Free Preview of Members-Only Content
To view the requested intelligence, you must be a Stratfor.com member.
SummaryThe surprise showing of National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of French presidential elections poses a profound challenge to the idea of a transnational Europe: a Europe without borders and a Europe of citizenship separated from nationality. The hard-right parties will not win the presidency, but if a group of essentially fascist parties can win 20 percent of the vote in a time of relative prosperity, what will happen when times get tough? A deep-seated unease has emerged in France and the rest of Europe about the decline of the nation. Since no centrist party wishes to speak to this issue, and since the left has failed miserably in dealing with it, the far right -- by default -- is becoming legitimized as the only political force that will address the concerns of Europeans who fear the consequences of Europeanism and an American concept of citizenship. AnalysisThe surprise of the French presidential elections on April 21 is not how well National Front candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen did. Le Pen, who now faces a runoff with incumbent President Jacques Chirac on May 5, was nearly as successful in the last election. There were, however, three real surprises in the vote. The first is how fragmented the French political system has become: Almost half of the voters cast ballots for someone other than Chirac, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin or Le Pen. The second surprise was how badly the left did. Le Pen and the other hard right-wing parties were essentially tied with the socialists and communists. That represents a profound collapse of the French left. Finally, there is the surprise that Le Pen, who has been seeking the presidency since 1974, has not gone away. Even with relative prosperity and peace, the deep passions that Le Pen taps into remain.You can get a sense of the roots of the situation by considering the geography of the election. Jospin carried only one province, Midi-Pyrennees, Le Pen swept the entire Mediterranean coast and the eastern border of France and Chirac took the remainder of the country. There is great significance in this geography. The Mediterranean coast faces North Africa, where great waves of immigrants to France originate. The eastern frontiers are similarly inundated by immigrants passing through Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. It can be put this way: Chirac carried only a single borderland province -- Aquitaine, along the Spanish border -- and Le Pen carried every other border province save one, which went to Jospin. The borderlands are not only the most vulnerable to immigration, they are also the place where the experience of the European Union is most striking. The French eastern frontier has never been stable: It was the subject of centuries of war, and its very instability has made it an important measure of national well-being. Today it is exceedingly difficult to experience the border. The European Union has not eradicated the frontier so much as turned it into an administrative convenience.
| Stratfor Members, please log in at the top left hand corner |
