The European Union currently faces several existential threats. The Polish government’s attacks on judicial independence (echoing those of...
The European Union currently faces several existential threats. The Polish government’s attacks on judicial independence (echoing those of Hungary earlier) challenge its core values and its legal system. The row with the United Kingdom over the Northern Ireland Protocol also threatens the EU’s nature as a “community of law”. Yet, an even more decisive battle for its future looms with the French presidential elections in April 2022.
This situation is something of a déjà vu. In 2017, France’s Rassemblement National party’s leader Marine Le Pen, an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit a year earlier, advocated the same course of action for France. “Frexit” would have dealt a deadly blow to the EU. In the second round of the presidential elections, however, current French President Emmanuel Macron beat Le Pen. He did so on a political platform in which pro-EU values figured prominently. Yet, anti-EU rhetoric is even more diffuse in the French electorate now than five years ago, and the debate has somewhat changed.
The main extreme right candidates are Marine Le Pen and the journalist Éric Zemmour, who poll at around 16%-17% each. Both have explicitly supported Poland and Hungary in their fight against the EU Commission and the Court of Justice. Le Pen and Zemmour have endorsed the Polish and Hungarian governments’ claims for “freedom” for...
