Angela
Merkel and Marine Le Pen: one of them will shape Europe’s future
Natalie Nougayrède
The
two women have fiercely conflicting visions, and their battle for the
continent’s soul will be crucial
Friday 2 September
2016 19.22 BST
Two very different
women hold Europe’s future in their hands – and neither of them
is Theresa May. The battle for Europe’s soul is being waged between
Angela Merkel and Marine Le Pen. This is a clash of personalities and
visions: Germany’s chancellor v the leader of France’s Front
National, the largest far-right party in Europe. As Britain prepares
to leave the EU, the Franco-German dimension of the continent’s
destiny has arguably never been so important since the end of the
cold war. What is at stake is momentous: whether Europe can survive
as a project, and whether fundamental principles such as the rule of
law, democracy and tolerance can be salvaged. The battle will play
out nationally in 2017, in key elections in France and Germany, but
it concerns all Europeans.
It may seem strange
to reduce Europe’s existential crises to just one personal
confrontation. Merkel has been in power since 2005 and is trying to
remain there, while Le Pen may dream of being in office but has never
approached it (last year her party failed to take control of a single
French region in local elections). Some may ask: why would a French
opposition figure count more than the man currently sitting in the
Elysée Palace? But François Hollande has become so weak – even
more so with this week’s resignation of his economics minister,
Emmanuel Macron – and terrorism has transformed French politics to
such a degree that Le Pen’s prospects now stand out as a key
defining factor of where France, and Europe for that matter, may be
heading.
It is only partly
reassuring to say that Le Pen has little chance of becoming president
next year (the French electoral system makes that difficult). The
trouble is, in recent months, her brand of anti-Muslim, xenophobic
and nationalistic politics has spread across the French mainstream
right like wildfire. Le Pen is fast capitalising on this summer’s
burkini episode and on the national trauma left by jihadi terrorism.
It’s hard to see which French politician or movement can find the
authority and strength to push back against her ideas, or counter
their appeal among the French suburban middle classes as well as in
rural areas. Nicolas Sarkozy hopes to win primaries in November, but
his whole strategy hinges on imitating rather than disputing Le Pen’s
line of thinking.
Angela Merkel and
François Hollande
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‘Le Pen lashed out
at Hollande, describing him as a subdued ‘vice-chancellor of
Germany’, after he’d denounced populism in a speech.’
Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/AFP/Getty Images
Marine Le Pen’s
single most powerful opponent is to be found outside France: Angela
Merkel. Le Pen hates Merkel, and Merkel despises Le Pen. They
confront each other in a fight of European proportions. Le Pen has
often attacked the chancellor – once describing her as an “empress”
imposing “illegal immigration” on the whole of Europe. Merkel
sees Le Pen as an acute political threat to Europe, although she has
rarely mentioned her in public. If France embraces the far right, the
wider impact will be far more serious than it was with, say,
Hungary’s illiberal slide.
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Merkel and Le Pen
have never met, nor have they had any reason to. Once, last year,
they sat not far from each other in the European Parliament chamber –
but Merkel kept her gaze away, out of contempt. That day, Le Pen
furiously lashed out at Hollande, describing him as a subdued
“vice-chancellor of Germany”, after he’d denounced populism in
a speech.
These two women have
one thing in common and one thing only: the depth of their political
conviction. Angela Merkel has been unwavering in her message that
welcoming refugees is the right thing to do; Le Pen fumes against
“rampant Islamisation” of the continent. Merkel wants to save the
European project; Le Pen is fully aligned with forces that want to
dismantle it (she recently said on CNN that France had become an EU
“province”). Merkel nurtures the transatlantic link; Le Pen
admires Putin’s Russia – her party sits at the heart of
pro-Kremlin networks in Europe, financial ones among them. Le Pen’s
ideology draws from France’s historical far right, the ideas of
Charles Maurras and colonial racism; Merkel is the daughter of a
Protestant pastor for whom individual freedoms are paramount values.
Le Pen has always made much about being divorced and smoking
cigarettes (trying to cast herself in the image of a modern woman);
Merkel’s personal style is more subdued, which isn’t to say her
character is less ironclad.
For decades what
drove the European project was the so-called “Franco-German
engine”. It is now all but broken – mainly because of France’s
economic weaknesses, which have severely unbalanced the relationship.
What now drives European politics is a different kind of
Franco-German equation, one in which Merkel, often faulted for her
eurozone policies, has on several occasions attempted to give
France’s socialist government some financial breathing space
against Le Pen – including by sparing France the wrath of the EU
commission for disrespecting deficit targets.
Merkel’s anti-Le
Pen strategy has largely been discreet. But in May she made it very
plain. Speaking at Berlin’s French lycee, she said she would try to
make sure “other political forces are stronger than the Front
National, if that can be accomplished from abroad”. It was an
unusually blunt statement. Le Pen’s supporters immediately accused
the chancellor of meddling in French politics; but Merkel has long
identified the populist dynamics connecting Le Pen’s rise with the
rise of Germany’s far-right AfD, a party that threatens to upend
politics in her own country.
This coming Sunday,
regional elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern offer a key test for
Merkel’s CDU party, which has trailed in local polls behind the
AfD. Le Pen will be watching closely, and little wonder: one of the
two will shape the future of Europe. The question is which
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