Benedicte Berner
If elected president, Marine Le Pen will aim to undermine France’s system of checks and balances, in particular by diminishing the role of trade unions and reducing the scope of media freedom. She will also attack the principle of equality before the law by inserting a “national preference” clause into the constitution, notably regarding employment and social assistance.
Such a provision would weaken the rule of law and entail legal disengagement from fundamental European Union treaties on free movement of people and equal access to jobs in all EU countries. Le Pen’s wish to establish the primacy of national law is unconstitutional from the point of view of European law and would align France with the illiberal regimes of Poland and Hungary. Like Turkey and Russia, she would also not respect the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights.
A Le Pen presidency would mean economic and political disengagement from the EU, including a drastic reduction of €5 billion ($5.4 billion) in France’s contribution to the Union’s budget. Le Pen also intends to abandon France’s climate change ambitions. Her commitment to dismantle existing wind farms would increase the country’s dependence on gas and oil, as expansion of nuclear power is hamstrung by long lead times in building new power plants.
Her foreign policy aims to build a new European security order in which France would regard the Kremlin as a privileged ally and remove the country’s current economic sanctions against Russia. Such a policy would end long-standing Franco-German cooperation, isolate France in the EU, and fracture the West’s cohesion in the face of Russian aggression.
Furthermore, Le Pen wishes to take France out of NATO’s military command, thus entailing the country’s international disengagement at a time when a major war is underway in Europe.
In short, her presidency would lead to an illiberal, conservative, closed, and isolated France.
Joschka Fischer
Given Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine and his threats – including nuclear intimidation – against other Eastern European countries, a victory for Le Pen would be a major political triumph for the Kremlin. After all, France would change sides during the war. In military terms, France is by far the strongest EU member state, a nuclear power, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and the EU’s second-largest economy after Germany.
A Le Pen victory would be a disaster for France. The country’s long-standing allies would regard it as a loose cannon within the Western system, and its credibility would be destroyed.
Such an outcome would also be a mega-disaster for the EU. The prospect of one of the EU’s founding pillars pursuing an “empty chair” policy in Brussels for the next five years would mean five years of blockage. There would be no common security policy, no transformation of the EU into a geopolitical actor, no further enlargement, and no deeper integration. And that would be the best-case scenario under a President Le Pen.
The worst-case scenario would be the destruction of the EU, meaning that all the progress made in the last 70 years would be lost. Europe would revert to nationalism – a pure nightmare.
Make no mistake, this would be a realistic option under a President Le Pen. She would first turn to Russia and therefore split the EU. Together with the institutional impasse, this could lead to the outright collapse of the Union.
For NATO, a Le Pen victory would be a severe blow, but not as lethal as for the EU, as long as the United States sticks to its commitments. NATO would be weakened if a President Le Pen withdrew France from its integrated military command and reached out to Russia, but the Alliance’s unity would be strengthened under the pressure of this crisis.
In short, the election of Le Pen would be a major disaster for France, the EU, and NATO. But the biggest loss would be suffered by France in terms of trust and credibility, which could not be restored quickly. So, let’s hope for the best on April 24.
Maciej Kisilowski
A victory for Le Pen would likely put an end to the West’s principled engagement in Eastern Europe.
That engagement has been one of the most remarkable, value-based political projects in history. Instead of a bare-bones free-trade agreement when they joined the EU, Eastern Europeans got equal political power compared to Western Europeans in EU institutions, markets wide open to millions of their relatively low-paid workers, and tens of billions of euros in developmental aid. At the same time, through NATO, they received ironclad security guarantees stretching to St. Petersburg’s doorstep.
What the West got from its new members in exchange, so far, has been Brexit, triggered largely by popular resentment of mass migration from Eastern Europe, breathtaking disloyalty during the 2015 refugee crisis, constant fights with governments (notably those of Poland and Hungary) that oppose basic European norms, and, now, pressure to get Europe even more involved in Ukraine. But, to many Western Europeans, the war looks increasingly like an intractable Balkan conflict rather than a prelude to World War III.
Le Pen will bring this tired zeitgeist to its logical conclusion. It is hesitancy to defend Suwałki and Tallinn, not Rome and Lisbon, that will make Le Pen withdraw from NATO’s integrated command. It will not be Germans and Austrians, but Ukrainians and Poles, who will be enraged if she reverses course on the Russia sanctions. And it is the prospect of more Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants, not Dutch and Swedish newcomers, that will make her challenge the EU’s freedom of movement.
In fact, if an Eastern European exclusion from the fundamental freedoms is bundled with some relaxation of the Union’s scrutiny over the rule of law in the region, Le Pen may get support for such a deal from Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s de facto leader, or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
None of this will solve France’s key economic and social problems. Like Trump, Le Pen will eventually leave office after tumultuous years of racial tensions and failed governance. But the legacy of the West being done with Eastern Europe and its unceasing problems will endure. If that happens, Putin may, in the end, get what he wanted all along.
Charles A. Kupchan
A Le Pen victory would constitute a political earthquake for France, Europe, and the West. It would bring to power in Europe’s core a leader whose France-first priorities are inimical to the project of European integration. Le Pen promises to withdraw France from NATO’s military structure, a reckless pledge while Russia is busy carving up Ukraine. Her hostility toward immigrants mirrors the racist and illiberal impulses that animate Europe’s far right. Should Le Pen become France’s next president, she may well seek to govern through the dangerous brand of illiberal populism that infected Trump’s America and that continues to afflict Poland and Hungary.
Apart from its impact on French policy, a win for Le Pen would confirm the collapse of France’s ailing political center, to which President Emmanuel Macron has laid claim even as he has sought to woo Le Pen voters by tilting hard to the right. Should Macron nonetheless lose to Le Pen, especially if his defeat is followed by a Republican surge in the US midterm elections in November, her victory would constitute a severe setback to centrist forces across the West. That outcome would be especially bad news given that democracy is retreating globally, and a pugnacious Russia and headstrong China are teaming up to make the world a more illiberal place.
Even so, Le Pen’s bark could end up being worse than her bite; governing is always more difficult than campaigning. Just as the far-left Greek leader Alexis Tsipras tacked to the center after taking office in 2015, Le Pen would face similar incentives to stay within Europe’s political mainstream should she end up in the Élysée Palace. Western institutions have also proved remarkably resilient in the face of recent challenges. NATO ably survived the Trump era, and the EU has admirably weathered Brexit. Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine has strengthened Western unity, enhancing the ability of NATO and the EU to ride out Le Pen.
The sky would darken, but probably not fall, if Le Pen is elected. But it would be best not to run the test.