Macron's risky move to trigger snap parliamentary election in France , after nationalists won the country's European elections, opens the door for a Le Pen government that wants to restore borders between EU countries. This is what John Litchfield, former international editor of The Independent and former Paris correspondent of the newspaper for 20 years, wrote in an article for POLITICO.
Ursula von der Leyen wants the French to eat insects. Who says it? Marine Le Pen said it. Le Pen has officially abandoned the extreme forms of attacks on Brussels cultivated by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Holocaust denier and founder of her far-right National Assembly party. She no longer advocates Brexit or the revival of the French franc. In fact, she and her de facto number 2, Jordan Bardela, triumphed in the European elections thanks to a fraudulent form of Europhobia. They took advantage of the vague knowledge of European affairs even among the pro-European part of the French electorate. As a Brit who lived in France for 27 years, I have a chilling feeling about the old English expression "déjà vu". The British tabloid press and the right wing of the Conservative Party prepared the ground for Brexit with a similar campaign of smears, lies and baseless claims that Britain would thrive if it was freed from the dead weight of European law.
Eight years after the Brexit vote, 55% of Britons think they made a mistake and only 31% still think the UK is better off outside the European Union. Strangely enough, Brexit, billed as a freedom movement by Le Pen at the time, was never mentioned by the National Assembly during the European elections. Some officials in Brussels are calling President Emmanuel Macron's decision to call early parliamentary elections a "Brexit moment" of France. Macron's risky decision to take on Le Pen, they say, is as foolish as former British Prime Minister David Cameron's attempt to take on Brexiters in a referendum in June 2016. Instead of destroying the right-wing threat with a bold vote, the danger is the French vote - like the UK referendum - simply to spark years of political and economic mutual recriminations. The comparison is wrong in one respect. In European terms, the elections in France are much more important. These may be the most destructive national elections in the 70-year history of the European project.
Bardella's European election manifesto calls for the replacement of a supranational union based on law with a "freely negotiated cooperation between member states, according to their interests and comparative advantages". It is a project that British Brexiteers could defend, disguised as EU reform. It is a revival of the old idea of a loose association of states that was rejected by the six founding members, including France, in the 1950s. The single market will be preserved in theory but destroyed in practice by allowing national preferences (ie protectionism) in agriculture and public procurement. Le Pen wants to restore borders between EU countries for citizens of "non-Schengen countries", from British and American tourists to undocumented immigrants. This is logical nonsense. How can borders be respected without hindering the freedom of movement of EU citizens? This is impossible.
Bardela's manifesto wants to "return the money to the French" by cutting part of France's contribution to Brussels. However, it remains silent that this money is legally and constitutionally the property (own resources) of the EU. Renunciation of EU contributions would require a change in the French constitution or an act of legal defiance by a future Bardela-Le Pen government.
And the insects?
The speeches of Bardella and Le Pen are littered with anti-European propaganda, with which the British tabloids prepared the collective consciousness of the United Kingdom for Brexit. In March, Le Pen said in a speech that the European Commission wanted to replace beef on French plates with insects. She linked the EU report of falling beef sales to Brussels' decision to allow imports of insect paste from Asia for limited use in some processed foods. This quackery was picked up by fact-checkers in the French media. In comparison, the loud claims of the "National Assembly" that it can painlessly "reform" EU, went largely unchallenged (with the exception of radio commentator Patrick Cohen).
The Brexiteers told a lot of little lies, but at least they were honest about their goal - they wanted to leave the EU. Le Pen and Bardela are selling French society a big lie. Or two big lies. The first is that a free group of countries would have the same economic power and advantages as EU rule bases and the single market. The second is that the government of the "National Assembly" could somehow enact these "reforms". They would have to be negotiated with 26 other countries or they would have to be imposed illegally.
Le Pen and Bardella can do enormous damage in a very short time. Facing a far-right government, Macron will retain constitutional powers over Europe, foreign policy and defence. But he could not force a far-right majority National Assembly to find money to support Ukraine or back new plans for a vast joint EU loan program for military investment. The amputation of the British limb has left the EU, sadly, crippled. A de facto retreat from the European project by a large and central founding state like France could be "deadly" (in Macron's words).
Why then did Macron take the risk of a Le Pen-Bardela government? All the anger in Brussels this week is directed at Macron, not Le Pen. Macron's camp claims that Le Pen's lies must be countered sooner or later. The European elections have become a referendum on Macron; they want the national election to be a referendum on, among other things, Le Pen's hidden agenda for Russia, Ukraine and the EU. These arguments were ignored during the European campaign and they can be repeated. Le Pen and Bardela know that the majority of French voters are vaguely pro-European. They also know that, like British voters, they are ill-informed about Europe and easily misled.