A phrase is repeated these days in the streets of France as a mantra, about the possibility of the victory of the far-right Marine Le Pen this Sunday: “Improbable but not impossible”. A minimal possibility but enough to cause, however, great concern in Europe, because although in her program the candidate has already abandoned the idea of leaving the EU, she does defend “a reform from within” that will lead to “a European alliance of nations” and that “will progressively replace the EU”. And along the way, she proposes unilateral and immediate changes in the relationship between Paris and its partners that, in the words of the French Nobel Prize winner for Economics, Jean Tirole, represent a “frexit in disguise“.
And a Brexit is not the same as a Frexit. Le Pen’s victory would be a full-blown cataclysm for European history. If the British never accommodated themselves to the EU, France is one of the founding and fundamental democracies of the EU, in addition to the second largest economy in the euro zone. Antoine Vauchez, political scientist and director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) points out in statements to EL PERIÓDICO that after a markedly pro-European presidency like that of Emmanuel MacronLe Pen’s victory would open a period of “political and economic instability” that would “transfer the conflict to the European institutions” and would result in a “destabilization of the EU”.
A project to define
Denouncing a “European construction far from reality” and an “ideology-laden federalist super EU”, the “alliance of nations” that Le Pen proposes is still a vague nebula, but the concrete steps that he proposes in his program to draw France’s new relationship clearly point to the rupture. The candidate of the “national preference” wants reduce the annual French contribution to the community budget by 5,000 million per yearclaims that French national law prevails over community and leave the Schengen Treatyin addition to prioritizing national production and imposing greater controls on imports with customs barriers.
Le Pen “wants a Europe à la carte that is not possible”, says Vauge, who recalls that France’s contribution to the French budget cannot be cut unilaterallyl Neither break the single market with obstacles to trade and the free movement of people, nor suspend community law. Measures that would be “unacceptable for the other European partners”, says the Nobel Prize winner Tirole in an interview with the newspaper liberation.
Because, furthermore, Le Pen’s victory would also mean the rupture of the Paris-Berlin axis, which has been the engine of European construction in recent decades, from the close relationship they forged Francois Mitterrand and Helmuth Kohl and that it has managed to survive the changes of political color in the two capitals.
If for Macron the Franco-German motor is untouchable, Le Pen describes it as “almost fiction” due to “irreconcilable differences” and assures that he is looking for a reunion, but away from the Macron-Merkel model, “of blind French following from Berlin”. Instead, he proposes a broader alliance with other “friendly” countries such as the Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and Tadeusz Mazowiecki’s Poland, that is to say, the club of the unruly countries of the EU in continuous pulse with Brussels.
NATO and Russia
But it is not only the relationship with the EU that Le Pen wants to change. In the name once again of “national sovereignty” and invoking the heritage of de Gaulle, advocates leaving the NATO integrated military structurein which France entered under the presidency of Nicholas Sarkozy in 2009, a position that also distances it from the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Le Pen’s relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia in full war with Ukraine has forced the candidate to carry out difficult balances in this campaign, such as denouncing the war crimes but without singling out the Russian Army. And she has never hidden that she is in favor of a “bilateral dialogue” with Moscow, once the current conflict ends.
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“It’s not just the break with the EU and NATO, is a break with the West“, stresses Vauchez. With his ultranationalist visionthe world of Le Pen is the opposite of that of Macron, who came to the presidency five years ago wrapped in the Europeanist flag and on election night made his entrance on the Esplanade of the Louvre to the strains of the European anthem, a declaration of intentions, who in his first speech promised to “defend France and Europe”.
The approval of European funds Next Generation to deal with the consequences of the pandemic is its greatest contribution to this defense so far, after managing to break down the great resistance of former Chancellor Angela Merkel to the mutualization of debt. An exercise of solidarity and commitment that does not fit in the ultranationalist ideology of Le Pen.