This month, French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap election after Macron’s rival far-right Party had a strong showing in this month’s elections for the EU Parliament.
French voters showed signs of waning support for Macron’s Renaissance Party in the recent EU elections, where more than 370 million Europeans chose their representatives in the continental parliament. Preliminary results indicated that 31.5% of French voters supported Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, securing almost double the amount of ballots as Macron.
While EU election votes do not affect Macron’s presidency, the growth of Le Pen’s Party rings real alarm bells for the durability of Macron’s domestic support. In response to this historic surge, Macron dissolved the French Parliament and announced that Parliamentary elections would be held over two rounds in the next month. Observers see this as a move to ‘test the waters,’ a risky bid to emerge victorious over Le Pen. In his announcement, Macron expressed that his party’s loss in the EU elections was not something that he could leave “without a response."
While Parliamentary elections are separate to the presidential elections, there is a real possibility that Macron would need to elect a far-right Prime Minister. With promises to end mass migration and to strengthen ‘the purchasing power of the French people,’ Le Pen’s National Rally has amassed a prominent political presence in the country. In fact, in the last presidential elections held in 2022, voters forced Macron and Le Pen into a runoff, as Macron failed to secure a majority in the first round of votes. While Le Pen eventually lost 41%-58%, domestic support for her party’s far-right policies have strengthened, culminating in their recent victory in the EU elections.
The rise of the far-right in France was echoed across Europe. Voters across the EU showed surging support for their country’s far-right parties, leading to major gains against Europe’s centre and left parties. Notably, Italy’s far-right ‘Brothers of Italy’ party, led by Giorgia Meloni, saw an increase from 6% to 29% in its vote share. Moreover, Germany’s AfD party, known for their anti-immigration policies, increased its vote share by 5%. This means that, while the new European Parliament will still be controlled by centrist and leftist political blocs such as the EPP, right-wing parties will bear a historically larger presence.
While individual values amongst far-right parties vary, they often incorporate nationalist, anti-establishment values. According to Monash University’s Ben Wellings, far-right movements have traditionally been “authoritarian, anti-Semitic and racist,” but are much more nuanced today with “republican, secular values” that are more so majoritarian than racist. Among these values is the idea of nationhood being one of “discrete borders and homogenous populations,” as Bhagat-Kennedy (2018) puts it. This manifests in the anti-mass migration policies that have given many far-right parties worldwide their notoriety, challenging liberal ideas of a free and globalised world.
Considering how far-right values oppose those of the political mainstream, why are we seeing a rise in support for far-right parties worldwide? We can definitely see a growing desire to sustain a strong national identity among voters, in a way that essentially opposes globalisation via mass migration. A great example of this is former U.S. President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ policies, a key part of which included travel bans of citizens from Muslim-majority states (Narea, 2020). Such a desire is catered well by the far-right’s nationalistic, populist rhetoric.
Nationalistic concerns are arguably underpinned by a growing dissatisfaction with current governments. A surging resonance with anti-immigration policies can be placed in a context of rising cost of living, exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. A German survey of its country’s youth found that young people were increasingly concerned with inflation, rising house prices, and social divisions, underpinning disillusionment towards government policies (Marsh, Erling & Latona, 2024).
With these concerns in mind, it is clear how far-right parties can use them to their advantage. Through their populist messaging, far-right parties have been increasingly seen as a means to solve the inadequacies of the left. As Albena Azmanova (2024) argues, the political mainstream has struggled to provide satisfying answers to the grievances of its voters. For instance, commitments to achieving climate goals and the ‘green transition’ have remained unconvincing when considering its social costs and unachievable targets, yet the ‘facile and implausible answers’ of far-right movements find greater comprehension among young, disillusioned voters. To put it simply, support for the far-right is framed by many as opposition to the “woke” leftist mainstream.
Whether the surging support for the far-right will last and grow further remains to be seen. Indeed, far-right parties have managed to amass a political presence too large to dismiss by current sitting governments. The outcome of France’s parliamentary elections, and the operations of the new EU Parliament, will become important arenas of political observation.
Comments