Europe

Petulance, panic and performance. President Macron’s broadcast following the evisceration of his party in last weekend’s elections for the European parliament had elements of all three. Wearing a black tie as if in mourning, he looked shocked, exhausted and angry. ‘The rise of the nationalists and demagogues,’ he said, ‘is a threat not only to our nation but also to our Europe and to France’s place in Europe and in the world… The extreme right is both the impoverishment of the French people and the downfall of our country. So at the end of this day, I can’t pretend that nothing has happened. I decided to give you the choice.

The much loved and quintessentially French singer, Françoise Hardy, born in 1944, died last night. French certainties are disappearing. The Fifth Republican regime could be next. President Macron’s stunning decision on Sunday night to dissolve the National Assembly in the wake of the remarkable victory of the Rassemblement National (RN) in the European elections is likely to turn a political crisis into a crisis of regime.  Following Macron’s 2022 re-election, devoid of a working majority, France entered a slow-building crisis. The fall-out continues to contaminate the political life of the country. After the agonising demise of the Socialist party, yesterday saw the implosion of the Republican party, the Gaullists who

‘We are really by far the biggest winner this evening,’ said Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV), when the European election exit polls were published last week. But although the Netherlands was first to go to the polls – with strong indications that the far right would be victorious – his ‘win’ fell short of the storming result of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which has sparked a political earthquake in France. Wilders, an anti-Islam, anti-immigration politician, surprised everyone in the country, including himself, when his PVV became the largest political party in the Netherlands in November. A man who has lived with 24/7 security for two decades is currently putting together a

Spain’s Conservative Popular party (PP) came first in Sunday’s EU elections, upping its share of seats in the European parliament from 13 to 22 – with 34 per cent of the vote. The Socialists (PSOE), represented by energy minister Teresa Ribera, avoided the drubbing many had predicted, coming second with 20 seats.   Between them, the PP and PSOE have won enough seats to dominate smaller parties for the duration of this EU parliament A large gap separates these two frontrunners from smaller left- and right-wing groups, Catalan separatists and a curious new addition to Spain’s political scene. These parties secured between two and six seats in the new EU legislature. The

Emmanuel Macron tonight dissolved France’s National Assembly and announced there will be new parliamentary elections with the first round of voting on 30 June and the second round a week later. The president made an unscheduled appearance on television one hour after exit polls declared a crushing victory for the National Rally in the European elections. Marine Le Pen’s party, whose election campaign was run by the 28-year-old president Jordan Bardella, is predicted a score of between 32 and 33.3 per cent, more than twice that of Macron’s representative, Valerie Hayer. She trailed a distant second on a projected 15 per cent, just ahead of the Socialist Raphaël Glucksmann. The

As Olaf Scholz gathers alongside other European leaders on the beaches of Northern France tomorrow to commemorate 80 years since the allied invasion of Normandy, the German Chancellor may have another D-Day in mind. Tomorrow morning, the polls open across the continent for the European parliamentary elections.  Over the coming three days, voters in each EU member state will vote for candidates put forward by their home country’s national parties. The natural result of this model is that voters tend to cast their ballots based on domestic concerns, rather than what those MEPs might necessarily be able to do for them in Brussels. As such, for Scholz and his traffic