French Election Briefing: Part 1
One of the main anchors of the European Union is up for re-election
France, one of the most influential countries in the European Union, is headed to the polls on 10 April to begin electing its next president. The result of this election will have significant ramifications on European unity and France's role in helping tackle the next crises that the EU faces. This article will explain how France elects its president and explore the four main candidates running for the job. A more comprehensive piece on the same election will come after the first round of voting when the two finalists for the presidency have been selected.
A refresher on the relevance of this election can be found in the piece linked below.
Two-Tier runoff system
The French presidential electoral system involves two rounds of voting, with the first round open to a single candidate from each of many registered parties. The second round is a runoff between the two candidates who scored the most votes in the first round. If an extremely popular candidate manages to get over 50% of the vote in the first round, they automatically win the presidency and avoid a second round. However, this is extremely unlikely on account that almost every French politician is disliked by large sections of the voter base.
The system does have the advantage of ensuring that the person elected into power has eventually garnered the seal of approval from a majority of voters. However, the system also heavily punishes multi-polarity in the first round and usually favors consolidation because, if various parties with a similar popular ideology split the vote in the first round, the two slots in the second round can get taken up by candidates with different and less popular ideologies who just happen not to have to face the same level of vote splitting. As such, democracies that use the two-tier runoff system tend to oscillate between two phases: one where two parties dominate the electoral calculus and one where that dominance grows stale and intra-party coalitions splinter, and fringe candidates can potentially come into power. France is currently in the midst of a transition, as while there are many competitive parties, it seems very likely that two specific candidates are headed to the runoff: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. In other words, the second round of the 2022 election seems set to be a rematch of the second round of the 2017 elections.
Candidates
Emmanuel Macron
Party: La République En Marche! (The Republic On the Move, abrev. LREM)
Party Ideology: European Liberalism (Classical Liberalism), Centrism, Pragmatism, French Patriotism, pro-EU
Emmanuel Macron is the current president and is running for re-election. During his term, he has positioned himself as a centrist and is often hard to pin down on concrete positions-- his outlook on many issues changes as context changes. Bringing a background in the finance sector to the table, he supports some left-wing positions (like the preservation of the 35-hour workweek and government investment in certain economic sectors) but generally falls on the side of free-market capitalism (supports tax cuts across the board, supports free trade, and supports overall spending cuts).
Many in the French press have called Macron's governing style as one resembling Jupiter, the Roman king of the gods. This analogy contends that Macron believes that France is best governed by a magnanimous personality who, while not inherently nationalist, has no strong leanings on policy and is only focused on furthering the goals of France and Europe. In this vein, Macron has attempted to expand global French influence; Macron has personally visited 67 countries to date in an official capacity. His lack of strong leanings can be seen in his approach to many issues concerning international affairs. At one point, he called French colonialism in Algeria "a crime against humanity" while visiting the country in 2017. However, in 2021, Macron said that France would never offer "repentance nor apology" for any alleged colonial atrocity that France committed. Regarding Syria, he first called for international rapprochement with Bashar al-Assad. However, when al-Assad reportedly used chemical weapons in Khan Shaykhun, Macron called for a UN military intervention against Assad. The results of this vacillating foreign policy have been mixed. On the one hand, many domestic critics believe that Macron's constant changes in tune make France look hypocritical and, therefore, indecisive and weak on the international stage. On the other hand, however, Macron supporters would probably point out that, compared to six years ago, France is far more involved in world affairs and garnered respect across a spectrum of countries. Moreover, except with Turkey, French relations with almost every other country have either improved or stayed the same under Macron.
One of Macron's few definitive and constant beliefs has been his ardent pro-Europe stance. Macron has consistently argued for more EU cohesion and cooperation by European countries. France has played a leading role in centralizing more power in Brussels on matters relating to economic cooperation. However, Macron has notably not been as keen to push for the standardization of social policy on issues relating to welfare, working conditions, and protection of minorities-- something that has drawn the ire of the left. This running theme of Macron drawing the ire of the left and not seemingly providing any response to them is re-occurring and is currently serving as a liability to him as the race has tightened.
This theme also shows up regarding Macron's positions on the relationship between the state and its minority citizens. Since the Samuel Paty beheading and a brief wave of Islamist violence in 2020, Macron has become a lot more focused on preventing radicalization in French mosques. To further this aim, he has used emergency powers to forcibly dissolve certain mosques and NGOs that he viewed as being too close/apologists for Islamic radicals. Macron and his party have argued that these steps are necessary to protect the French people and French culture from Islamic extremism. Many of the newly banned groups are universally viewed as security threats. However, Macron also moved against groups that had condemned religious violence but had also argued that people should not normalize caricatures of Muhammed. These moves have drawn the ire of some on the left, who claim that Macron's justification that these groups posed threats to French culture and secularism is not a substantive-enough reason to ban them and gives fuel to anti-Muslim racists.
During the immediate reaction to the beheading of Samuel Paty, a minister from Macron's party accused the right-wing National Rally (see Marine Le Pen, described below) of being too soft on Islamic terror when they opposed some of the bannings on civil-liberty concerns. Given that the left sees the National Rally as a racist party, this was seen by some on the left as Macron's party trying to "out-racist the racists."
Yet another example of Macron's tenuous relationship with the left is his response to the George Floyd related-protests that broke out in France. Many social justice activists in France thought George Floyd's death was also an opportune moment to confront issues surrounding racism in France and especially call for a re-examination of the glorification of certain problematic parts of French imperial history. Macron's response was mixed. He did concede that France does have a serious problem with structural and societal racism targeted against certain racial minorities and that the French government should work to right that. However, he also defiantly declared that France would never apologize for its history and that no "problematic" statue would ever come down in France. This stands starkly in contrast to his willingness to admit French culpability in the German persecution of French Jews between 1940 and 1944. He also broadly accused the French social justice movement of being a cultural import from the United States. In terms of messaging, Macron went deep into the idea of defiance against American-imported "wokeness" but did not highlight his own admission of French societal racism. One can probably imagine left-leaning French voters do not take kindly to the idea that their ideas are simply "American imports" and therefore pose an existential threat to France's society.
It would appear that Macron hopes that this style of messaging would bring center-right and right-wing voters into his coalition, thereby broadening it. However, this strategy not to have worked so far as polling for hypothetical second-round matchups reveals a very-tight race between him and Marine Le Pen (read below for more information). This is a surprising contrast from 2017, when he netted over 62% of the vote in the second round against the same opponent. However, many left-of-center people have simply become tired of being Macron's "scapegoat" and having their concerns being ignored and may plan not to even vote at all in the second round. Having said that, Macron's base of the professional class and center to center-right voters should easily put him above 25% in the first round, with some polls even predicting he will hit the low 30% benchmark.
Marine Le Pen
Party: Rassemblement National (National Rally, abrev. RN)
Party Ideology: Right-wing (formerly Far-Right), French Nationalism, Immigration Restrictionsm, protectionist, soft Euroskeptism (formerly hard Euroskepticism)
Marine Le Pen is arguably the leading opposition figure currently. She leads the right-wing National Rally, formerly called the National Front. Her father, Jean Marie-Le Pen, created the National Front as a far-right party that appealed to a certain type of voter, who, seeing a France that accepted relatively large amounts of migrants from former French colonies and appeared to be subservient to the multicultural superpower that was the United States, thought that France should return to the nationalist ideas of the 1930s. Unfortunately, many of the 1930s French nationalists formed the core of Vichy France and collaborated with the Germans in World War 2, leading Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front to engage in Holocaust minimalization and praise of the controversial Vichy regime. With the exception of the 2002 election, the party historically did very poorly, with their extreme anti-immigration agenda being the principal selling point. In 2002, the party surprisingly made it to the second round with 16% in the first round and a very split opposition. However, Jean-Marie Le Pen was defeated 82%-18% by conservative Jacques Chirac, and the National Front almost faded into obscurity as the party's view of Vichy France became too controversial for most French people.
That is until Jean-Marie Le Pen died and the party's leadership passed to his daughter, Marine Le Pen. Ms. Le Pen felt that the party was simply too radical to be effective and decided that moderation was the only way to realize some of the party's more tangible goals, like reducing immigration. Therefore, she immediately began a clean-up operation to purge the sections of the party that were too close to the Vichy-apologia wing, and sought to make the National Front hyperfocused on two things: limiting Muslim immigration to France and pushing for France to pull out of the Eurozone and possibly the European Union. As a result, her star rose until she made it to the second round of the 2017 elections. While she and her party were still seen as just too far right for most French people, she did get 33% in that round, which was an exceptional showing for the National Front.
Building off that strong showing, Ms. Le Pen put even more work into sanitizing the party for mainstream acceptance. She renamed the party from the National Front to National Rally, dropped the hard Euroskepticism for a softer focus on simply restricting freedom of movement in the EU (especially for non-EU citizens), and removed the clauses supporting the re-introduction of the death penalty and those opposing civil unions for French gays and lesbians.
To make Le Pen's current position on the European Union clear, she presently believes that France's membership in the European Union is a net positive. However, she would like the European Union to be a "Europe of Nations" where the EU respects the diversity of the European peoples. Thus, she opposes any European integration that seeks to move power from Paris to Brussels. While she also supports France's open borders under Schengen for goods and citizens from other EU states, she opposes the ability of non-EU citizens to move freely in the Schengen zone. This is quite the change from 2017 when she stood for actively disengaging France from Europe-wide institutions.
Le Pen has also shown flexibility when it comes to a lot of social policies. The National Rally has a surprisingly socially progressive platform for a European right-wing party, with the exception of race relations.
The party nominally stands for the protection of many existing LGBTQ+ rights in France, notably being accepting of civil unions and the right for transgender French citizens to switch their gender on documents. The National Rally also supports a form of feminism and the legality, though not the morality, of abortion. This is often justified as support for the doctrine of an "enlightened France," with the National Rally signing on as a way to not compromise to Muslims under the veneer of multiculturalism. On the other hand, when Le Pen actually campaigns, she doesn't shy away from taking a culture-warrior stance against western liberal values.
On immigration, she still stands for strong restrictions and especially supports a crack-down on illegal immigration into Europe (which affects France thanks to Schengen). She has also rallied against multiculturalism, believing that it cannot coexist with French culture. She has argued that Muslim immigrants to France have to accept French-style secularism to acquire citizenship. There would preferably be no more Muslim immigrants to France for the foreseeable future in her worldview. However, it should be noted that she also maintains that, unlike those to her further right, a certain form of Islam is compatible with French secularism, noting that other religious communities, like Catholics, have sacrificed a literal reading of their holy texts to adhere to French secularism. Interestingly, a lot of her rhetoric concerning non-Muslim migrants (from Africa and the Middle East) to France has been relegated to the background; it has not been brought up in the campaign so far.
In terms of economics, Le Pen takes a nationalist and populist stance, fusing elements from the left and the right. On the one hand, she believes that French taxes are far too high, especially on French businesses. She also stands against the current 35-hour work week. However, she also supports the nationalization of the French motorways and sections of the French deposit banking sector. She opposes almost all privatization efforts except for public broadcasting. Furthermore, she blames high French energy prices, especially for gasoline, on the liberalization of the European energy market since the late 1990s. Combined with her endorsement of protectionism and a level of autarky in certain sectors, her economic position is best described as nationalist and populist.
One of the more contentious parts of her worldview is her view of France's policy response to global events. Before February, she argued that France was too close to the United States and needed to re-exit NATO and push for a multi-polar world again. Le Pen still argues for France's withdrawal from international organizations like the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, arguing that these organizations simply back up America's dominance of international economics to the detriment of France. She had also previously called Vladimir Putin's Russia a defender of European values and Western civilization. She was traditionally considered one of Putin's most prominent allies in Western Europe. However, she has sharply condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 23 February, saying that while NATO may have played a provocative role, the invasion of another sovereign country is a "red line" that "is thoroughly condemnable." She has been coy about her position on French policy regarding Russia post-invasion and has done her best not to comment on the matter when asked.
Most polling indicates that Marine Le Pen will probably be the other candidate to make it to the second round, with her vote percentage hovering in the lower-to-mid 20% range.
Eric Zemmour
Party: Reconquête! (Reconquest!, abrev. R!)
Party Ideology: Far-Right, Total Immigration Moratorium, Social Conservatism, French Nationalism
Eric Zemmour and his movement are probably the real successors of the strain of thought espoused by Jean-Marie Le Pen (mentioned earlier under Marie Le Pen). He is known for making extremely controversial remarks that have previously led him to pay fines on counts of inciting racial hatred towards Muslims on three separate occasions. He argues for a complete shutdown of all immigration, supports the French government incentivizing non-White French citizens to surrender their citizenship and repatriate back to their ancestral countries, and, unlike Le Pen, believes that all immigrants pose a threat to France, not just Muslim ones. He also believes that all Muslims support jihad and oppose the values of France.
Zemmour himself is a journalist and political pundit who is the son of Berber-Jewish parents from Algeria who moved to France when Algeria was still an integral part of France. He has always been involved with the far-right, frequently defending Jean-Marie Le Pen from allegations of antisemitism. Zemmour has always focused on the culture clash that results from his perception of the incompatibility between the French and Islamic ways of life. He has also written about what he believes to be the inner decline of France caused by the libertarian left born out of the radicalism of 1968. Besides these two issues, Zemmour's stance appears to be a replica of what Jean-Marie Le Pen used to stand for, especially in economic matters.
Zemmour himself is probably not on track to make the second round. He is currently polling in the mid-10% range. However, his main contribution to the race has been the further normalization of Marine Le Pen, as she comes off as the more moderate and sensible right-wing candidate when compared to Zemmour. This blunts left-wing charges of racism against her, as she can simply point to Zemmour to show that there are people with more extreme views than hers.
Jean-Luc Melenchon
Party: La France Insoumise (France Unbowned, abrev LFI)
Party Ideology: Left-wing to Far-Left, Marxian Socialism, Euroskepticism, Environmentalism, Anti-Capitalism, Left-wing Populism
Jean-Luc Melenchon is the only serious left-wing candidate in the race. However, he is also unappealing to many on the center-left, and his only real support comes from ethnic minorities (he is the only candidate to officially declare himself anti-racist), far-left activists and coordinating groups, and a specific type of populist voter that despises the status quo in general but, while not approving of multiculturalism and social leftism, also doesn't care enough about those issues when compared to economic leftism. Melenchon was in the center-left and formerly dominant Socialist Party until 2008 when he left it over it being too moderate for him. After a run in 2012 for president in conjunction with the French Communist Party, Melenchon worked to build his own force. Melenchon, while not disparaging the Communists, felt their economic policies were both outdated and too moderate and felt that their approach to social issues did not help bring more voters on board to the party.
The party calls for a comprehensive reformation of the French Fifth Republic into the French Sixth Republic, with the new iteration being both more democratic (greater direct democracy, greater ability to recall elected officials, and the re-distribution of a lot of presidential powers) and socialist (ensuring the common ownership of, and right to, air, water, food, living, and health; LFI also calls for protection of workers and labor rights to be in the Sixth Republic constitution as well).
The party is also heavily ecosocialist, with a strong focus on environmentalism. The party calls for a complete transition to green energy by 2050, a very difficult policy goal especially given that LFI does not consider nuclear power (which France is heavily dependent on) to be green. Ths party's stance on nuclear energy has been strongly criticized by the unabashedly pro-nuclear LREM, which maintains that France's diplomatic independence and national security are entirely due to the domestic nuclear energy supply, and the only type of energy that France could use whose procurement could take place entirely within their own borders is nuclear energy. LFI usually retorts by arguing that this position is a nationalistic attempt to divorce France from the world around them and a tool of French imperialism to vilify Russia (it's often presumed that France would be reliant on Russian gasoline for energy if they did not have their nuclear reactors).
The party's foreign policy can best be summed up in two terms: Anti-American and Anti-Liberal. The party dislikes anything to do with America, viewing it as a racist, imperialist country. LFI argues for France's departure from NATO and believes that France must move away from America if it seeks to be respected on the world stage. The party is also against all institutions associated with the "liberal order," including France's membership in the WTO, IMF, World Bank, and even the EU. LFI is arguably the most Euroskeptic party in the running, with its platform calling on France to exit almost every European treaty it has made, especially in regard to trade.
Melenchon himself serves as the thought-leader of his party and has almost single-handedly come up with the LFI platform. However, beyond his radical platform, he remains controversial due to credible accusations of antisemitism made against him. While his anti-Zionism has always concerned the public vis a vis rhetoric concerning French Jews, his beliefs seemed to hardened beyond that. In 2013, he accused French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, who is Jewish, of behaving "like someone who has stopped thinking in French, like someone who thinks only in the language of international finance." More recently, in 2021, he said, "I don't know if Jesus was on a cross, but he was apparently put there by his own people," in reference to police violence against French minorities. Many argued this remark, however, perpetuated the false notion that Jesus was condemned to death by the Jewish people, a sentiment that has fueled antisemitism in Europe for over a millennium. Melenchon also claimed that the values of Judaism are responsible for the emergence of Eric Zemmour and his far-right politics, with almost every other party in France condemning these remarks. To be fair to Melenchon, he has never been convicted in court on any charge of incitement of racial hatred against Jewish people, which is a crime in France. Furthermore, Melenchon insists that he cannot be antisemitic because he is anti-racist, but many French people (and specifically French Jews) find this argument to be unconvincing.
Melenchon is also currently polling in the mid-to-high 10% range and is unlikely to make it to the second round. However, he did defy expectations in 2017 regarding his electoral performance, so he can't be ruled out just yet. Moreover, it's worth noting that some Macron supporters are considering tactically voting for him in the first round in order to remove the right-wing from the second round entirely.
In conclusion
The French political scene is currently quite fluid, with the Russia-Ukraine conflict throwing a wrench into an already tumultuous election with various complex issues. I will be writing a follow-up piece after the first round, which will focus on the platform of the two candidates that clear the first round and the ramifications of the victory of either.