Even though Annalena Baerbock has only been Foreign Minister for four months, she is familiar with the diplomatic rule not to comment on the domestic politics of other countries. The Greens referred to this when asked before the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg how worried they were about the election results in France. After all, more than 50 percent of the voters chose candidates who represented pro-Putin and anti-EU positions. A sentence follows that can only be understood as support for President Emmanuel Macron: As a “European at heart”, it is a “heart’s concern” for her to stand together, especially in these times.
Jean Asselborn has been representing Luxembourg for almost 17 years and doesn’t think much of diplomatic rituals this Monday. “They are in a kind of political civil war,” says the Social Democrat about the French. The EU’s longest-serving foreign minister called the result, which led to the resumption of the duel between Macron and Marine Le Pen, “very, very worrying”. The EU is a value and peace project, but Le Pen would put it on a different track, Asselborn fears. “The French must prevent that.”
Le Pen wants to declare war on the EU institutions
Le Pen announced months ago that she would first and foremost travel to Brussels as president. You can take that as a threat. She wanted, she said, to declare war on the EU institutions that govern “without the people or even against the people”. The EU should become a union of “free nations”. Unlike in 2017, it is not calling for exit from the EU or the euro. But the fight for common law would probably be lost with President Le Pen, since she is on the side of Poland and Hungary. National law takes precedence, that is the position of the long-standing MEPs, whereby she is primarily concerned with questions of migration. The common European position on the war in Ukraine would be called into question, as would the “Green Deal”. Because Le Pen could block all climate laws that are currently going through Parliament.
“A France led by Le Pen would be an emergency stop for European integration, worse than Brexit,” said Manfred Weber (CSU) of the SZ. The group leader of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament and prospective new EPP leader calls for a “fire wall” to stop Le Pen, but also criticizes Macron. “His political concept of overcoming the established parties and distinguishing only between progressives and populists, while successful, has led to a deep division in society.” If there is no more competition in the middle, populists would become stronger. Macron is “partly to blame for the success of the populists,” says Weber, whose EPP party friend Valérie Pécresse received a disastrous 4.8 percent of the vote.
“Now everyone gather behind Emmanuel Macron,” wrote the SPD politician Michael Roth, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag and former Minister of State for Europe, on Twitter. “He or the demise of a united Europe. Sounds pathetic. But that’s how it is.”