When it comes to who the real loser is after the European elections, this inglorious role could fall to Emmanuel Macron. It is already certain in advance that the French president will not cross the finish line as the election winner. In reality, the only question that remains is whether things will go relatively smoothly and the Frenchman will be able to accept the result in good spirits, or whether he will suffer a crushing defeat that could have domestic political consequences.
Within seven years, the savior of Europe has become a lame long-distance runner who no longer scores points in his own country with what his policies stood for from the beginning: a strong Europe. How could this happen? The reason is a mixture of arrogance and wrong political calculation on the part of the president. But above all, it is a lesson that the French voters want to teach him.
“The European elections are perceived more than ever as national elections,” says Brice Teinturier, head of the polling institute Ifop and one of the best experts on the political mood in France, “as a form of French midterms.” Only half of those eligible to vote, according to Teinturier’s forecast, will even go to the polls.
Many of them will use the EU elections to express dissatisfaction with the government, which has pushed through painful pension and unemployment reforms and is blamed for a 40 percent increase in electricity prices within two years, making the loss of purchasing power the number one election issue.
Macron’s idea of sending French ground troops to Ukraine has also been met with rejection. In addition, there is serious unrest in the overseas territory of New Caledonia, news such as the bloody liberation of a crime boss during a prisoner transport and, last but not least, the historically high national debt, all of which create a feeling of state failure and loss of authority.
The shining winner is expected to be Jordan Bardella, the leading candidate of the national-populist Rassemblement National (RN). The 28-year-old has cleverly declared these elections a “referendum against Macron” and has literally outstripped the president’s pro-European list. If the latest polls come true, Marine Le Pen’s political protégé could receive 33.5 percent of the vote and beat everyone else by a wide margin.
Macron’s candidate, Valérie Hayer, who is largely unknown even in France, has continued to lose ground in the polls shortly before the election and is expected to receive less than half as many votes as Bardella.
With only around 15 percent, Hayer is only one point ahead of Raphaël Glucksmann, who leads a social democratic coalition. If the surprise left-wing candidate succeeds in beating Macron’s list and relegating him to third place, it would be a humiliation that Macron would surely have preferred to avoid.
The good performance of the nationalists in the European elections in France is nothing new. Le Pen’s Front National, later renamed Rassemblement National, has been the party that regularly emerges as the strongest in the EU elections since 2012. In 2019, it was one point ahead of Macron’s list. What is new is that the party is rolling towards victory like a “steamroller”, as political scientist Jérôme Jaffré puts it.
The national-patriotic, anti-European bloc of three parties (RN, Reconquête and Patriotes) received 27 percent in 2019, and this Sunday it could receive 40 percent of the vote. If you add together the anti-European votes in the right-wing and left-wing populist spectrum, the bloc of EU opponents could even receive 53 percent of the vote. “That would be the first time in a European election since 1979,” Jaffré sums up.
The political scientist explains it like this: “The French accuse the EU of not having real borders, which is why it is unable to adequately control immigration. They also blame the EU for the loss of purchasing power due to high inflation. And the Commission is perceived as nothing more than bureaucratic because of the ever-increasing number of norms and constraints.”
So feeling European but voting anti-European? One can safely regard this as a typically French contradiction – like happily drinking red wine, eating steak and yet living longer than one’s neighbors. Because all the surveys of the past few years indicate that the French have become more pro-European. In other words: They believe the EU is vital to survival, but still feel that it is too powerful or, like Marine Le Pen, label it “totalitarian.”
Macron may have lost many left-wing voters due to tough social reforms and a new immigration law. But the RN’s success can be explained above all by a change of course. Instead of Frexit and a return to the franc, the right-wing populist Le Pen now wants a strong identitarian group in the Strasbourg parliament in order to reform the EU from within, as she claims.
“Let’s not be like the British, who end up crying about Brexit,” counters Macron’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Le Pen is deceiving her voters, one only has to look at the RN’s program: “They do not want to respect the internal market, do not want to pay France’s membership fee and disregard a large part of the treaties. That means, de facto, leaving the EU,” says Attal.
Does a landslide victory for the RN in the European elections mean that Le Pen could win the 2027 presidential election? “It would be completely absurd to draw such conclusions three years before the elections,” says political scientist Teinturier. However, he does see a considerable expansion of the RN’s electoral base, both in terms of sociological composition and age groups. “The RN dominates in all groups, except for the over-70s, where it is on a par with Macron’s Renew list.”
The normalization of the party thus seems to be complete. One of its leading thinkers is Louis Aliot, long-time party vice-chairman, mayor of Perpignan and former partner of Le Pen. “Today, campaigning for our party is a thousand times easier than for others, such as the Socialists,” said Aliot at a meeting in the brasserie “Le Bourbon”, the Parisian politicians’ meeting place opposite the French National Assembly.
“We go door to door, we are present in the markets and nobody thinks of becoming aggressive or attacking us,” says Aliot. A complete reversal compared to his own experiences as a young politician.
The RN’s course is clear. It is moving purposefully from the fringes towards the centre. Instead of limiting itself to a radical minority and remaining a classic protest party, France’s right-wing populists have said goodbye to the old Frexit fantasies. This means that the RN will not only be able to influence the EU, but may soon be able to govern its own country.