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The window for Emmanuel Macron to forestall the rise of the far right in France may now be closing. When he was elected over Marine Le Pen in May 2017, Macron won the opportunity to prove that his program of “radical centrism” could unite the country, turbocharge a sclerotic labor market, cut red tape, slim the national budget, and reform the European Union. But the politics of Le Pen, a populist-nationalist in the mode of Donald Trump, were not defeated, merely quiescent. The electoral turnout had been low, for France, at 75 percent, and many voters punched their ticket for Macron only to block Le Pen. While Macron won the runoff election with two-thirds of the vote, political observers predicted that voters would not be patient with the 40-year-old banker’s newly formed party, En Marche. The countdown began.
Some 18 months later, a new poll confirms that the battle for the French republic, torn between nativism and globalism, is trending in Le Pen’s favor. According to an Ifop survey published Sunday, France’s far-right Rassemblement National Party has moved ahead of En Marche for the first time in polling ahead of the May 2019 European Parliament elections. About 1,000 French people were asked how they would vote if the parliamentary election were held next Sunday: 19 percent indicated they would support Macron, down from 20 percent at the end of August, while 21 percent signaled support for Le Pen, up from 17 percent. With a further 9 percent delineating support for smaller populist and so-called “Frexit” parties, the far-right vote totaled 30 percent—a substantial five-point gain since this summer.
Le Pen’s creeping resurgence mirrors Macron’s sagging popularity, which has hit record lows amid accusations that he is arrogant and out-of-touch, and that his reform packages, intended to juice the French economy, have solely benefited the rich. The latest gripe the French have with Macron is over rising gas prices; truckers and drivers plan to block traffic across the country as part of nationwide protests on November 17.
Macron’s loss of domestic support should not effect the implementation of his increasingly controversial reforms, for now. It will, however, impact the upcoming parliamentary elections, which, morphing into a proxy war between pro-Europeans and nationalist-populists, may well determine the future of the European Union, especially now that the bloc is set to lose its de facto leader, Angela Merkel. Aware of the election’s grave stakes, Macron has been hoping to bolster his support by styling himself as the arbiter of innovative centrism. As Politico reports, this week he is discharging party officials to the Madrid congress of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), to try and broker a joint platform with the group that would echo the vision he had for France by undercutting established forces on both sides of the political spectrum, and championing integrated globalism.
If Macron succeeds in forging this alliance, and then manages to drum up the support of voters to establish the second-largest group in European Parliament, his influence in Brussels would enjoy a symbolic spike. But if French voters fail to get on board, he risks alienating potential allies in Brussels, and emboldening the march of Le Pen and Europe’s populists, who are also eyeing the elections as an unprecedented opportunity to shape, or destabilize, the E.U. over the next five years.
The looming battle over the E.U. comes at an augural moment for Europe, as the continent prepares to mark the centenary of the close of the First World War, and reflects on the forces that tore it asunder. In a timely interview with Ouest-France, published last Wednesday, Macron encouraged voters to “resist” incendiary politics that recall the crucible of the 1920s. “Europe is facing a risk: that of dismemberment through nationalist leprosy and being pushed over by external powers, and therefore to lose its sovereignty,” he said, warning that a fractured Europe would risk “having its security dependent on American choices and changes, a growing presence in China on essential infrastructures, a Russia that is sometimes tempted by manipulation as well as big financial interest.”
For those French voters who have not experienced the uplift they were promised, Macron’s bold rhetoric will ring hollow. Clearly, Macron needs to shed his elitist image, and get them back on his side. To do so, he should look toward the resurgence of Le Pen. Her triumph in the poll proves her appeal did not dissipate with the ascendance of Macron. But, more important, it shows that the French president has not made the necessary efforts to understand the economic and cultural alienation that have fueled far-right movements across Europe and the Americas while he has been in power. It’s not enough to urge voters not to stray from the center—Macron must also offer reassurance beyond polished speeches. Otherwise, in his efforts to stop the far right, he looks fated to slip into the same patterns as his counterparts in the U.S., and seed its continued rise.