Everything currently points to a clear victory for the Rassemblement National (RN) in the European elections. Marine Le Pen’s party, whose list is led by Jordan Bardella, the shooting star of the French right, is confident of victory. Their slogan “Long live June 9th” exudes anticipation for the election, and there are actually reasons for the RN to be happy: in polls from March, the party is up to twelve percentage points ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party sends European MP Valérie Hayer into the field as the top candidate.
At Renaissance, possible spins for the election defeat are already being prepared internally. It is said that a reduction in the gap to the RN, to around five percentage points, could certainly be sold as a success. After all, the European elections in France, as in most EU states, are a protest election and a vote on national politics. But most French people are dissatisfied with this, Macron is doing poorly in all surveys, and only 29 percent recently rated his work positively. The RN also won the last European elections in 2019 – very narrowly back then. The presidential party, which ran an extremely pro-European election campaign under the slogan “For a Europe that protects,” came in second, less than one percentage point behind.
The old recipes don’t work
Renaissance’s attempts to prevent the seemingly inevitable election defeat have so far come to nothing. In the fight against the poor poll numbers, Macron relied on a double strategy: On the one hand, at the beginning of the year he appointed his Education Minister Gabriel Attal as head of government, whose high personal popularity ratings should be the driving force in the European election campaign. On the other hand, Renaissance party representatives, including the new Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné (who is still party leader), are trying to bring the RN’s connections to the Kremlin and Russian banks into the public eye.
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Although this is partially successful, it seems to miss the crucial issues for many voters. The wars in Ukraine and Gaza concern and concern many French people; Macron’s statements about the possible deployment of ground troops to Ukraine have recently sparked a controversial debate. However, everyday issues such as rising living costs, health care and pensions remain more important. In 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave Macron an unexpected boost in his election campaign. As an internationally experienced statesman and commander in chief of the armed forces, the president easily separated himself from his challenger Le Pen. However, he does not seem to be able to repeat this strategy in 2024.
Political shockwaves in Paris
If the current forecast gap remains, the European elections could have a significant impact on French politics. For Le Pen and Bardella, it would be an important stage on the way to the 2027 presidential election, which should make them president and him head of government. In the president’s camp, however, the new prime minister would be damaged and would also lose ground in the struggle to succeed Macron. Because the fights over Macron’s succession have begun in the government alliance. They will increase after the European elections. In addition to Attal, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire and former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe are also said to have ambitions.
They all know that they would probably face the RN in the second round of the 2027 presidential election. All interested parties are already positioning themselves with the right-wing extremists using the means at their disposal: Attal, somewhat involuntarily after being nominated as head of government, as Macron’s weapon against poor poll numbers; Darmanin as a tough crackdown on crime and illegal migration, core issues of the RN. Le Maire, on the other hand, is fueling business fears of an election victory for the RN, calling Le Pen’s party the “new Marxists”. And finally, a completely different tone came from Philippe’s Horizons party recently; his parliamentary group leader warned that the political exclusion of the RN was counterproductive: people were “tired of being lectured to”.
Snowball effect conceivable
In addition to the political effects of the current RN high rise, the effects on the French administration are also increasingly coming into focus. For years there has been speculation in the French media about the so-called Horaces Circle, which allegedly includes dozens of high-ranking state officials who advise Marine Le Pen on her ambitions for the presidency. Representatives of the RN also report that there is a much larger network of sympathizers, but they have not yet dared to come out of cover for fear of negative effects on their careers. An RN MP claims in background conversation that he maintains regular contact with several active ambassadors.
If the RN triumphs in the European elections, observers in Paris fear that something could slip in the administration. When the former director of the EU border protection agency Frontex, Fabrice Leggeri, announced at the beginning of March that he would be running for third place on the RN list, the party hoped that it would send a signal to other top officials. Leggeri graduated from the French administrative college École Nationale d’Administration and brings a lot of international experience with him – a quality that the RN has so far lacked. The party is hoping for a snowball effect: profiles like Leggeri could convince more and more opportunists and careerists in the administration that the RN opens up promising prospects in the future.
It could also help that Macron does not have a good reputation in these circles. The reform of the ENA (which has been called the Institut national du public service since 2022) and the abolition of certain career paths were seen in many places as a political attack on independent administration. After the reform announcements in April 2019, at the height of the yellow vest protests, many officials saw themselves as Macron’s pawns. The president, himself a graduate of the ENA, wanted to direct the people’s anger at the supposedly aloof administration that “no longer corresponds to society.” The frustration is particularly deep in the Foreign Ministry, which Macron accused in 2019 of acting as a deep state against his interests.
Credible claim to power
The RN knows these sensitivities and wants to take advantage of them now. In addition to a referendum that the party would like to hold on the question of immigration immediately after an election victory in 2027, one of the first official acts of President Le Pen could be to roll back the reforms of the administration and the ENA – also in order to gain the favor of the civil servants to back up. However, what is currently much more important than the referendum or individual reform proposals is that the impression is created internally and externally that the RN is seriously preparing to assume government responsibility.
The Front National (FN), founded in 1972 by Le Pen’s father Jean-Marie, has never succeeded. Close colleagues left the party because they accused “the old man” (as Jean-Marie Le Pen was often called) of having settled into the role of eternal opposition. With the name change in 2018 from Front to Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen also wanted to distance herself from her father’s legacy. She has succeeded in many areas.
The RN has become socially acceptable; extreme positions, such as the previously widespread anti-Semitism, have been pushed out of the party. In the context of the war in Gaza and the corresponding upheavals, including in French society, the RN is seen by representatives of the French Jewish community, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld for example, as a shield against the Islamist threat. And yet: In 2027, Marine Le Pen would run in a presidential election for the fourth time; It would be difficult for her to embody the departure. If the election victory of her protégé Bardella on June 9th turns out to be too triumphant, it could also cause unrest within the RN.
This post is first on the German-French platform DokDoc appeared.
