President Marine Le Pen’s first 100
days
What should the world expect if she
takes power?
By NICHOLAS
VINOCUR 4/20/17, 4:00 AM CET Updated
4/20/17, 9:29 AM CET
PARIS — This is the moment France’s ruling elite hoped they
would never see. Newly-elected, President Marine Le Pen is walking up a red
carpet to the door of the Elysée palace.
The date is May 14, 2017, one week after the far-right
leader of the National Front edged out her centrist rival Emmanuel Macron in
the final round of a presidential election. The ceremonial transfer of power
from one elected leader to another lasts for just a few minutes. Outgoing
President François Hollande greets the president-elect on the steps of her new
home, the nexus of French power, before he is whisked away in a Citroën with
tinted windows.
It’s a handover unlike any other in postwar French history.
The newly elected president wants to wrench the country in an entirely new
direction: pull it out of the European Union, rewrite its constitution, pivot
its foreign policy toward Russia. For now, France — and the rest of the world —
can only watch, and wonder. How much of her agenda will she be able to
accomplish?
True fiction
The prospect of a Le Pen presidency has occupied the French
imagination ever since the lawyer-by-training took over the National Front
party from her father, Jean-Marie, in 2011. A comic book exploring this
hypothetical, titled “La Présidente,” shot to the top of bestseller lists in
2015 and clung there for weeks. (The series is now in its third installment,
imagining her second term in power.)
Analysts say that markets have yet to fully price in the
risk of Le Pen’s election, which means that the “correction” in positions that
would follow it would be particularly abrupt.
But as the first round of France’s election on April 23
draws near, fictional accounts are reaching their sell-by date, and the world
is starting to grapple with the possibility of her actually being elected. If
polls are to be believed, a Le Pen victory remains unlikely. But there is a
scenario, not too farfetched, under which she could win. And that slim chance
has consequences too great to ignore, especially for investors who hold hundreds
of billions of euros in French government debt and company stock.
What should the world expect from President Le Pen? A
partial answer can be found in her 144-point campaign platform. It promises
radical, jarring change that starts with rewriting the Constitution; enforcing
the principle of “national preference” for French citizens in hiring as well as
the dispensing of housing and benefits; reinstating the franc as the national
currency; shutting down the country’s borders and suspending its participation
in the EU free-travel zone; pulling out of NATO’s integrated command structure;
and slashing immigration to one-tenth of its current annual level.
Yet the chances of seeing such plans implemented, even
fractionally, are slim. As some of her aides admit, Le Pen’s program represents
her vision of France, not a roadmap to get there. In order to see it through,
the newly-elected president would first need to consolidate her power by
winning control over the lower house of parliament in a June election — or by
rejigging the system to allow her to rule with a much narrower level of
support.
Taking such challenges into account, POLITICO put together
one scenario of Le Pen’s first 100 days based on hours of talks with senior
party officials, European diplomats, MEPs, financial analysts, country experts
and regular people. What emerges is a narrative of constant crisis mixed with
long stretches of institutional paralysis, starting on day one.
The great Le Pen crunch
If election night is given over to emotion, the morning of
May 8 will be one of sober reckoning. The French are likely to wake up to
accounts of the night’s toll: rioting in impoverished urban fringes with large
immigrant populations, coupled with a major financial attack on French stocks
and bonds.
Of the two, in the short term at least, the economic
blowback is likely to be more brutal. Analysts say that markets have yet to
fully price in the risk of Le Pen’s election, which means that the “correction”
in positions that would follow it would be particularly abrupt. According to
one scenario drawn up by JP Morgan, the first effect would be a spike in French
borrowing costs as markets adjusted to the idea that France could soon
re-denominate nearly €2 trillion of debt into French francs, which would be
initially pegged to the euro but would not be protected by the European Central
Bank.
The “spread” in interest rates between French and German
government bonds, which normally holds steady below 20 basis points (the spread
is counted in 100ths of one percentage point), would blow out to 200 basis
points, reflecting the threat of catastrophic sovereign default. Rating
agencies would issue warnings about the risk of Le Pen carrying out her plan to
leave the EU. French shares would tank, dragging down European stock markets,
and the euro would shed 10 percent of its value against the dollar.
Such extreme volatility would alarm savers and investors,
triggering an initial wave of capital flight that would gather momentum in the
coming weeks. But Le Pen, who would have spent the night celebrating with her
friends — perhaps among them her Hitler-admiring university pal and
communication adviser Frédéric Chatillon — would probably welcome the mayhem as
an opportunity to press her political agenda.
Le Pen’s aides do provide hints as to the first cabinet’s
orientation and possible contenders for top seats.
If her comments after Brexit are any guide, she would praise
the drop in the euro as a “competitive devaluation” for France, while blasting
traders for trying to “punish” the popular will.
Meanwhile, Le Pen would address rioting with promises of an
immediate crackdown on “vandals” and “bandits,” invoking a “clear risk to
national security.” This happens to be the only condition under which a member
of the Schengen Agreement is allowed to suspend its participation in the
free-travel zone, giving her reason to shut down most immigration to France
just days after being sworn into office.
Le Pen’s first cabinet
At the same time, Le Pen would be grappling with the first
real challenge of her presidency: forming a government. Aides are cagey about
the exact composition of her cabinet for a few reasons, foremost among them the
possibility that Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve could refuse to
hand in his resignation at the end of Hollande’s term (he has denied intending
to do so). In France, presidents need a majority in parliament to govern
effectively. There’s also the fact that Le Pen’s first team would only sit until
June’s legislative elections, after which she would have to reshuffle to
reflect the outcome of the vote.
Le Pen’s aides do provide hints as to the first cabinet’s
orientation and possible contenders for top seats. According to Sébastien
Chenu, a transplant from the conservative party who is close to Le Pen, the
president would want to reach out to independents and conservatives to improve
her chances of securing a majority in parliament. “It’s going to be a
government of openness in which you are likely to find members of other
political families,” he said.
Chenu and others declined to match candidates with
positions. But Chenu, who also advises Le Pen on cultural affairs, did say the
prime minister was unlikely to be a party member, ruling out influential
National Front Vice President Florian Philippot, and Le Pen herself has ruled
out any ministerial posting for her popular niece, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen.
According to several party members, candidates for frontline
cabinet postings include the right-wing sovereignist and anti-Islam thinker
Philippe de Villiers, who is close to the National Front; Henri Guaino, a
Gaullist former speechwriter to ex-President Nicolas Sarkozy; pro-Russian MP
Thierry Mariani; and independent sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan. “These are
all people who are close to our positions, who would represent openness,” said
Chenu. “But we have contacts with lots of other people from rival parties who
will be willing to come out of the woodwork after the first round [of the
election].” A senior Front official said that Le Pen’s controversial communications
adviser Chatillon, who is under investigation on suspicion of campaign finance
fraud, would “not be up for interior minister.”
Her cabinet slots filled, Le Pen would have to staff the
broader administration, which is a monumental task. Under France’s presidential
system, the head of the executive is personally responsible for naming as many
as 10,000 government officials. Normally, most civil servants remain in their
posts from one administration to the next. But with Le Pen, there would be questions
of loyalty, as some civil servants could resist carrying out her orders — a
problem similar to that faced by U.S. President Donald Trump when he clashed
with intelligence agencies during his first weeks in power.
Jean Messiha, a graduate of the elite ENA school of public
administration who is in charge of recruiting senior civil servants for a Le
Pen government, brushed off the potential for clashes with intelligence
agencies, arguing that the president would swiftly win over the loyalty of most
key government ministries. “Most of the police already vote for Le Pen,” he
said. “And we have legions of supporters in the armed forces.”
Purging the judiciary
Messiha acknowledged challenges in other branches of
government, notably the judiciary. In several recent rallies, Le Pen has lashed
out at magistrates conducting investigations into multiple cases against her,
including allegations that she misused European Parliament funds to pay party
assistants. (The National Front president refused to answer questions from
police about the case, invoking her legal immunity as a member of the European
Parliament.)
Asked if the president would retaliate against magistrates
once in power, as she has suggested she would, Messiha said: “The magistrate
corps is not an independent entity that can choose who it wants to serve. These
are administrative entities whose job it is to enforce the political project
that the people have chosen. Wherever there are problems, of course, punitive measures
will be taken.” In order to ensure loyalty in all branches of government, “new
men” could be required, he added.
Important roles would be distributed among a group of some
150 senior civil servants who belong to a group known as the “Horatii” — Le Pen
loyalists.
The same principle would apply to senior non-cabinet posts,
like the director of the treasury and secretary general of the Elysée, the
person in charge of managing the president’s agenda. Messiha said that the
National Front, which unlike its rivals lacks a deep field of senior civil
servants, had been at work for two years recruiting and vetting candidates
through an internal human resources department. (Centrist candidate Macron, who
is also not part of a mainstream party, faces a similar challenge but has a
wider network of senior civil servants to call upon.)
Important roles would be distributed among a group of some
150 senior civil servants who belong to a group known as the “Horatii” — Le Pen
loyalists who are hedging their bets by not divulging their identities, and
whose number is impossible to verify independently. “These 150 represent a
Praetorian Guard,” said Messiha. “They will make up the hardcore of all
government action. But beyond them are people who do not belong to the Horatii
who have let us know they are interested in working with us.”
He added: “Overall, we have names for 80-90 percent of all
strategic positions in the senior administration. The idea is to arrive on the
morning of May 8 with most of the key appointments already worked out.”
The battle of Brussels
Having filled her administration, Le Pen would have only a
brief window in which to act before legislative elections on June 11 and 18.
After reinstating border controls and expelling dozens of so-called foreign
suspected terrorists, she would turn to face her nemesis: Brussels. According
to several party aides, Le Pen’s first act on the international scene would be
to travel to the European capital and hand a letter to European Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk
outlining French “demands” for EU reform.
This move would break starkly with a French tradition
whereby incoming presidents first pay homage to the Franco-German partnership
by traveling to Berlin. And it would establish Le Pen’s anti-EU agenda as
official French policy, setting the stage for an unprecedented diplomatic
confrontation between Paris, Brussels and Berlin that would color her entire
presidency.
The National Front has never spelled out exactly what Le
Pen’s demands to the EU would be. But judging by her 144 proposals, they would
amount to nothing less than the complete exemption for France from all four of
the EU’s “fundamental freedoms.” She would demand the right to close national
borders permanently, prioritize French workers over others and rescind all
free-trade agreements unilaterally, in addition to banning Islamic veils in
public — demands that would amount to as many violations of EU treaties,
forming the basis for a very rocky “negotiation.”
Like former British Prime Minister David Cameron, Le Pen
foresees a period of talks with the EU before she holds a referendum on
membership “after the Italian election” — or sometime in late 2018 — according
to her latest remarks. But unlike Cameron, who supported remaining in the EU,
Le Pen has always made clear that she wants France to withdraw no matter how
the talks go. “There will be a referendum,” echoed Messiha.
Le Pen’s stance might seem to make any talks with the EU
irrelevant, but Bertrand Dutheil de la Rochère, a senior party aide who is
close to Philippot, said her desire to negotiate was “sincere.” The new
president, he said, would seek to build a coalition of member states that also
wanted to reform, or unravel, the EU, among which he cited “Spain, Portugal,
Italy, Finland and Austria” — countries that either have resurgent right-wing
populist parties or reasons to resent German-led austerity in Europe.
The aim would be to obtain what Messiha termed a “total
reconsideration” of the EU’s basic principles in order to “return sovereignty
to nation states.” Both aides to Le Pen expressed confidence that France, as an
EU founding member, would be able to impose its will on recalcitrant partners.
“Germany will not have a choice,” said Messiha.
However, several Front officials acknowledged that the party
had not held any talks with the government or parties in Berlin. When Le Pen
held a “presidential conference” in Paris last February, ambassadors from 46
nations attended — but not Germany or Britain. Messiha blamed the German government’s
“closed-mindedness” for the absence of dialogue. “I dare to think that within
the German government there are several entities working on Marine Le Pen’s
election. Financial markets are already thinking hard about Le Pen’s election,
so there is no reason that they should not be doing the same,” he said.
But while the Front assumes Berlin would cave in to French
demands, many across the Rhine are not so sure. Klaus Buchner, an MEP and
member of the German Green party, said the opposite was true: Berlin would
likely to fight France to save the EU. “In the unlikely case that Marine Le Pen
wins the French presidency,” he wrote in an email, “I would imagine that the
vast majority of EU member states, certainly including Germany, would strongly
resist her demands and not cooperate with her.”
Outrage over her election could boil for weeks and escalate;
riots could spread to several cities with increasing violence, according to a
contingency plan drawn up by a left-wing police union.
A senior French official echoed Buchner. “I’m not sure we
would actually be in such a position of strength,” the source said, speaking on
condition of anonymity. “Other countries might decide among themselves that
they want to keep the euro, and we would become a black hole in the middle.
Germany could very well go about assembling a coalition of pro-euro states,
taking advantage of the fact that France would be under financial attack and
looking weak.”
Even so, there is no denying that Germany would end up more
isolated without France as its natural partner. Sophia Besch, a country expert
at the Centre for European Reform, said that if Le Pen won, Germany “would be
running out of options a bit. You can’t stress strongly enough how much
[Germany] depends on France… They need a France that is seen in the rest of
Europe as standing up to Germany.”
Berlin bites back
During the negotiations, which could last for more than a
year, political analysts suggested that the most likely scenario would be a
Brexit-style standoff between France and a pro-EU coalition of countries. Until
Le Pen tabled Article 50, triggering its official divorce (assuming she won the
referendum), Germany would probably play the clock, hand out as few concessions
as possible and take measures to insulate the rest of the eurozone from
financial attacks against France.
Indeed, as Le Pen pursues an exit from the EU, the situation
at home would be unlikely to remain stable. Outrage over her election could
boil for weeks and escalate; riots could spread to several cities with
increasing violence, according to a contingency plan drawn up by a left-wing
police union. Meanwhile, market attacks against French companies and government
debt would gather momentum, exacerbated by complications linked to the closing
of borders, triggering a banking crisis that could quickly become acute.
“What this immediately makes you think is that we would have
to restrict capital flows and access to banks,” said the senior French
official. “There would be a very serious problem with the circulation of
capital, and that would lead to the development of a parallel economy, the
detachment of the Bank of France from the euro system, and, finally, a brutal
transition toward a coupon system.”
Make or break
In the midst of such spiraling headaches, Le Pen would take
on the defining challenge of her early presidency: attempting to win a majority
in the National Assembly, the lower house of parliament. Normally, the winner
of the presidential election is all but guaranteed to obtain a parliamentary
majority, as dispirited supporters of the losing camp stay at home. And Le
Pen’s win would almost certainly provide her with fierce momentum in the polls.
But several members of the Socialist Party and the
conservative Les Républicains said that things would play out differently. Far
from being discouraged by her victory, said one MP, conservatives would use the
alarm it generates to grab control of parliament and clip her wings for the
rest of her term.
“The Républicains have zero interest in rolling over for Le
Pen in the legislative elections,” said Philippe Juvin, an MEP who supports
former prime minister François Fillon in the campaign. “Even after a defeat in
the presidential election, there is a good chance that the party will perform
well in the legislative vote thanks to our deep implantation across the
country, which is unmatched by the National Front.”
Without a majority, Le Pen would become a lame duck
president subjected to a prime minister who could block her reforms and
referendums.
“Indeed, there is a very strong possibility of
cohabitation,” he added, referring to a situation where the prime minister and
government belong to one party and the president to another. Juvin conceded
that a few individual MPs who have already signaled their proximity to the
National Front might jump ship. But on the whole, he said that Le Pen was
unlikely to win “more than 80 or 100 seats” — a remarkable performance
considering the party previously had 2 MPs but still well short of the 289 she
would need for a majority.
Without a majority, Le Pen would become a lame duck
president subjected to a prime minister who could block her reforms and
referendums. But she has anticipated this prospect and planned accordingly.
Immediately after her Brussels trip, Le Pen wants to hold a referendum to
revise the constitution, which would replace the current system of voting in
parliament with proportional representation along the lines of what exists in
Belgium or Sweden — giving her significantly more latitude to rule with perhaps
one or two minor coalition partners.
However, holding such a referendum would itself face a huge,
possibly insurmountable, challenge. According to Pascal Jan, a law professor at
the Sciences Po Institute of political science in Bordeaux, Le Pen has two
legal options for holding a referendum on the constitution: Article 89 and
Article 11. The first requires a three-fifths majority in parliament — a
non-starter before legislative elections. The second, which pertains to “the
organization of public powers,” could be done “upon a proposal from the
government.”
Article 11 is clearly Le Pen’s preferred avenue. She might
seek to hold it as soon as possible, preferably before the legislative vote.
Yet, said Jan, this too would prove nearly impossible, for two reasons: First,
if the prime minister is still the Socialist holdover, he could simply refuse
to propose the referendum (the motion must be submitted by the government); and
second, the council of state, a constitutional court, would have to approve the
referendum, and it could delay its verdict until after the legislative vote,
defanging the effort.
Rule by decree
The result of the legislative election would define the
first year of Le Pen’s presidency — determining whether she would rule or be
condemned to kibitzing the government while signing executive decrees.
On the night of the election, she would watch from the
presidential palace, where she might or might not be living with her longtime
partner Louis Aliot and her three children from a previous marriage (the
children are aged 18, 18 and 19). Le Pen likes to be surrounded with senior
lieutenants from her party, people like Steeve Briois, mayor of Hénin-Beaumont
in northern France, a longtime ally. Ascension to the presidency would be
unlikely to change her custom of surrounding herself with faithful, longtime
allies.
Pollsters have yet to carry out surveys on voting intentions
for the legislative elections. But according to analysts, in the event of a Le
Pen victory, the most likely scenario is one where the National Front comes in
third — after the Républicains and the Socialists. Like Presidents François Mitterrand
and Jacques Chirac before her, Le Pen would have no choice but to accept a
prime minister put forward by the ruling majority.
In a best-case scenario for Le Pen, elections would see
social democrats opposed to austerity elected in Germany and the Euroskeptic
5Star movement take power in Italy.
In this case, the name is anyone’s guess. Conservative
candidate François Fillon, having already served under Nicolas Sarkozy for five
years, might be reluctant to do so for another five. The same goes for the
erstwhile candidate and former Prime Minister Alain Juppé, who has signaled he
was only interested in the presidency. The focus would turn to rising figures
such as François Baroin, a Sarkozy ally and former finance minister who was
previously tapped to act as the head of government under Fillon, had he been
elected.
Le Pen would have, at this point, lost the battle but not
the war. While waiting for a chance to dissolve parliament and make another
attempt at forming a majority, she would rule via executive decree or
presidential ordonnance. Such measures could be used to ram through more
campaign pledges, like banning the hanging of EU flags from all public
buildings and the wearing of Islamic veils in public. But decrees would be open
to legal challenges from lower courts. Le Pen would spend much of her first 100
days locked in legal disputes, imposing executive will whenever possible.
As a result, she might seek to take advantage of her
relatively free hand on the international front. She could attend conferences
hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin or host sympathetic foreign populist
leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Paris while kicking
off a debate about the euro at home.
Moving the needle
Currently, a clear majority of the French support remaining
in the EU and preserving the euro. But senior National Front officials believe
that, once in power, Le Pen will be able to move the needle.
“For the time
being, most French people are against leaving the eurozone, but there has been
no national debate on the question,” said Messiha. “There has been a sort of
strategy of terror, based on the Brexit model … But [in the U.K.] people had
their eyes opened by the debate on Europe, and they decided to reject it
massively.”
As she worked to drum up support, Le Pen could be expected
to use tensions and standoffs with other European leaders on France’s EU
demands to feed discussion on the euro at home. Unable to conduct policy, she
would point to German or British “intransigence” to argue for total French
sovereignty, all the while masking her limited powers at home.
Aides said that Le Pen expected robust discussion on the
euro to influence the outcome of elections in Germany and Italy, scheduled for
September this year and, at the latest, May of next year, respectively. In a
best-case scenario for Le Pen, elections would see social democrats opposed to
austerity elected in Germany and the Euroskeptic 5Star Movement take power in
Italy.
With immigration suspended, a divisive debate on the euro
raging and Europe split, Le Pen might feel that she has the clout to roll the
dice again. She could, sometime in early 2018, seek to dissolve parliament and
try again to obtain a ruling majority.
Or she could reach for the legal nuclear option. Article 16
of the constitution allows the president to take full control, if the nation’s
“independence, territorial integrity or international engagements” are under
threat. A major terrorist attack or a full-blown financial crisis preventing
the government from borrowing on international markets could meet that
criteria. And so what if Le Pen brought them on herself?
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário