the National Alliance and a tripling of the current number of seats.
Marine Le Pen, the old leader of the national coalition, has moderated the image of a racist, anti-Semitic party that pushed for EU separation. The electorate has broadened from the working class.
The election pattern anticipates difficulties in assembling a government that receives the support of the majority. However, it is possible that for the next three years France will be led by a peculiar combination, with Macron as president and Bardella as prime minister.
Although Macron has a lot of power in foreign policy, he does not decide on the budget. The national coalition is no longer pushing for separation from the European Union, but after the party gets into government, the change in France’s EU and Ukraine policy could be drastic.
The editorials are HS’s positions on a current topic. The articles are prepared by HS’s editorial department, and they reflect the journal principle line.
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