French elections set to derail EU project

IN MAY, France is heading for general elections and the outcomes could accelerate the decline of the EU project and further deepen the swing to the right in Western politics. It could culminate in the French withdrawal from the EU.

The exit of Britain from the EU following the Brexit vote in June signals the departure of a less-than-enthusiastic member. But the departure of France in the heartland of Western Europe and a key driver of the European integration idea may weaken the idea at its very core.

The EU has been diminishing geopolitically for some time, being unable to assert itself as a global actor able to take on key responsibilities for global political and economic governance.

At least in the eyes of pundits, the EU has not been able to harness the power of its economic diversity and its abilities in order to assert its global power, partly due to the fact that it is a multilateral body made of diverse states run largely by consensus.

The EU has been more confident on matters of economic integration and global trade than on international security and geopolitical questions. Its common foreign policy and defence policy remain at infancy as it battles to define in a coherent manner what the EU seeks to do with world affairs outside the US umbrella.

It has struggled to define its role in a world that is neither multi-polar nor unipolar, but a strange combination of both, at least in the past 20 years.

Since Britain decided to exit in order to find its own role and identity in global affairs, there have been fears other smaller states might follow. But now it seems France may follow against expectations.

Indications are the far right National Front party’s Marine Le Pen remains ahead in the race for the French presidency while one candidate after another falls out of the race. In the latest polls, she stands at 25%, which is not insignificant at this stage of the contest for the May elections, but given there is no clear contender to derail or overtake her in sight, she’s the candidate to watch.

Three major potential contenders have emerged as alternatives to the determined Le Pen. Among them is the former president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who launched his campaign in 2015 when he renamed his party Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) to a more appealing epitome of his greater France promise, Les Républicains (The Republicans). To compete for conservative voters, he focused on traditional values of fiscal probity, honesty, and rule of law.

But he could not even run for the primaries of the party last year because of revelations about fraud in his campaign funding for the 2012 polls, which he lost to incumbent Francois Hollande of the socialist platform. By the time the party rejected his candidacy in November, he was already a finished man, fully drained by legal battles. He is due to face trial, his presidential immunity having been legally removed.

This opened the way for a hotly contested run-off between seasoned conservative politicians, Francois Fillon and Alain Juppe, which Fillon won to become the candidate of the centre right. Having started strong, Fillon is fast declining in polls following revelations of embezzling parliamentary funds by employing his wife as his parliamentary assistant, a matter that will mostly likely sink him politically.

On the left, the incumbent, President Francois Hollande, has fizzled out of the race because his social democratic platform was seen as wishy-washy politics and because he is blamed for the government’s failure to revive the struggling economy, reduce unemployment and inequality. He decided not to run in the end, opening the way for two candidates for the Socialist ticket, Sarkozy’s former prime minister, Manuel Valls who promised a moderate left agenda, and the young and radical Benoit Hamon who rejects austerity, the freezing of wage increases and wants a minimum wage and a strong EU.

Third, there has also emerged Emmanuel Macron, a long standing socialist who served as an economy minister under the Hollande government.

Having been responsible for pushing through liberal and non-socialist economic reforms, he was thus converted into a social liberal, a platform he is now running on, promising an agenda that is neither left nor right. Whether he will find a sizeable constituency for the third way politics Tony Blair style in a changed atmosphere favourable to right wing views is an open question.

Fillon is facing a storm in the form of fraud controversy that could easily sink his campaign, while Macron still has to build a solid support base, having promised to launch a movement made up of volunteers.

Le Pen and the far-right are on the rise and she has a strong chance of going all the way and even winning the presidential race. The French right is also building solidarity with other right wing parties across the world to consolidate their rise in critical areas of the world. The rise of Trump helps to boost the swing to the ideological right across the world, especially in the West.

The implications of this for French politics include a stronger swing to rightwing politics which range from narrow nationalism to racism and Neo-Nazi tendencies. This will further complicate the building of global cosmopolitanism, and drive people apart by the friction of race and culture.

The right wing economics will also set us back decades by encouraging excessive economic protectionism, a withdrawal from multilateral economic governance, crass neo-liberal policies. Under these conditions, the fashioning of global rules may hit a snag, opening the way for the survival of the fittest.

Right wing economics will set us back

Dr Siphamandla Zondi, acting head of the Political Science department at the University of Pretoria