Far-right the likely big winner in France

National issues and strong national political leaders will dominate the election campaign in France, with the far-right the likely big winner.

The government of France is subject to the odd principle of a ‘monarchical republic’. The political landscape has always been shaped around strong political leaders who aggregate around them a party serving their political agenda. Former president François Mitterand brought the left back to power after taking over the Parti Socialiste (PS) in 1971. His successor, Jacques Chirac, created the Rassemblement Pour la République (RPR) in 1976. And Nicolas Sarkozy took control of Chirac’s Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) in 2005 to serve his own personal presidential ambitions.

The 2014 European Parliament election is not going to cut loose from this tradition: national issues and strong national political leaders will dominate.

Until 2004, France was one single constituency. European elections were organised on a national basis while a high-profile politician headed the list and led the campaign. But since 2004, the rules have changed, and France is divided into eight constituencies for the purpose of the European Parliament. Seats are allocated between the different constituencies in proportion to their population. The partition is implemented on the basis of one seat for an average of 780,000 inhabitants. And a list must secure at least 5% of the votes in order to win a share of the seats.

With the lists of candidates published in each constituency linked to that particular constituency, one might imagine that France’s European campaign has turned into eight different regional campaigns focused on a mix of European and local issues and dominated by regional political leaders. But this is not the case.

Instead of transatlantic trade, France will debate trade balance. Instead of the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, candidates will discuss shale-gas exploration. And instead of the potential political shift in the European Parliament, French newspapers will report on scandals about the two mainstream parties.

Marine Le Pen, standing for the far-right Front National (FN), Jean-Luc Mélenchon for the far-left Front de Gauche, José Bové for the Greens (EELV), Vincent Peillon for the PS, Brice Hortefeux and Michèle Alliot-Marie for the UMP: all of them are either former ministers, 2012 presidential contenders or the presidents of national parties. They are the main candidates for the European elections. They will be the main players in the nationwide televised debates, even though they are not standing against one other in the same constituency. Their concerns are mainly nationwide and not Europe- wide.

The short gap between municipal and European elections reinforced this tendency and has reduced the timeframe for the European campaign – the registration deadline for candidates is as late as 2 May. It has also driven an even closer focus on national issues. When President François Hollande reshuffled the government after the municipal elections and appointed Manuel Valls as prime minister, he also pledged to tackle the deficit and to respect France’s commitments toward the European Union. To reduce the budget deficit below 3% of gross domestic product, Valls has announced a plan to cut expenditure by €50 billion, which he is not likely to achieve. The plan was immediately criticised by the opposition but also by the left wing of the PS, which accused the prime minister of betraying Hollande’s presidential commitments.

Under pressure from the far-right

While the PS has been weakened by its dismal showing in March’s municipal elections, the centre-right UMP is engaged in a series of leadership clashes between Jean-François Copé and François Fillon. Scandals in both parties have undermined the legitimacy of mainstream politics. At the same time, the FN is in a position to make major electoral gains that would enable Europe’s far-right to form a group in the next European Parliament.

The most immediate and direct consequence of the dreadful local election results was the nomination of PS secretary-general Harlem Désir as minister in charge of European affairs. The nomination was seen by politicians on the right and the left as a tactical manoeuvre by Hollande and Valls to remove Désir from the limelight as well as from the European campaign – Désir was first on the list in Ile-de-France. Pervenche Bérès has replaced Désir as head of the list while former education minister Vincent Peillon took over as leader of PS’s national campaign. Peillon is standing in the Southeast constituency on a joint list of the socialists and the radical party.

The Greens (Europe Ecologie – Les Verts, EELV) achieved a major breakthrough in the 2009 European elections, winning 16.9% of the votes. But despite their participation in the government after Hollande’s victory in the 2012 presidential race, the Greens have been unable to build on this success. Predictions put them in sixth place with 7.5% of the votes, behind the Front de Gauche and the centre-right Alternative party – an alliance between the Union des Démocrates Indépendants and François Bayrou’s Modem.

The Greens’ leading light, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, an MEP for 20 years, is not seeking re-election. Replacing him will probably be the EELV’s greatest challenge in the upcoming elections. The party’s 2012 presidential contender, Eva Joly, who chaired the Parliament’s development committee, is second on the list in Ile-de-France, a position that should guarantee her re-election. The Greens’ national campaign is led by José Bové, who is also (along with Ska Keller of Germany) the European Greens’ nominee for the presidency of the European Commission.

A bad election for the EELV could have a major impact on the composition of the next European Parliament. French MEPs account for 16 of the Greens’ 58 members. If, as forecast, the Greens lose support in Germany, it leaves the group very exposed.

The alliance of the UDI and Modem could benefit from setbacks for the Greens. The Alternative has proven to be the only French party to implement a Europe-centred programme. It is the only major party not to comply with the ‘monarchical republic’ principle since its leader, Bayrou, is not standing in the European elections.

Alternative’s European image should enable its candidates – including MEP Marielle de Sarnez, who heads the list in Ile-de-France – to pick up votes from the Greens. With the expected decline in the British Liberal Democrat delegation and the potential absence of any German Free Democrats, the Alternative is likely to become one of the biggest national delegations in the ALDE group.

But the biggest change should come from the far-right. With predicted results of 23.5%, the FN is likely to consolidate its success at the local elections, when it conquered 11 town halls of cities with more than 10,000 inhabitants, a level not reached since the 1995 local elections. The FN is expected to perform particularly well in the Southeast constituency, long a stronghold of the far-right, where Jean-Marie Le Pen, former party president and Marine’s father, is heading the list. Marine is heading the list in the North constituency.

Latest opinion polls show the FN in first place, slightly ahead of the UMP, and at least four points ahead of the PS.

Le Pen has already announced that French far-right MEPs will form a group in the next Parliament with the Dutch far-right Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) of Geert Wilders as well as nine other smaller far-right parties, including Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ), Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, and Italy’s Lega Nord.

To form a group in the next European Parliament, the rules state: “25 members are needed to form a political group, and at least one-quarter of the member states must be represented within the group. Members may not belong to more than one political group.” Together with the PVV, Le Pen is expecting to have more than 25 MEPs. But she will have to find MEPs from another five different member states willing to sign up to the new group.

The failure of the Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty group, which lasted less than a year in 2007, highlighted the problems of forming a group for parties with different agendas, and that could be an issue again: the FN and the PVV want their countries to leave the EU, while the FPÖ wants to shape the Union from within.