Due to its recent electoral success, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National can legitimately claim the presidency of the Finance Committee. After the presidency and vice-presidency of the Assembly, this is the most important office in the French legislature.
Hélène de Lauzun —
The biggest surprise of the election is the performance of the RN, which won 89 seats—11 times more than in the previous elections. The pollsters were totally focused on the NUPES and clearly failed to anticipate this tidal wave.
Hélène de Lauzun —
French paradox: no one wants to give Emmanuel Macron a majority, but all the projections in seats suggest that he will have a comfortable majority. It has been a long time since France has not been in such an absurd, not to say grotesque, political situation.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Following these elections, the horizon of French political life appears very dark. The next deadline is in about a month and a half with the legislative elections. President Macron is almost certain to win a majority, if not an absolute majority. From then on, he will have no counter-power—for five long years.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Emmanuel Macron wins the election, but his victory, despite the triumphalist declarations of some members of the government, is an ambiguous one.
Hélène de Lauzun —
“As long as our contemporaries have not been made to understand once again that without saints there are no heroes, we will be condemned to fall.”—Jacques de Guillebon
Hélène de Lauzun —
Marine Le Pen was playing a very long game in the debate, and immense pressure must have weighed on her shoulders. Not only did she have to wash away the affront from 2017, but she also had to remain focused on the one and only goal worth mentioning: to win the second round on Sunday, April 24th.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Five years since their last debate, Macron is the incumbent, whose regular put-downs during walkabouts have done a lot to make him one of France’s most unpopular presidents. Meanwhile, Le Pen knows that she has a relatively low bar to clear: she only needs to do better than her previous performance, and look more sympathique.
Anne-Élisabeth Moutet —
The release of the report in the press comes at an ideal time to destabilise the candidate, with some of the facts mentioned by the European Office dating back more than ten years.
Hélène de Lauzun —
With the first round behind him, Emmanuel Macron is making things clear. On Monday, April 11th, the President of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand announced that the “right to die with dignity” would be the major societal reform of the new five-year term if Emmanuel Macron were reelected.
Hélène de Lauzun —
The convinced of Macronism have already shown themselves in the first round. Those who will vote for him out of duty have shrunk to a trickle. Anti-Macronism is on its way to being more powerful than a vote for Le Pen.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Repositioning French political forces began as soon as the results were announced. Even if the headliner is the same as in 2017, the balance of power and the political situation have radically changed.
Hélène de Lauzun —
For many months, the re-election of Emmanuel Macron has been taken for granted. But the French hate it when a scenario is imposed on them in advance.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Both Zemmour and Le Pen have tweeted about the possibility that this could be an anti-Semitic second or third-degree murder and that its late arrival on the news cycle could be premeditated.
Jorge González-Gallarza —
France’s entrenched political establishment has been accused of concealing a deadly anti-Semitic attack that saw a young, disabled man run over by a tram after having been beaten and chased by a gang of ‘youths’ in a Paris suburb.
Robert Semonsen —
“I believe in France; I dedicate every second of my life to the happiness of the French people, who are the top priority in all my battles.”—French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen
Hélène de Lauzun —
Overall, congratulations from European leaders to the reappointed prime minister have been slow or lukewarm, while the majority of European media outlets have been critical. No official reaction came from the offices in Paris, Berlin, or Rome.
Hélène de Lauzun —
McKinseyGate could seriously weaken the candidate Emmanuel Macron. The massive use of consulting firms discredits his record as president, but also his program as a candidate.
Hélène de Lauzun —
“When someone comes to your house and trashes everything and assaults you, you kick them out of your house and you send them home,” Zemmour said.
Robert Semonsen —
These attacks were exploited by both parties as evidence of the current administration’s poor handling of security and immigration. Despite the spin, they actually testify to the advanced deterioration of the political climate in France: an accumulation of tensions in society, ready to flare up at any moment.
Hélène de Lauzun —
It may be that Macron is playing a dangerous game. The suspicion of a confiscated campaign is becoming more and more intense in French opinion.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Marion Maréchal backs Zemmour’s campaign strategy which seeks to unite the ‘patriotic bourgeoisie’ and the working class.
Robert Semonsen —
An outburst of criticism accompanied this last-minute candidacy. For several weeks Emmanuel Macron has been accused of taking advantage of the pandemic, and of the war, to dodge debates about his time in office, now coming to an end.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Today in France, taking a sovereignist line is unfortunately understood as Putinolatry, and it is extremely difficult to hear a balanced point of view on what the positioning of a strong France in the international game should be.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Never before has the approval of presidential candidates generated such tension: the deadline for the deposit of sponsorships was set for March 4th, so validation really came at the last minute for major candidates who were nevertheless guaranteed to gather at least 10% of the vote.
Hélène de Lauzun —
France is no novice to this particular battleground. It was only in late October that Le Petit Robert announced the inclusion of the neutral third person pronoun “iel” for its digital edition.
Tristan Vanheuckelom —
The journalist’s popularity is being driven by a charismatic campaign on social networks, reinforced by excellent control over images communicated through the media and through his rallies.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Marine Le Pen speaks to working-class France, while Zemmour’s electorate comes from the bourgeoisie—two pieces of the same puzzle which for the moment do not manage to fit together, neither in the one nor in the other.
Hélène de Lauzun —
The founder and patriarch of the family, Jean-Marie Le Pen, chose to speak out in the political-family feud that finds his daughter and granddaughter on opposite sides. He gave his full support to Marine Le Pen for the presidential campaign.
Hélène de Lauzun —
By participating in the Madrid summit, Marine Le Pen looks to strengthen her international stature and to reinforce her relationships with her European allies; to use the platform as a way to gain legitimacy in the fight against Éric Zemmour.
Hélène de Lauzun —
Zemmour regularly claims in his speeches his affiliation with the former RPR, and his desire to achieve a “union of the Right.” He hopes to gather within his candidacy all the families of the French Right attached to national identity, sovereignty, a certain economic liberalism, and a (moderate) social conservatism.
Hélène de Lauzun —
The distribution of votes among the various right-wing candidates resembles a game of communicating vessels. Marine Le Pen is ploughing her own furrow. Eric Zemmour puts ‘des mots sur des maux’ (words on evils): it is what he does best. He can participate in the reconfiguration of the French right. Will he go much further?
Hélène de Lauzun —
The year 2022 is starting badly for the French government. While it wanted to use the outbreak of the omicron variant in France to impose the vaccine pass before mid-January, things are looking more complicated than expected.
Hélène de Lauzun —
According to Secretary of State for European Affairs Clement Beaune, the flag was scheduled to be taken down on Sunday, but he said he was “very proud that this one flew for a few days.”
Tristan Vanheuckelom —
Until a few months ago, the French media believed that the presidential campaign would be a repeat of the 2017 campaign, with a second round that would pit Emmanuel Macron against Marine Le Pen and end with the re-election of Emmanuel Macron. Today, nothing is written in stone, and the fundamentally unpredictable nature of political life gives us hope.
Hélène de Lauzun —
In a joint statement, the leaders rejected the notion of “a Europe governed by a self-appointed elite” and said that “only the sovereign institutions of the states have full democratic legitimacy.”
Tristan Vanheuckelom —
By reserving family benefits to households with at least one French parent, deporting foreigners who haven’t been employed for a year, replacing healthcare coverage for illegal immigrants with “vital emergency aid,” restricting family immigration by 75%, and ending the reception of unaccompanied minors, Ms. Le Pen contends the French state could save €16 billion annually.
Robert Semonsen —
President Macron has denied that immigration is out of control. But his assurances contradict official data from the government statistics agency, INSEE, which show that net migration numbers have risen steadily since the early 2000s.
French right-wing journalist Eric Zemmour could get into the second round of presidential elections in 2022.
“Ideological pressure within the European Union has become unprecedented”, Viktor Orbán said after the meeting.