Marine Le Pen, who ran in Burgundy the day after entering the second round of the French presidential elections, could not have been clearer: “I don’t want to leave the EU,” she said. “That’s not my goal.”
However, much of what the far-right leader of the Rassemblement National (National Assembly) wants to do – on the economy, social policy and immigration – implies a breach of EU rules, and her possible arrival at the Élysée Palace next weekend could prove to be disastrously prove the 27-strong block.
Le Pen may have dropped earlier pledges to take France – a founding member of the EU, its second largest economy and half of the vital Franco-German engine that has powered it since its inception – out of the single euro currency and bloc.
In the 2017 election, fears of the economic fallout from these policies, particularly among older voters concerned about their savings, are widely believed to have contributed to her dizzy second-round defeat to pro-European Emmanuel Macron.
This time, the EU does not even appear by name among the dozen or so key issues on Le Pen’s election manifesto. However, many of their concrete policy proposals blatantly contradict the obligations of EU membership.
Opponents and commentators have dubbed the strategy “Frexit in everything but name”: an approach no longer aimed at removing France from the bloc but aiming to fundamentally reshape it, leading to a crippling standoff with Brussels could.
“Le Pen’s EU policy is: ‘We’ll stay on the bus, but we’ll drive it off the cliff.'” said Mujtaba Rahman, the European director of consulting firm Eurasia Group. It would “try to destroy the EU from within” and was “a much bigger threat to the EU status quo than Brexit,” he said.
Pascal Lamy, chief of staff to former European Commission President Jacques Delors, said a Le Pen victory would be a bigger shock “than Trump was to the United States or Brexit was to Britain”.
Their “sovereignist, protectionist, nationalist” agenda would be “completely at odds with France’s commitment to European integration” and includes “proposals that are a total breach of the treaties that France has signed,” he said.
Key to Le Pen’s plans is an early referendum on a proposed “Citizenship, Identity and Immigration” law that would amend the constitution to give French citizens “national priority” in employment, welfare benefits and public housing — a measure that would this is not compatible with EU values and rules on free movement.
Le Pen’s plans include a “national priority” for French citizens in areas such as public housing. Photo: Daniel Cole/APThe same referendum would establish “the primacy of national law over European law” to allow France “not only to control immigration but in all other areas to balance its European engagement with the preservation of its national sovereignty and the defense of its interests bring to”. says their RN party.
The aim would be to allow France to benefit from a “Europe à la carte” by being able to pick and choose from the parts of EU legislation it likes and dislikes – a non-starter for the bloc passed by the 27 was forcibly excluded during the Brexit negotiations with Great Britain.
“This is absurd,” said Jean-Louis Bourlanges, a centre-right MP and chairman of the French parliament’s foreign affairs committee. “As soon as you affirm the primacy of national law, you no longer have European law. Marine Le Pen has refused an official exit, but her program is incompatible with France’s continued membership of the EU.”
Le Pen also aims to reintroduce border controls on imports and people, in violation of EU and Schengen rules, and unilaterally cut France’s contribution to the EU budget – when the bloc’s multiannual financial framework for 2021-2027 already does is fixed. Further plans to reduce taxes on essential goods and fuel would violate EU free market rules.
Big questions may remain about how much of this program could be implemented domestically and in the EU context. Le Pen’s ambitions would be thwarted if she failed to win a parliamentary majority in June’s elections, and EU legal experts have warned that even a referendum on the primacy of national law would breach European treaties.
French lawyers also say that the country’s highest court, the Constitutional Council, would throw out Le Pen’s plan for a referendum by presidential decree – to bypass parliamentary approval – precisely because any referendum to change the constitution must have the support of MPs and senators.
The EU as it exists today, Le Pen said earlier this year, is “completely neglected and domineering nations,” a “pushy and authoritarian” bloc enmeshed in “a globalist ideology of open borders” that “destroyed our identity.” “. “.
Her vision, she said, is an “alliance of nations … respecting peoples, history and national sovereignty” whose members could “prefer their own companies for public contracts” and restore “permanent controls” at their borders.
But even if it failed to declare the supremacy of French law and establish a national preference, the fine print in Le Pen’s program seems inexorably leading France into a conflict relationship with the EU – with political chaos as a result, since France is indispensable Roll inside the block.
“She could totally bet [the EU] stall or paralyze,” said Georg Riekeles, a former European Commission official, who predicted a “dramatic weakening” of the EU’s ability to deal with crises, from security to climate.
Le Pen has vowed to pull France out of NATO’s integrated command structure and remove troops and arms from joint management. She also wants to demolish French wind farms, a strike against France’s EU renewable energy targets. “Every topic just gets more complicated,” said Riekeles.
EU insiders fear a Le Pen-led France would also give national-conservative governments in countries like Poland and Hungary a big boost, potentially aligning themselves with capitals that have long challenged the supremacy of EU law and into a fight involved with Brussels.
“It would stop any attempt to change things in Poland and Hungary,” said French MEP Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, who works for the rule of law. While the Green MEP believes the EU institutions and single market would survive under a Le Pen presidency, she believes it would be “the end of a rule of law, values-based European Union”.
For the EU, a President Le Pen could mean a five-year “empty chair” crisis, Lamy suggested, citing the events of 1965 when then French President Charles de Gaulle boycotted the European institutions over the budget.
“Certainly in the short term it would be a big problem over the next five years,” he said. “I have a hard time believing that if she was elected with the program that she has, she would be re-elected.”