Europe

The electoral turmoil in France threatens its status as a world power. Friendly nations are despairing; rivals and enemies are gloating, even circling. France is the world’s seventh-largest economic power, a prominent Nato member, a member of the UN Security Council and the EU’s leader on foreign and defence issues. It has the fifth largest strategic nuclear force and the fifth largest navy, a ‘tier one’ military and one of the highly effective ‘Nine Eyes’ intelligence services. Last year France was the world’s second largest arms exporter. It controls the third largest global undersea cables network and has the second largest coastal economic area, whose confetti territories give it a

Apart from Bob Dylan and Kazuo Ishiguro, it’s a fair bet that most people’s reaction to the Nobel prizewinners for literature this century is, who? Arguably the most recent, Jon Fosse, is an exception but the majority of winners don’t really stand up to the weight of the award. Annie Emaux? Abdulrazak Gurnah? Louise Gluck? It’s hard to avoid the impression that the judges were swayed by ethno-gender considerations rather than outright lifetime literary merit. I asked him about Albania obtaining European Union membership and he got tetchy This week there died, and today was buried, one man who really did merit the award for which he was nominated 15 times,

Life in the Berlaymont building, the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, just got a bit more surreal. A striking feature of the EU is its rotating presidency, under which the 27 member states take it in turns to do a six-month stint running its technically supreme political body, the European Council. This week, Hungary, the bad boy of Europe, took over the hot seat. It keeps it until the end of this year. The difficulty is that the government of Viktor Orbán in Budapest, albeit still popular at home, is at loggerheads with the EU. Politically, its scepticism over Ukraine’s war effort and its open dislike for liberal social

The builder who has been working on my house in Burgundy will be voting for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally on Sunday in the first round of the French parliamentary election. So will the electrician. I haven’t asked the plumber, but I suspect I know where his vote will go, given that his assistant is voting for Le Pen. My neighbour, a farmer, is voting Le Pen, as is a teacher acquaintance. The local policeman is also voting Le Pen. ‘What do I think of Macron?’ retorted the electrician. ‘Put it this way, he’s not my friend’ It’s not that surprising in this neck of the woods. The National Rally

Of the 20 or so opinion polls since France’s president Emmanuel Macron announced a snap election this month, the vast majority put Marine Le Pen’s right-wing party ahead. The Rassemblement National and its allies are predicted to get around 35 per cent of the vote, with the left-wing coalition Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) on 29 per cent and Macron’s centrist coalition Ensemble pour la République trailing on 20 per cent. Barring a black swan moment, Jordan Bardella’s RN will win the most seats in the chamber. But no one party is likely to have an absolute majority. Bardella announced on 18 June that, without a working majority, he will turn down the premiership, which he has

Has France’s far right just made a 180-degree turn on Ukraine? The leader of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella, expressed his support for sending ‘ammunition and equipment [Ukraine] needs to hold the front’ at a recent arms fair. Last year, Bardella stated ‘the war would not end without a withdrawal of Russian troops and a return of complete and full sovereignty of Ukraine on the territories that are currently occupied by Russia’. Bardella, just like other figures on France’s nationalist right is hedging his bets. He is, for example, against sending ‘equipment that could have consequences of escalation in Eastern Europe’. Likewise, Marion Maréchal, the niece of Marine Le Pen, wishes for Ukraine’s victory but

How do we defend Europe without the Americans? With Donald Trump inciting Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to Nato members not paying enough, it’s clear a Trump 2.0 could shatter the alliance. This isn’t news. Leaders of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, have known this since Trump took office in 2017. They know what’s strategically necessary to fill the gap. The trouble is, this would be politically impossible for Berlin. A Trump-led unravelling of Nato would confront Germany with a daunting to-do list Compensating for the United States, which provides 70 per cent of alliance defence spending, would be staggeringly costly for Germany. It would transform spending habits

Does Emmanuel Macron have one more joker to play? Perhaps. His petulant decision to dissolve the National Assembly has been difficult to understand. His political movement looks like it will come third behind the rightish Rassemblement National and the ultra-leftist New Popular Front, a coalition of trots, Antifa activists, and loopy greens. Privately, the polling companies are confessing a lack of confidence in the numbers so far, which show Rassemblement leading, the left trailing in second and Macron’s party in third. We’re waiting for some more authoritative polls at the end of week. The pollsters are struggling to make sense of, in effect, 577 separate elections held across two rounds.

The National Rally is comfortably leading in the polls. The charismatic Jordan Bardella is set to become the next Prime Minister. And Marine Le Pen looks to be heading for power in France. When she gets there, however, she faces a potentially far more lethal opponent than the bruised and increasingly powerless President Emmanuel Macron. The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. In reality, the next big issue in Eurozone politics will be whether Lagarde crushes Le Pen – and whether that risks compromising the independence of the Bank for good.  Lagarde has the power to crush Le Pen. The only real question will be whether she chooses

Emmanuel Macron has described the left-wing coalition’s manifesto as ‘totally immigrationist’. The Popular Front, which brings together Communists, Greens, Socialists and Anti-Capitalists, was formed at the start of last week to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections. While there has been the odd divergence on personnel – notably who should be prime minister in the event the left wins the election on 7 July – one issue on which the Popular Front is agreed is immigration: the more the better. The French left describes immigration as ‘an opportunity’ for the Republic Its manifesto states that once in power it will establish a maritime rescue agency to help bring migrants across the