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FRENCH ELECTIONS

Far-right scents power as tense France ready for snap vote

A divided France braced Saturday for high-stakes parliamentary elections that could see the anti-immigrant and Eurosceptic party of Marine Le Pen sweep to power in a historic first.

Published: 29 June 2024 08:40 CEST
Far-right scents power as tense France ready for snap vote
Michele Martinez, candidate for the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) holds a campaign leaflet in Collioure, southern France. Photo: Matthieu RONDEL/AFP.

The candidates formally ended their frantic campaigns at midnight Friday, with political activity banned until Sunday’s first round of voting.

Most polls show that Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) is on course to win the largest number of National Assembly seats, though it remains unclear if the party will secure an outright majority.

A high turnout is predicted and final opinion polls have given the RN between 35 percent and 37 percent of the vote, against 27.5-29 percent for the left wing New Popular Front alliance and 20-21 percent for President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist camp.

That would put France on course for political chaos and confusion with a hung parliament, said Mujtaba Rahman, Europe head at the Eurasia Group risk consultancy.

READ ALSO: OPINION: When the mask slips, Le Pen’s party reveals its fundamental racism

“There is no precedent in recent French politics for such an impasse,” Rahman said.

Macron’s decision to call snap elections after the RN’s runaway victory in European Parliament elections this month stunned friends and foes and sparked uncertainty in Europe’s second-biggest economy.

The Paris stock exchange suffered its biggest monthly decline in two years in June, dropping by 6.4 percent.

In an editorial, French daily Le Monde said it was time to mobilise against the far-right.

“Yielding any power to it means nothing less than taking the risk of seeing everything that has been built and conquered over more than two and a half centuries gradually being undone,” it said.

‘Racism and anti-Semitism’

Brice Teinturier, head of the Ipsos polling firm, said there were two tendancies coming out of the campaign.

“One is a dynamic of hope” with left wing and RN supporters believing that “there can be a change”.

But Teinturier also highlighted “the negative politicisation, the fear, the dread caused by the RN and in a part of the electorate by the France Unbowed and the coalition of the left”.

Macron apparently hoped to catch political opponents off guard by presenting voters with a crucial choice about France’s future, but observers say he might have lost his gamble.

Many have pointed to a spike in hate speech, intolerance and racism during the charged campaign. A video of two RN supporters verbally assaulting a black woman has gone viral in recent days.

Speaking on the sidelines of a European summit in Brussels late Thursday, Macron deplored “racism or anti-Semitism”.

Support for Macron’s centrist camp collapsed during the campaign, while left-wing parties put their bickering aside and to form the New Popular Front, in a nod to an alliance founded in 1936 to combat fascism.

Support for the far-right has surged, with analysts saying Le Pen’s years-long efforts to clean up the image of a party co-founded by a former Waffen SS member have paid off.

“If we come to power, we’ll be able to demonstrate to the French people that we’ll keep our promises,” Le Pen wrote on X, vowing to bolster purchasing power and “curb insecurity and immigration”.

Under Macron, France has been one of Ukraine’s main Western backers since Russia invaded in February 2022.

But Le Pen and her 28-year-old lieutenant, party chief Jordan Bardella, have said they would scale down French support for Ukraine, by ruling out the sending of ground troops and long-range missiles.

Le Pen has ratcheted up tensions further by saying that the president’s commander-in-chief title was purely “honorific”.

Power-sharing

If the far-right obtains an absolute majority after the second round of voting on July 7, Bardella could become prime minister in a tense “cohabitation” with Macron.

His party’s path to victory could be blocked if the left and centre-right join forces against the RN in the second round.

A defiant Macron has stood by his decision to call the elections, while warning voters that a win by the far-right or hard left could spark a “civil war” in France.

He has insisted he will serve out the remainder of his second term until 2027, no matter which party wins the legislative contest.

READ ALSO: What’s at stake for foreigners in France if far-right Jordan Bardella becomes PM?

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ELECTIONS

‘Double border’ and ‘national priority’: French immigration under far right

The far-right party of Marine Le Pen has vowed to promote a policy of "national priority" and drastically curb what it calls uncontrolled immigration in order to "preserve French civilisation."

Published: 3 July 2024 17:54 CEST
'Double border' and 'national priority': French immigration under far right

If it wins an absolute majority in the second round of snap elections on Sunday, the Rassemblement National (RN) party said it would adopt an “emergency” law on immigration, but the constitution and European treaties would have to be revised for the party’s programme to be implemented.

Here AFP looks at some of the most controversial proposals of the party which is currently the most popular in France.

‘National priority’

The Rassemblement National’s top political pillar is the principle of “national preference” — now called “national priority”. It would limit welfare benefits to only French nationals.

In April, France’s Constitutional Council rejected a request by the centre-right Republicans party to hold a referendum on immigration, which would include a proposal to make access to some welfare benefits conditional on the length of residence in the country.

Disadvantaged people should not be deprived of France’s “policy of national solidarity,” said Laurent Fabius, the Socialist head of the Council. The principle of national preference was contrary to the constitution, he said.

READ MORE: What is ‘national preference’ for the French and how would it hurt foreigners?

‘Double border’

RN party leader Jordan Bardella, who will become prime minister at the age of 28 if it wins an absolute majority, has proposed the introduction of a “double border”.

The measure would tighten controls at the European Union’s external borders and impose the return of national border controls to reserve free movement within the Schengen zone to “European nationals only”, says the RN.

Yves Pascouau, a senior research associate at the Institut Jacques Delors, said that Europeans cannot be banned from entering France.

“The Schengen agreements establish freedom of movement,” he said, adding that calling a referendum or revising the constitution would not help.

“This goes beyond French matters — it’s the Schengen agreements that apply,” he said.

State medical aid

Under the RN, the AME, which guarantees free medical care to undocumented migrants who have resided in France for more than three months, would be replaced with a fund covering only life-threatening emergencies.

The 1946 constitution states that France will ensure to the individual and to the family the conditions necessary for their development and that it guarantees the protection of health for “all.”

“To completely restrict this state medical aid, or to abolish it with all the dangers for public health that this could create, is to ignore the constitutional imperative,” said Anne-Charlene Bezzina, an expert in public law.

Birthright principle

The RN wants to abolish France’s centuries-old principle of “droit du sol”, which grants French nationality to people born in France to foreign parents on certain conditions.

The far-right party says that only people born to at least one French parent should have automatic access to French nationality.

Others can make a request to obtain citizenship.

France has recently moved to revoke birthright citizenship in the French Indian Ocean territory of Mayotte to stem migration.

Bezzina suggested that the restriction of “droit du sol” across France would not pass unless the constitution was revised.

“The acquisition of nationality is enshrined in an 1889 decree, and has been continuously applied,” she said.

Dual nationals

Ahead of the first round of parliamentary elections, Bardella sparked an outcry by saying his party wanted to ban dual nationals from holding jobs in a number of sensitive sectors such as security and defence. He said “very few people” would be affected.

Macron’s government has slammed the proposal, which violates the principle of equality.

READ MORE: EXPLAINED: The French far-right’s proposal to ban dual nationals from certain jobs

“The message that you send is dual nationals are half-nationals,” Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told Bardella in a tense debate in June.

The proposal opens up the possibility of “recourse before the European Court of Human Rights or the Council of State”, said Serge Slama, an expert in public law.

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