Sarkozy wins back party leadership, but road to French presidential election remains very long

Nicolas Sarkozy took a further step on the road to his political comeback over the weekend, as he won back the leadership of France’s centre-right UMP party. The former French President secured 64.5% of votes in an online survey of UMP members, finishing well ahead of former Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire (29.2%) and outsider Hervé Mariton (6.3%).

Sarkozy was always going to win, but the outcome is most certainly below what he was hoping for. In 2004, he had sailed through the leadership election with over 85% of the vote. Still, he holds again the reins of his “political family” – to use his own words – and has already made at least two interesting announcements:

• The UMP will change name before the next round of local elections in March 2015. 

• He will set up a committee of former UMP prime ministers to help him manage the party – although the idea has reportedly not gone down particularly well with François Fillon, one of the former prime ministers supposed to sit on this committee. 

On this blog, we have noted how Sarkozy’s political comeback has the potential to really spice up the French debate over Europe. The former French President has this year repeatedly spoken of returning half of the EU’s powers to national governments. He also wants to scrap the EU’s passport-free Schengen travel area in its current form and replace it with a more selective ‘Schengen II’, which could only be joined by countries adopting the same immigration policies.

Sarkozy’s political strategy looks pretty clear: take a tougher, more ‘realist’ stance on Europe and immigration to stop the UMP losing voters to Marine Le Pen’s Front National. What is far from clear at this stage, though, is whether the new line will draw unanimous support from the rest of Sarkozy’s party.

Another important point to keep in mind is that the victory in Saturday’s party leadership poll does not automatically make Sarkozy the centre-right candidate for the 2017 French presidential election. A separate ‘primary election’ is due in 2016, when Sarkozy is going to face at least one much tougher rival: former French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé.

How that duel will end is anyone’s guess, but recent opinion polls suggest that Juppé would have a better chance of victory in case of an ‘open primary’ – where members of smaller centrist parties can vote alongside with UMP members to elect a single centre-right presidential candidate. Sarkozy has so far spoken in favour of an ‘open primary’, although he looks reluctant to involve the Democratic Movement (MoDem) in the exercise. The centrist party led by François Bayrou actually endorsed François Hollande in the run-off of the 2012 presidential election against Sarkozy, and Bayrou has made no secret of his support for Juppé as the centre-right candidate in 2017.

Finally, Sarkozy remains (directly or indirectly) involved in a series of pending legal cases that may well dog his campaign.

The road to 2017 is still very long. 

Sarkozy held in custody: A blow to his mooted comeback and a gift to Le Pen?

Nicolas Sarkozy has been detained for questioning by the French judicial police this morning, over allegations of influence-peddling (trafic d'influence). No formal charges have been brought so far, but prosecutors are investigating whether Sarkozy had promised to help a high-ranking French judge get a lucrative job in Monaco in return for insider information about other investigations relating to the financing of Sarkozy's presidential campaign in 2007.

This story emerged from the wiretapping of phone calls between Sarkozy and his lawyer, Thierry Herzog, that French prosecutors had started last year as part of a separate case - the alleged financing of Sarkozy's presidential campaign by the Gaddafi family.

According to the French media, the conversations revealed that Sarkozy and his lawyer were not only receiving confidential information on the on-going investigations, but were even aware of being wiretapped - given that Sarkozy had reportedly bought a new mobile and was using it to talk to his lawyer under the pseudonym Paul Bismuth.

We will see how the investigation evolves, but it could have important implications. Over the past few months, Sarkozy's political comeback has looked increasingly like a matter of when, not if. A few of his closest allies seem to think the former French President is the only one who can preserve the unity of the centre-right UMP party.

Indeed, Sarkozy could decide it is time to come back precisely in light of this scandal - engaging in a Berlusconi-style crusade against politicised judges. But it is far from clear whether the French electorate would buy this.

In the meantime, Front National leader Marine Le Pen is waiting in the wings, and could come out as the big winner. France's last two centre-right presidents, Jacques Chirac and now Sarkozy, have both been hit by legal scandals. It could be a great argument to persuade disaffected voters to shift to Front National. 

Farage wraps up his European Parliament group faster than Le Pen...thanks to a Front National defector

Nigel Farage has managed to form a new Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group in the European Parliament. The group comprises 48 MEPs from seven EU member states. The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats and the Latvian Farmers' Union both joined forces with UKIP. But the story of the day is that the seventh nationality Farage needed to wrap up his group has been provided by...a French MEP who defected from Marine Le Pen's Front National.

Joëlle Bergeron (see picture) was elected to the European Parliament with Front National last month. However, according to her, she came under pressure to give up her seat to another member of the party deemed as more 'orthodox' and closer to Le Pen. A couple of days before the European Parliament elections, Madame Bergeron had raised a few eyebrows in Front National's leadership by speaking out in favour of giving immigrants the right to vote in local elections in France. She eventually decided not to step down as an MEP, but she quit Front National and joined UKIP's group.   

How these parties will coexist remains uncertain. For example, UKIP wants to quit the EU, and Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star Movement is a rather unpredictable quantity that doesn’t want to leave the EU and supports a financial transaction tax. Indeed, the fact that parties will be allowed to vote independently on each specific issue could help make the alliance more sustainable.  

As we noted in a recent briefing, European Parliament rules mean the EFD group - as all the others - will be entitled to millions of subsidies every year. According to our estimates, based on 2012 figures, Farage's new alliance could claim in total around €5.6 million a year - €3.8 million for the group in the European Parliament, and €1.8 million for the affiliated pan-European political party and foundation. UKIP is not a member of the latter two, so it will only be entitled to a portion of the money specifically devoted to the European Parliament group.

So Nigel was faster than Marine, but Le Pen still has a good chance of forming her own group. She was in Brussels yesterday for a meeting with her new allies, and Polish MEP Janusz Korwin-Mikke was sitting at the table (see picture) - most likely a sign that Poland's Congress of the New Right (KNP) is on board. This means Le Pen only needs one more national delegation to finish the job. Difficult, given that the deadline to register new groups expires next Tuesday, but definitely not impossible.  

Farage suffers another defection: can he still put together a group in the European Parliament?

With the deadline for the registration of European Parliament political groups set to expire early next week (the European Parliament's equivalent of a transfer window), even the moves of individual MEPs can be decisive.

Nigel Farage suffered an unexpected blow yesterday, as Dutch MEP Bastiaan 'Bas' Belder (see picture) announced that he would leave UKIP's Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group and join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) - the Tories' group.

This complicates things for Farage, who now needs MEPs from at least three more member states (other than UK, Italy, Czech Republic and Lithuania) to gain the seven countries needed to keep his EFD group alive.

Time is running out, but there are still a few options out there, including:

• The Sweden Democrats (who have also applied to join the ECR group); 

• German satirical party Die Partei; 

• Poland's Congress of the New Right (who are also in talks with Marine Le Pen);

• Bulgarian MEP Angel Dzhambazki of the Bulgarian National Movement (VMRO).

Meanwhile, there has been no news from the Le Pen-Wilders front this week. They also need two more countries to wrap up their group. Given that Farage and Le Pen have both ruled out joining forces with Golden Dawn, Jobbik and the German neo-nazi NPD, the room for manoeuvre is now narrower, and the two may well end up contending for the same MEPs. The next few days are going to be interesting.

Grillo joins Farage, but UKIP's group in the European Parliament is not a done deal yet

Now it's official: Italy's anti-establishment Five-Star Movement will try to form an alliance with UKIP in the new European Parliament. Beppe Grillo launched an online survey of Five-Star members and activists on his blog yesterday, and 78% of votes went for Nigel Farage's EFD group.

The survey has drawn criticism from the Italian press, but also from some Five-Star MPs, for a number of reasons:

• Only 29,584 votes were cast, a microscopic amount when compared to the almost 5.8 million votes the Five-Star Movement won in the European Parliament elections;

• The survey only offered three options: EFD (UKIP's group), ECR (the UK Conservatives' group) or non-attached. Other groups that could have been more natural allies of the Five-Star Movement, notably the Greens and the European Left of SYRIZA and Podemos, were not included;

• The three options were presented on Grillo's blog in a way that appeared to privilege Farage's group. The description of the ECR was shorter and less enthusiastic in tone. As regards the non-attached group, the blog warned that being part of it would mean "limited or no influence on the legislative activities of the European Parliament", and would therefore prevent the Five-Star Movement from pushing its political agenda in Europe. A fair point, although it can also be quite difficult to impose your views if you are sitting in a group where no-one agrees with you on certain issues.

Still, the verdict of la rete (the internet) is sacred for Grillo and the alliance with UKIP will go ahead. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out. Although they both emphasise the importance of referenda and direct democracy, the Five-Star Movement and UKIP are not exactly soulmates. Energy policy, EU farm subsidies, financial regulation, the financial transaction tax, GMOs and the EU-US free-trade deal (TTIP) are all issues on which the two parties do not see eye to eye.   

Indeed, the deal between Grillo and Farage is that their parties will sit in the same group, but will vote independently. This could help make the alliance sustainable in the longer term.

So where does this leave Farage with the formation of his group in the European Parliament? The bad news for UKIP is that they still need two national factions to wrap up the group. At the moment, parties from five EU countries are on board: UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Lithuania and the Czech Republic.

On the other hand, though, Farage is now ahead of Marine Le Pen when it comes to the number of MEPs in the respective groups. Farage has 45 MEPs on his side, Le Pen only 38 (42 if you count the Polish KNP party, whose participation has not yet been confirmed).

Will Le Pen and Farage both succeed in putting together a group? And whose will be the largest one? We will likely get the answer over the next couple of weeks.  

Who will win the race for the most anti-EU MEPs: Farage or Le Pen?

***Update 18:30*** 

We flagged up earlier that Beppe Grillo was in talks with Nigel Farage and it looks like they have gone well:

#Grillo and #Farage agree to "begin discussions" over new EP group. They will meet again in coming weeks. http://t.co/5CSRVAXyCI #EP2014
— Vincenzo Scarpetta (@LondonerVince) May 28, 2014

This could be a very interesting development - stay tuned!

***Original Post***

The dust is beginning to settle after the European elections, and aside from the drama over the appointment of the European Commission President, the other big developing story is the exact composition of the groups within the new European Parliament.

As we predicted in our pre-elections briefing, despite many commentators predicting the its demise, the ECR group survived, albeit in a diminished state. However, there is a chance it could still end up making up its loses by attracting fresh recruits such as the Belgian N-VA, the Finns party, and, more controversially, the AfD or the Danish People's Party. There has been speculation that Law and Justice could move to the EPP but we consider this unlikely.

Therefore, the big question is: how will the record number of seats for a whole range of anti-EU and protest parties translate into EP groups? (regular readers will know you need at least 25 MEPs from at least 7 different member states). Assuming there will be no formal alliance between the two, the question is whether there will be two 'anti-EU' groups - a 'moderate' group headed by UKIP and Nigel Farage and a 'far right one' headed by Front National and Marine Le Pen, and if so, which one will be larger. Farage and Le Pen virtually have the requisite number of MEPs on their own but it remains to be seen whether they can get 6 other national factions on board.

As we illustrate below (click to enlarge), theoretically, the numbers are there for both but it depends heavily on how exactly the parties end up lining up. UKIP's EFD group are potentially more attractive to new members, but they are also more vulnerable to losing MEPs both to the ECR and to Le Pen's new European Alliance for Freedom (EAF) group, with Lega Nord having already jumped ship.

Click image to enlarge

Le Pen has just given a press conference in Brussels, but nothing new emerged. For the moment, her alliance includes five countries and 38 MEPs - what she described as an "extremely solid basis". Therefore, two more countries (and parties) are needed to wrap up a group, but Le Pen, Wilders & co. were all extremely tight-lipped when asked what these parties could be.

While the neo-fascist MEPs will remain beyond the pale for everyone, the question is will Farage and Le Pen want to link up with parties like Janusz Korwin-Mikke's Congress of the New Right? This could be the missing piece of the jigsaw for both Farage and Le Pen but given that Korwin-Mikke has said that it is "not possible to rape a woman" and that "there is no proof Hitler knew about the Holocaust" the question is whether the domestic reputational costs of such an association would outweigh the benefits. An intriguing possibility would be a Farage-Grillo alliance (the two met today) but ultimately we think this is unlikely.

One potential - and highly ironic - scenario would be if neither group attracts enough national factions in order to satisfy EP rules thereby missing out both on lucrative taxpayer subsidies as well as a highly visible platform from which to undermine the EU from within. In the longer term, could this yet lead to a rapprochement between Le Pen and Farage?

The anti-EU vote: Spot the difference

Question: What's the difference between these two opinion polls for this month's European elections?

Answer: Ok, the percentages in the bottom graph are slightly higher, but there is a striking similarity.

The top graph plots the front runners in the French European elections: Marine Le Pen's Front National, the centre-right opposition UMP, and Francois Hollande's governing Parti Socialiste.

Meanwhile, the bottom graph plots the latest European election poll results for UKIP, Labour and the Conservatives.

There is always a tendency to see the anti-EU/government/establishment phenomenon as unique to one's own country. These European elections are likely to prove otherwise.

Would it not be easier if 'Brussels' simply dissolved the people and elected another?

In less than a month's time voters across the EU (that is those who decide to vote) will head to the polls to elect the new European Parliament. Ahead of the elections there has been a lot of speculation about the surge in support for a range of populist anti-EU, anti-austerity, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment parties and what this will mean.

Breaking the parties down into these sub-groups illustrates that the potential 'anti-EU vote' is a complicated phenomenon. In a new briefing published today, we estimate these parties could win as much as 30.9% of the vote in May, up from 24.9% in 2009. This will give them 218 out of 751 seats (29%), up from 164 out of 766 (21.4%) in the current parliament. (You can see our criteria for categorising the parties in the briefing).

These parties, loosely termed by Open Europe as the ‘Malcontents Block’, span the political spectrum and differ substantially from each other, ranging from mainstream governing parties to outright neo-fascists, and will not therefore form a coherent block. The largest increases are among the anti-establishment parties typified by Beppe Grillo's Five Star Movement in Italy and the anti-EU vote is largely driven by the rise of the Front National in France and UKIP in the UK. Having said this, we acknowledge that the European elections are in part used by anti-establishment parties to drive a domestic agenda, sometimes with limited links to "Europe". Still from free movement to the bailouts, European issues are now trickling through to voters' decisions.

Sources: Vote Watch Europe and Open Europe calculations

However, despite the strong performance of these anti-EU parties, the EP will continue to be dominated by parties which favour the status quo or further integration. The vote share of parties identified by Open Europe as being ‘critical reformers’ – parties which believe the EU needs fundamental reform if it is to survive – is set to go from 53 to 39 seats.

The net effect of the anti-EU vote could therefore ironically be to make the EP more integrationist: by crowding out critical reformers, by reinforcing the corporatist tendency of the two main groups who will want to freeze out the anti-EU MEPs, and by binding the EP and Commission closer together.

Source: Vote Watch Europe and Open Europe calculations

Another one to watch out for is voter turnout. If turnout is roughly the same this time around (43%), we estimate that 74.4% of all voters will have voted against the EU, for radical change, or not bothered to vote at all, with only 25.6% of all eligible voters actively turning out to vote in favour of status quo/more integration parties.

This is not to say that all 'non-voters' are anti-EU or anti-status quo - some have tried to put words in our mouth to that effect (somewhat predictably). However, it clearly reinforces the European Parliament's remoteness from voters and the thin democratic mandate that MEPs can rely on to push their agenda in the Parliament. Some may be tempted to see voter apathy as a 'net neutral' - we don't know how these voters would vote after all and they're voting for other things apart from Europe anyway. This is a familiar argument that has been used many times in the past as a pretext for pressing ahead with more integration. However, to conclude that voter apathy in fact means 'endorsement' is naive, intellectually dishonest - and outright dangerous as it'll only create even more fertile ground for an even more hostile response in future.

Source: Vote Watch Europe and Open Europe calculations

Worryingly for the UK and other liberal minded EU governments, the share of MEPs explicitly dedicated to free market policies is also expected to fall from 242 (31.6%) to 206 (27.4%).

Source: Vote Watch Europe and Open Europe calculations

All this means that the EP elections may be bad news for David Cameron. The EP has an effective veto over some of Cameron’s potential flagship reforms (outlined in his recent Sunday Telegraph article), including EU-US free trade talks, services liberalisation and rules on migrants’ access to welfare.

The consequence of giving the European Parliament more and more power under successive EU treaties is that these elections matter. MEPs now have equal status with national governments in the vast majority of EU policy areas from regulating working time to bankers' bonuses. Despite this, turnout has fallen in every European election so far and this time around we could see more anti-EU MEPs elected than ever before.

The usual response from the Brussels bubble to voter apathy is that people don't 'understand' the EU. Perhaps, this time politicians might spend more time trying to understand why the electorate is looking for alternatives to the likes of Schulz, Juncker and Verhofstadt or not bothering to vote at all.

Hollande expected to announce cabinet reshuffle after local election 'punishment'

If you want to get a sense of how badly the latest French local elections went for President François Hollande, have a look at today's front page of left-leaning French daily Libération:

 

The headline means 'The punishment', and it summarises the outcome of the local vote pretty well. According to data from the French Interior Ministry, the centre-right (that is, the opposition UMP and its allies) gained 139 towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants compared to the 2008 local elections. The centre-left (Hollande's Socialist Party and its allies) lost 160. The fact that the Socialist Party managed to retain Paris - where Anne Hidalgo was elected as the city's first female mayor - cannot compensate for what was an unequivocal defeat nationwide.

Marine Le Pen's anti-EU Front National took control of eleven towns - in addition to Hénin-Beaumont, where the party won an outright victory in the first round. Though not impressive in absolute terms (see this blog post from last week for some more background information), the score is nonetheless politically significant. It shows how French voters increasingly see Front National not just as a mere 'protest party', but as a credible alternative for power - albeit so far only at the local level and in a very limited number of towns.

Meanwhile, the immediate consequence of yesterday's local election fiasco is that Hollande is expected to announce a cabinet reshuffle any moment. The French President has just come out of a two-hour meeting with Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, whose departure looks very likely, judging by the headlines in the French press over the past few days.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who enjoys a pretty high approval rating compared to his fellow cabinet members (in part thanks to his tough stance on certain crime and migration issues), is broadly seen as the favourite to replace Ayrault as Prime Minister. Laurent Fabius, currently serving as Foreign Minister, is another name being mentioned by the French media. 

However, in light of the latest macroeconomic indicators, the impression remains that moving a few ministers around will not be enough to restore the French government's credibility vis-à-vis the electorate - unless the policies also change and France makes some real progress in pushing ahead with the reforms needed to restore its competitiveness within the eurozone.

Marine means business: Front National makes big gains in French local elections

Yesterday was a big night for Marine Le Pen's anti-EU Front National, which emerged as the main winner of the first round of the French mayoral elections. The party won an outright victory in Hénin-Beaumont, a former mining city in northern France, and finished ahead in six other towns - where its score ranged from 27.69% (in Digne-les-Bains) to 40.3% (in Fréjus). 

In Marseille, the second most populous French city, Front National finished second with 23.16% of votes, behind the centre-right UMP (37.64%) - relegating President François Hollande's Socialist Party to third place, with 20.77% of votes.

We will have to wait until tomorrow evening for the final results. But, according to the preliminary figures made public by French Interior Minister Manuel Valls, the centre-right (that is, the UMP and its allies) won 46.54% of votes nationwide - well ahead of the centre-left (Socialist Party and allies) on 37.74%. So not exactly a night to remember for Hollande.

Le Pen's party was only running in 597 of the almost 37,000 municipalities up for grabs, and therefore won only 4.65% of votes nationwide. However, this is much better than in 2008 - when Front National only managed to run in 119 municipalities and won around 1% of votes nationwide in the first round. This suggests it may be consolidating as an electoral force at the local level.

The second round of the mayoral elections will take place on Sunday 30 March. Interestingly, several top Socialist figures (from Hollande's spokeswoman Najat Vallaud-Belkacem to Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault) have called for the centre-right to support a so-called Front Républicain - whereby the Socialists, the UMP and other centrist parties join forces to stop Front National candidates prevailing in the second round. However, UMP leader Jean-François Copé has this morning dismissed the idea.

So unlike Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, whose PVV party saw its support decrease slightly in last week's Dutch local elections, Front National is on a clear upward path - and it would be no surprise if it came out as the largest party in the upcoming European Parliament elections. It will be interesting to see how yesterday's results will influence the campaign. We have already noted that several centre-right French politicians - including Nicolas Sarkozy himself - have embraced, at least in rhetoric, a less idealistic approach to 'Europe'. Given the Front National's strong showing, this is only likely to continue.

Irony alert: Farage could be the biggest loser if Le Pen and Wilders manage to form a new anti-EU group in the European Parliament

Belonging to a group in the European Parliament matters. Groups receive money on top of individual MEPs' allowances and are given additional group staff. It also boosts chances of representation on committees (where EU laws are discussed and amended before they are put to a vote in the plenary).

Therefore, the prospect of Marine Le Pen, the leader of France's Front National (FN) and Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), forming a new anti-immigration, anti-EU group in the next European Parliament is causing some distress around Europe. When this was last attempted - with the so-called Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty (ITS) group - it quickly fell apart. The Greater Romania Party (PRM) didn't quite approve of Alessandra Mussolini - the granddaughter of you-know-who - labelling Romanians "habitual law-breakers" and thus withdrew from the group. Rather telling.

So will Wilders and Le Pen succeed to unite parties that, per definition, don't always like each other? According to EU rules, 25 MEPs from at least a quarter (seven) EU member states are needed to form a group.

By our count, at least four more parties from as many EU countries look willing to join forces with FN and PVV: Italy's Lega Nord (who currently sits in the same group as UKIP), Belgium's Vlaams Belang, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the Sweden Democrats (whose leader today said they are considering joining). This leaves FN and PVV only one party and country short.

This could be filled by, for example, the Slovak National Party (SNS) - which is pretty hardcore, and currently sits with UKIP. Bulgaria's Ataka would probably also be quite keen to join, though Le Pen recently called the party "the real extreme right" (not meaning it favourably). Greater Romania may struggle to reach the 5% national threshold needed to win seats in the European Parliament, but could be another possibility.

The Danish People's party has said it won't join the group, while Greece's Golden Dawn and Hungary's Jobbik seem to be off-limits for everyone.

So this might come down to the wires. An interesting twist, though: if Le Pen/Wilders succeed, this could mean problems for Farage. UKIP currently sits in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group - which includes 31 MEPs from twelve different countries, but:

• Farage could lose several MEPs from Italy, with Lega Nord joining FN and PVV, and the other Italian, Magdi Cristiano Allam, standing for re-election with a different party (Fratelli d'Italia);
• The Slovak National Party might join the Le Pen/Wilders group in the end;
• The (True) Finns are talking to the European Conservatives and Reformist (ECR) group, where the UK Conservative Party sits;
• The two Greek MEPs in UKIP's group are from LAOS - a party which is currently polling below the national threshold of 3%. This means their re-election is not certain;
• In addition, seven out of twelve EU countries in UKIP's group are currently represented by only one MEP.

So Farage could need both new parties, additional MEPs and more countries to be able to set a group after May's European elections. And if not managing a group of his own, where will he go? Will he reconsider his decision not to join forces with Marine Le Pen, something he ruled out in the past  when he said UKIP and FN are from "completely different political traditions and background"?

What is clear is that the formation of political groupings in the European Parliament will be a messy affair - and then we haven't even begun to discuss the ECR...

Guess who?

Here's a game for you. Guess who said the following: 

11 March (part one)

"We can't leave the management of migratory flows only to the technocrats and the courts. We need a common discipline for border controls. It must be possible to sanction, suspend or expel from [the EU's border-free area] a non-compliant country."

11 March (part two)

"Only firms which produce in Europe will benefit from Europe's public money."

23 April

"[We] don't want a 'colander Europe' anymore. This is the message I've heard. A Europe that doesn't control migratory flows is finished."

27 April

“I propose that, if we have not obtained reciprocity with our biggest [trade] partners at the European level within one year, we apply the following rule unilaterally: We will reserve all our public markets.”

29 April

"Europe has let the nation state weaken too much. Nowadays, the countries that believe in national spirit are the countries that make gains...Without borders, there's no nation, no state, no republic, no civilisation."

Pretty tough stuff. So who is it? Someone from the UK Independence Party? An activist form the (True) Finns? An MEP from Lega Nord? A eurosceptic socialist?

All wrong. It's Nicolas Sarkozy (in his efforts to fish in Le Pen waters).

But no one would dare call him 'anti-European' of course...

German Media Looks For Meaning in French Presidential Election Result

The first round of the French presidential elections took place yesterday. As expected, the contest for the keys to the Elysée will  be between Socialist candidate François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy in the final run-off on 6 May (when, incidentally, the Greek elections are also taking place).

The key question now is what decision the almost 45% of French voters who didn't vote for Hollande or Sarkozy yesterday will make in two weeks' time. We will look at the significance of the result for the future of France, the eurozone and the EU as a whole in a separate post. For the moment, allow us to deploy our various language skills to round up how the media across Europe have responded to the results of the first round.

For all manner of reasons, particularly the future handling of the eurozone crisis, the reaction from Germany is particularly interesting. A leader in FAZ argues,

“[France] reveals a scary political landscape…A third of voters have voted for candidates with a completely alien view of the world, but who have in common one thing: explicitly nationalist, anti-European beliefs.”

Benjamin Reuter, Paris correspondent for German economic weekly Wirtschaftswoche, notes,

“The core concern should be that none of the candidates have discussed the hard reforms the country is facing...If France slides further into the direction of the abyss, the future of the euro will also be in danger - with or without Le Pen.”

An opinion piece in Deutsche Mittelstands Nachrichten sees yesterday's results as a “painful defeat” for Merkel’s vision of Europe, going on to note,

“The brutal rejection of the euro by the French, with 20% of the vote for [far-right leader Marine] Le Pen, can be described as an earthquake, whose tremors will above all else be felt in Brussels.”

A similar line is taken by Marco Zatterin - Brussels correspondent for Italian daily La Stampa. On his blog, he argues that Hollande is not, and should not, be seen as a threat in Brussels, but stresses,

“The pitfall is elsewhere. It's in the 20% of Le Pen-ists confirming that one in five voters in Europe are tempted by euroscepticism. This is a reality that the EU must stop underestimating.”

In Greek daily To Vima, columnist Giorgos Malouhos notes, perhaps hopefully, that Sarkozy began to lose popular support since he chose to “faithfully” support Germany's austerity-focused vision of the future of the eurozone, and argues,

“Sarkozy's defeat is not just his own: It's also the defeat of German policy.”

Spanish business daily Expansión is already looking at the final showdown. It argues,

“The victory of one or another candidate would also change the scenario in Spain. Hollande’s victory – and a Europe with ‘Merkhollande’ – would allow Spain to take it easier on its deficit reduction targets. On the contrary, five more years with Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée – and ‘Merkozy’ in Europe – would mean further tightening the rope around Spain’s neck.”

Johan van Overtveldt, Editor in Chief of Belgian magazine Knack, writes,

“Hollande's victory doesn't promise much good, neither for France nor for the euro...If Hollande pushes through his policy intentions, there will be guaranteed panic.”

Van Overtveldt draws an interesting comparison between Hollande and France's former Socialist President François Mitterrand, noting that, in the early 1980s, the latter “conducted a policy based on higher social charges, more taxes, limiting free entreprise, more government employment and nationalisation of various companies. This policy quickly resulted in a social-economic and financial catastrophe.”

But what about the French papers?

In French business daily Les Echos, Editorialist Jean-François Pécresse sees the glass half full, as he argues,

“Almost two-thirds of the electorate have voted for some form of economic realism, either on the right or on the left. The French are now offered these and no other options. The first one, championed by Nicolas Sarkozy, advocates a tested policy of quick deficit reduction via public spending cuts and support for competitiveness. The second one, embodied by François Hollande, contents itself with a slower path, which privileges taxes, especially on enterprises, and safeguards our old habituation to the welfare state. One [option] has yet to convince the French, the other one has yet to convince the markets.”

In La Tribune, François Roche sees Sarkozy moving further to the right on the road to the second round, as he argues,

“By dint of ploughing Front National’s land, Nicolas Sarkozy has made Marine Le Pen the big winner of the first round of the presidential election. He is now in a trap: if he wants to win the election, the only thing he can do is to try and attract people who voted for Front National in the first round…His only chance is to present himself as the champion of Front National’s own values.”

While the Le Pen phenomenon has understandably gained a large share of the column inches across Europe, it is perhaps some of the German media's reaction to the results that is the most revealing and significant in terms of the future. A Merkozy divorce would undoubtedly make things interesting and the fact that such a large share of the French electorate is clearly dissatisfied with the major parties has certainly caught the eye in Berlin - where many could begin to fear that France may not have the stomach to stay the course with Merkel's eurozone rescue strategy.

The End of the Road?

Nicolas Sarkozy officially announced his candidacy for re-election during a televised appearance broadcast on TF1 last night. The decision hardly came as a surprise. UMP officials had kept tight-lipped about the President’s schedule, but his recent foray into Twitter and lengthy interview in Le Figaro on Sunday fuelled well-founded speculation in Paris. Sarkozy had hoped to delay the announcement until March, but it is believed that party officials’ exasperation and his unpopularity in the polls forced his hand. As Francois Hollande, election frontrunner and Socialist candidate slyly commented on Tuesday morning, “it seems [that the announcement] comes earlier than expected, don’t you think? Perhaps he believed it was a matter of urgency”.

What are his chances?

According to the latest polls by IFOP-Paris Match published just before the interview last night, Francois Hollande leads with 30%, followed by Sarkozy with 25.5%. Marine Le Pen, far-right candidate for the Front National ranks third place with 17.5% of voting intentions.

Historically, French presidents up for re-election rarely experience a boost in the opinion polls following the announcement of their candidacy. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac each experienced slight increases in opinion polls, which were short-lived and generally failed to change the course of the election. Polling experts believe that Sarkozy would be lucky to experience a boost, since his announcement had been widely expected. As Jean-Marc Lech of polling institute Ipsos remarks “for the announcement to create an effect, it ought to surprise the electorate. But nothing [last night] was surprising, other than the exact date and the location of Sarkozy’s interview”.

Rivals for the Elysee dismissed the event. Le Pen called it a “non-event…of no political importance” and centrist candidate Francois Bayrou slammed Sarkozy’s time in office “his record speaks so much louder that anything he can say”, mocking the incumbent’s analogy of a captain refusing to abandon his ship, “when a captain has steered his ship onto rocks, it’s time for change”.

But historical precedents need not necessarily apply. In 2007 Sarkozy proved himself to be an expert campaigner, able to inject dynamism into the Elysee race, and capable of appealing to wide sections of the electorate. Recent positive figures on French growth (0.2% in the last quarter of 2011, compared to recession in the rest of the eurozone) could bolster the incumbent’s argument that he has the experience to lead an embattled France through the economic crisis.

On the whole though, this looks unlikely. Sarkozy has led an erratic unofficial campaign since January. The proposal to introduce reforms to the sclerotic French labour market last month was widely perceived as an electoral mistake. It is unpopular with the French, and is ill-timed, if necessary. Angela Merkel’s endorsement of his re-election was awkward, as it came weeks ahead of Sarkozy’s official announcement, and jars with his recent decision to appeal to Le Pen’s anti-euro, anti-German supporters. In addition, his pledge last night to “put work at the heart of everything” was too similar to his undelivered 2007 campaign promises.

It's argued that Sarkozy's real chance in re-election lies with Le Pen. If the FN candidate fails to secure the 500 mayoral nominations needed to present herself at the ballot, Sarkozy will benefit from a boost in support. Despite his pro-Euoprean stance, it is likely that far-right supporters will be wooed by promises of referendums on the rights of immigrants and the unemployed. This is something Sarkozy is aware of: tellingly, he refused to back Bayrou’s plea for a reform of the nomination system. A poll published earlier this month found that Sarkozy and Hollande would equalise in the first round if Le Pen did not run in the election. However, although this would provide Sarkozy with a boost in the first round, it wouldn't make a difference to his second round chances, where he continues to trail behind Hollande with 43% compared to the Socialist candidate's 57%. In all likelihood, Le Pen will not make it to the second round, so her inability to run on the ballot won't change Sarkozy's chances. Looks like Nicolas needs to try harder to win over the electorate.

Which candidate has the most to gain from France's downgrade?

The race to the Elysee took another turn on Friday when Standard & Poor’s downgraded French debt. The decision had been widely anticipated by the markets since December, when the ratings agency conducted a review of Eurozone finances. Although all three French parties called for reforms of the ratings agencies – Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP called for central banks to establish rating criteria, while Socialist candidate Francois Hollande mooted the possibility of a European agency – some candidates reacted better to the downgrade than others.

However, what is the likely effect of the downgrade on the presidential race? A LH2 poll conducted on Friday and Saturday in partnership with Yahoo! and published on Sunday shows that, compared to a month ago, Sarkozy and Hollande saw their ratings slip while the Front National's Marine Le Pen saw her third-place position behind Hollande and Sarkozy boosted. Sarkozy's share of first round voting intentions fell to 23.5% from 26%, Hollande's fell to 30% from 31.5%, while Le Pen gained 3.5% points to 17%.

Le Pen – whom 26% of voters wish to see in the second round according to a separate TNF poll published Friday – used the announcement as an opportunity to justify her policies, which include a return to the franc and protectionist measures such as a 3% import tax to finance her proposed minimum wage and social spending increases. During a jubilant press conference at the weekend, she argued that S&P’s ruling was “validation of the analysis [she] had carried out for the last two years” and that Nicolas Sarkozy’s “boomerang of lies” would soon come flying back to hit him in the face.

Hollande was quick to blame Sarkozy’s economic record. During a conference in French Antilles on Saturday the Socialist candidate remarked that “it’s not France that was downgraded but a certain policy…a certain president”. But his pointedly delayed response to Moody’s decision to maintain its French AAA rating was seized upon by UMP officials as proof that he was rejoicing in France’s downgrade. “Is the Socialist Party more cheered up by bad news for France than good news?” asked the UMP secretary Jean-François Copé.

Hollande also appears aware of the limitations the new downgrade sets for his presidential programme, conceding at the weekend that “not everything will be possible” and his pledge to “re-enchant the French dream” at the beginning of his campaign has itself been downgraded to one of offering “lucid hope”. Hollande has announced that he will propose strong measures to combat France’s ailing economy by the end of the month, a move which commentators have – perhaps rather too quickly - likened to Sarkozy’s 2007 muscular campaign of economic reform.

Sarkozy was the candidate most exposed to the downgrade for obvious reasons. Having brought the question of the country’s debt rating to the forefront of the national consciousness during his campaign to reform pensions (justified on the basis that they would reduce public debt and therefore maintain France’s triple A) he had the most to lose. As he reportedly confided to allies in December, “si la France perd son triple A, je suis mort” (if France loses her triple A rating, I’m dead).

In a conference in Madrid yesterday, Sarkozy downplayed the relevance of the S&P judgment, refusing to answer journalists’ questions because “what happened Friday, is Friday”. Today Prime Minister François Fillon denounced the left’s “small media tsunami which was at times almost as indecent as it was irrelevant”. Sarkozy has instead preferred to focus on employment ahead of the election, organising a ‘social summit’ tomorrow, where he will unveil long-overdue plans to reform France’s labour market, less than one hundred days before the election.

Sarkozy looks like the biggest victim of the downgrade, but Francois Hollande shouldn’t count himself lucky just yet. The Socialist candidate has insisted that he – unlike Sarkozy - never pledged any specific debt rating for France (an admission of pessimism unlikely to win over many additional French voters one would suspect). His pledged reforms to be “tough on the dominance of finance, tough on growth policies, tough on new instruments…tough on tax” don’t appear to have convinced voters either. Le Pen should be able to benefit the most off the back of the downgrade, but her weak performance during a televised interview on Sunday exposed her shoddy grasp of basic macroeconomics (and maths) which has left her poll standing stagnate at 18% today.

In sum, none of the three leading candidates have been able to use the downgrade to their benefit just yet but the race still looks open with only three months before the polls start for real.

Sarkozy's outbursts reveal an insecurity

A reconstruction by the Financial Times of what happened at the EU summit on 9 December reveals that it wasn't only a classic Franco-British dispute which raised the tensions of the discussions.

The newspaper discloses that following French President Nicolas Sarkozy's dismissal of David Cameron's demands, Denmark and its College of Europe-educated Prime Minister also came under fire:

Sarkozy went on to rebuke Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the freshly elected Danish prime minister, for the temerity to speak up for a deal at 27. “You’re an out, a small out, and you’re new. We don’t want to hear from you,” Mr Sarkozy said.

It's not a secret that France has never been too happy with either the EU's internal market or the 2004 enlargement, a view forever symbolised in the notion of the "Polish plumber." Sarkozy's latest outbursts suggest that the French government is not only once again looking to further its old agenda of a smaller, more centralised and more protectionist union but that he is personally starting to feel the heat.

The elephant in the room is the upcoming French presidential election. L'Express carried a headline recently noting that French far-right leader Marine "Le Pen is riding the wave of the debt crisis and the euro" with some polls putting her on 20% for the first round of the election, to be held in April. As opposed to her father, who made it to the second round of the Presidential election back in 2002, she's not just running with an anti-immigration message but also rallies very firmly against the euro, something that wasn't on the political agenda in 2002.

Polls show that Sarkozy is currently expected to gain around 25% of the vote in the first round, while the socialist candidate François Hollande is a few percentage points ahead.

Since April is still some time away and the euro crisis can still take many turns (including France losing its triple A rating) the French press is starting to realise that there is a serious danger that a Le Pen could again make it to the second round.