France’s voters keep hope for Europe alive

Le Pen’s second-place showing behind a defender of the continent shows that the dykes against nationalism and populism are holding firm

ack in February, United States President Donald Trump spoke at a conservative convention about a friend named Jim, a “very, very substantial guy” who “loves the City of Lights” but does not go there any more because “Paris is no longer Paris”. Maybe Jim should consider coming back.

And Trump himself, who coldly tweeted two days before the first round of France’s presidential election that the latest terrorist attack would have “a big effect” on the vote and told the Associated Press it would help Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front, should also consider visiting France. He needs to get to know it better.

On Sunday, Paris still being Paris, Le Pen did not even reach 5 per cent of the vote in the City of Lights. Campaigning on a nationalist, anti-globalisation, anti-immigration platform, she made it into the second round with 21.3 per cent of the vote nationwide, according to official final results that reported her achieving a better showing in rural and small-town France than in the cities.

She was outpaced, though, by Emmanuel Macron, a 39-year-old political upstart who won 24 per cent of the vote despite having never held elected office. His movement, En Marche! (Onward!), has existed for less than a year. He scored best in the cities, where urban, educated voters embraced his pro-Europe, open-borders, progressive agenda.

To New Yorkers and Londoners, this strong territorial divide may look familiar. There are undeniable echoes of the BrexitTrump 2016 electoral insurrection in this first round. France is not immune to the powerful populist wave that has engulfed western democracies over the past few years, starting with Hungary and Poland.

In Paris, anger over inequality and unemployment, resentment over globalisation and immigration, and discontent with a political system that has run its course contributed to a notable statistic: Of the 11 candidates who competed last Sunday, eight were either critical of the European Union or squarely against it. Together they attracted 49.6 per cent of the vote — almost half the electorate.

Yet, the French vote has confirmed a trend apparent in recent elections in two other EU member-states, Austria and the Netherlands: Across the Channel from Britain, the dikes are holding. In all three countries, anti-populist forces managed to put forward a candidate or a platform offering an alternative innovative enough to counter the anger. In Austria, it was an ecologist presidential candidate. In the Dutch parliamentary election, it were two small, firmly pro-European parties. In France, it was a young man who portrayed his lack of political experience as an asset and promised to transform the discredited system.

Let’s face it: Old Europe is looking more resilient than the Anglo-Saxon world.

In the end, in France, neither Trump nor President Vladimir Putin of Russia — who ostentatiously welcomed Le Pen at the Kremlin a month before the election — had a decisive influence on the election. Nor did Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in Iraq and Syria. What mattered was Europe. This remains the major issue.

Stronger together

For Le Pen’s supporters, the EU is an abomination that violates national sovereignty and opens borders to mass immigration, while the Eurozone prevents the French government from controlling its economic and monetary policy. To Macron, the EU is the institution that can help France be a player and defend itself in a globalised world, while its open borders and common currency increase economic opportunities for its citizens. Basically, Europeans are stronger together.

This is the clear choice French voters will face in the second round on May 7. A choice between two starkly different visions of Europe, between two opposite outlooks on the world: an open world versus a world of borders and barriers, modernity versus conservatism. The political consensus, based on the European project and liberal values, that allowed two major mainstream parties to govern France alternately on the right and the left for the past three decades has been shattered.

The candidate of the governing Socialist Party, Benoit Hamon, earned a devastating 6.4 per cent of the vote, mirroring a trend in some other European countries. As for Les Republicains, the centre-right party, it is also in deep trouble. Its candidate, former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, came in third last Sunday with 20 per cent. Never before had the major party of the right been eliminated from the second round.

Would the party have fared better with a candidate who hadn’t employed his wife in lucrative but elusive tasks and who paid for his own suits? Even this is not sure, such is the thirst for renewal and the furore of “degagisme” (“scram-ism”), as the farleft candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who claimed 19.6 per cent, called the anti-politician trend — only to fall victim of it too.

This is the new landscape, shaped by the steady rise of the National Front and euroscepticism over the past decade. Rather than hiding behind it, Macron chose early in his campaign to fly the European flag. He astonished his rivals by winning support for the EU, against all odds, at his rallies. And it worked.

He also managed to reverse the fear factor: By the end of the campaign, polls showed that more than two-thirds of French voters, still convinced of the benefits of a common currency, did not want to leave the Eurozone, throwing Le Pen’s antieuro agenda off balance. Macron embraced the French-German relationship, so vital to a unified Europe, and went to Berlin to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel, for whose immigration policy Le Pen has only scorn.

But even if he succeeds on May 7, he will still be left with other difficulties. Winning the June parliamentary elections — without a proper party — and achieving a majority to govern is one. Transforming the political system, as he has promised, to adjust it to the 21st century and give a voice to those voters who have felt excluded for so long is another. For a political novice, however talented and lucky, this is quite a tall order, but it is the condition for the dikes to continue holding up.

Sylvie Kauffmann is the editorial director and a former editor in chief of Le Monde, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.