Emmanuel Macron won the second round of the French presidential elections - A Collective Sigh of Relief

 

A collective sigh of relief

By Benjamin Fox | EURACTIV.com 7:12 (updated:  7:18)

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte Macron (not seen) celebrate on the stage after winning the second round of the French presidential elections at the Champs-de-Mars after Emmanuel Macron won the second round of the French presidential elections in Paris, France, 24 April 2022. [EPA-EFE/YOAN VALAT]

Losing Emmanuel Macron, one of Europe’s few political poster boys, would have been a disaster. A Marine Le Pen presidency would have been a body blow for the EU on a par with Brexit. That crisis has been avoided.

The outpouring of congratulatory messages from EU leaders, with almost indecent haste, within minutes of the exit polls being published on Sunday evening was part of a huge collective sigh of relief in Brussels and most of Europe at President Macron’s re-election.

The decisive nature of his victory: 58.5% to 41.5% is a convincing win in anyone’s language and will also offer reassurance. But let’s not forget the jitters in Macron’s camp ahead of and just after the first round. A week ago, many analysts warned that the result would be within five points, within the margin of error. It was only in the final days of campaigning that Macron’s lead started to open up.

The disaster may have been avoided, but this doesn’t change the fact that Le Pen has just obtained 41% of the vote, the highest score in the history of the far-right in France. In twenty years, the Le Pen vote has doubled from the 5.5 million votes collected by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2002. That has not translated into the keys to the presidential palace, but it should result in plenty of seats in the National Assembly.

There is no reason to believe that Le Pen or her successor will not be able to get closer to the presidency in five years, especially as there is no apparent heir to Macron, and En Marche is primarily a personal political vehicle without deep ideological roots.

At the same time, Le Pen and Eric Zemmour appear to have killed off the centre-right Republican party, which secured less than 5% in the first round and now lacks the cash to mount an effective campaign in the June legislative elections.

The June polls will be the real litmus test of the new configuration of French politics.

Should Le Pen and Zemmour work together and mop up some of the Republican votes, it is hard to see how they will not win a sizeable number of seats. That in itself would be a major breakthrough and change the political landscape in Paris.

The Republicans and the Socialists currently hold 129 seats in the National Assembly compared to a mere six held by Le Pen’s Rassemblement National. But those two once-dominant parties have just obtained less than 7% of the vote between them in the first presidential round, less than Zemmour’s total and less than a third of Le Pen’s. It is hard to imagine how they can hold on to more than a fraction of these seats in June.

The French left, meanwhile, has also decisively changed shape. Macron will need leftists, who supported Jean-Luc Melanchon, to lend him their votes again if he is to secure another parliamentary majority in June.

      EURACTİV