10:45 p.m., April 9, 2022
It is quite rare to see French political news making the front page of the newsletter specialized in national security issues on the American news site Politico. According to three high-ranking sources in the Biden administration interviewed by this media, a possible victory for Marine Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, could destabilize the Western coalition against Moscow. “It could put an end to France’s role as a European power and incite certain leaders of NATO member countries to hesitate in their choice to remain in the Alliance”writes Jonathan Lemire, the head of the White House service of Politico.
According to the sources who confided in him, a victory for the far-right candidate would lead to “break the delicate balance” built by Emmanuel Macron between the relationship he built with Vladimir Putin and France’s solidarity with Ukraine. The site’s international editor, Ryan Heath, adds that he remembers vividly the year 2016, when he tried to convince his interlocutors that the Trump-Clinton match was closer than expected. polls and that the Brexit camp was also stronger than announced by its detractors, but that Clinton and the anti-Brexit would eventually prevail. “Don’t make the same mistake this time”, he wrote on Saturday.
Read also – Presidential: how Macron and Le Pen are preparing their duel
This mirroring of the political shocks of 2016 with the presidential election in France this Sunday is not uniquely American. In the UK, the curator Daily Telegraphwho had clearly taken a position in favor of Brexit, predicted the “collapse” of the Republican camp. “Macron is hated by millions of leftist voters. These will not follow his calls to vote for him to stand up against Le Pen, writes one of its columnists. And when the dust settles, France may well have its first president.as if looking forward to it.
” A nightmare “
In Germany, on the other hand, there is a widely shared fear that Macron will fail to be re-elected. “France will also decide the future of Europe and it is better to take a close interest in it”, can we read under the signature of Matthias Krupa, the Paris correspondent of the center-left weekly The time. According to him, a victory for Marine Le Pen would have consequences “considerable”, with a weakening of the eastern flank of NATO and the western unity displayed over Ukraine. “That would be good news for Vladimir Putin”, he concludes. This analysis is shared by the former Czech ambassador to France Petr Janyska. In the columns of Diary N, the most read newspaper in the Czech Republic, he notes that Emmanuel Macron has become in five years “an important political figure in Europe, especially today, when the new German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has not yet established himself on the political scene”. For him, “the prospect of seeing Macron lose to Marine Le Pen, a Europhobic and incompetent candidate on the European field, is a nightmare”.
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The prospect of seeing Macron lose to Marine Le Pen, a Europhobic and incompetent candidate on the European field, is a nightmare
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In an opinion poll carried out last month in twelve EU countries, at the request of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 43% of Europeans polled (against 32% who disagree) trust France to defend European interests in the field of defense and security. Among the countries that served as the field for the study was Greece, where we remember the role played by the outgoing French head of state against President Erdogan’s Turkey when the latter displayed a behavior hegemony in the Eastern Mediterranean. The editor-in-chief of the English-language edition of the prestigious I Kathimeriní, a former correspondent in Washington, recalls that it was Macron’s France that facilitated the formation of a “united european front” to respond to the threat. “In these difficult geopolitical and economic times, it would be wrong to underestimate the value of strong and lasting relations with the country which has the first military power and the second economic power on the continent, writes Tom Ellis. The fact that a friend of Greece is virtually guaranteed to remain at the helm of this globally important country is another welcome plus. » It’s all in the ” nearly “.
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