Macron’s Win Is Also a Blow to Viktor Orban’s
Nationalist Crusade
The Hungarian leader had cast his own victory as the
start of a nationalist wave in Europe — one that Marine Le Pen would have
joined. Instead, Mr. Macron’s victory in France is a win for the European
Union’s approach.
Steven Erlanger
By Steven Erlanger
April 25, 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/25/world/europe/macron-le-pen-orban.html
BRUSSELS —
There were sighs of relief throughout the European Union after President
Emmanuel Macron beat back a serious challenge in France from the populist
far-right champion Marine Le Pen.
Then
another populist went down, in Slovenia, where the country’s three-time prime
minister, Janez Jansa, lost to a loose coalition of centrist rivals in
parliamentary elections on Sunday.
Those two
defeats were widely seen as a reprieve for the European Union and its
fundamental principles, including judicial independence, shared sovereignty and
the supremacy of European law. That is because they dealt a blow to the
ambitions and worldview of Viktor Orban, Hungary’s prime minister, who avidly
supported both Ms. Le Pen and Mr. Jansa in an effort to create a coalition of
more nationalist, religious and anti-immigration politics that could undermine
the authority of the European Union itself.
“Europe can
breathe,” said Jean-Dominique Giuliani, chairman of the Robert Schuman
Foundation, a pro-European research center.
After his
own electoral victory earlier this month, Mr. Orban declared: “The whole world
has seen tonight in Budapest that Christian democratic politics, conservative
civic politics and patriotic politics have won. We are telling Europe that this
is not the past: This is the future. This will be our common European future.”
Not yet, it
seems.
With
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Orban, who has been close to both former
President Donald J. Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s president, is more
isolated in Europe than in many years. He has been a model for the Polish
government of the Law and Justice party, which has also challenged what it
considers the liberal politics and the overbearing bureaucratic and judicial
influence of Brussels. But Law and Justice is deeply anti-Putin, a mood
sharpened by the war.
“The
international environment for Orban has never been so dire,” said Peter Kreko,
director of Political Capital, a Budapest-based research institution.
Mr. Orban
found support from Mr. Trump, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel, and from the Italian populist leader and former Deputy Prime Minister
Matteo Salvini. But they are all gone, as Mr. Jansa is expected to be, and now
Mr. Orban “has fewer friends in the world,” Mr. Kreko said.
Ms. Le
Pen’s party was given a 10.7 million euro loan in March to help fund her
campaign from Hungary’s MKB bank, whose major shareholders are considered close
to Mr. Orban. And Hungarian media and social media openly supported both Ms. Le
Pen and Mr. Jansa.
Ms. Le
Pen’s strong showing was a reminder that populism — on both the right and the
left — remains a vibrant force in a Europe, with high voter dissatisfaction
over rising inflation, soaring energy prices, slow growth, immigration and the
bureaucracy emanating from E.U. headquarters in Brussels.
But now Mr.
Macron, as the first French president to be re-elected in 20 years, has new
authority to press his ideas for more European responsibility and collective
defense.
After the
retirement late last year of Angela Merkel, the former chancellor of Germany,
Mr. Macron will inevitably be seen as the de facto leader of the European
Union, with a stronger voice and standing to push issues he cares about. Those
include a more robust European pillar in defense and security, economic reform
and fighting climate change.
“He is
going to want to go further and faster,” said Georgina Wright, an analyst at
the Institut Montaigne in Paris.
But Ms.
Wright and other analysts say he must also learn lessons from his first term
and try to consult more widely. His penchant for announcing proposals rather
than building coalitions at times annoyed his European counterparts, leaving
him portrayed as a vanguard of one, leading with no followers.
“Europe is
central to his policy and will be in his second term, too,” said Jeremy
Shapiro, research director for the European Council on Foreign Relations in
Berlin. “In the first term, he underachieved relative to his expectations on
Europe — he had a lot of grand plans but failed to create the coalitions he
needed, with Germany and the Central European states, to implement them.”
The Dutch,
too, as the Netherlands and Germany together lead Europe’s “frugal” nations,
are skeptical about Mr. Macron’s penchant to spend more of their money on
European projects.
Mr. Macron
“knows that lesson and is making some efforts in the context of the Russian war
against Ukraine,” Mr. Shapiro said. “But he’s still Emmanuel Macron.”
In his
second term, Mr. Macron “will double down” on the ideas for Europe that he
presented in his speech to the Sorbonne in 2017, “especially the idea of
European sovereignty,” said Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, director of the Paris
office of the German Marshall Fund.
But in his
second term, she predicted, he will be more pragmatic, building “coalitions of
the willing and able” even if he cannot find unanimity among the other 26 Union
members.
Prime
Minister Janez Jansa of Slovenia on Sunday, hours before the announcement that
his party had lost to a centrist coalition.Credit...Jure Makovec/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
France
holds the rotating presidency of the bloc until the end of June, and one of Mr.
Macron’s priorities will be to push forward an oil embargo on Russia, Ms. de
Hoop Scheffer said, a move that has been complicated by the fact that many in the
bloc are dependent on Moscow for energy.
The climate
agenda is important for him, especially if he wants to reach out to the angry
left and the Greens in France. And to get much done in Europe, he will need to
restore and strengthen the Franco-German relationship with a new, very
different and divided German government.
“That
relationship is not easy, and when you look at the Franco-German couple, not a
lot keeps us together,” Ms. de Hoop Scheffer said.
There are
differences over Mr. Macron’s desire for more collective debt for another
European recovery plan, given the effects of war. There is also a lack of
consensus over how to manage the response to Russia’s aggression, she said —
how much to keep lines open to Mr. Putin, and what kinds of military support
should be provided to Ukraine in the face of German hesitancy to supply heavy
weapons.
Germany is
much happier to work in wartime within NATO under American leadership than to
spend much time on Mr. Macron’s concept of European strategic autonomy, she
noted. And Poland and the other frontline states bordering Russia have never
had much confidence in Mr. Macron’s goal of strategic autonomy or his promise
to do nothing to undermine NATO, a feeling underscored by the current war.
If Mr.
Macron is clever, “French leadership in Europe will not be followership by the
other E.U. countries, but their empowerment, by their commitment to a new
European vision,” said Nicholas Dungan, a senior fellow of the Atlantic
Council. “Macron can do this.”
Steven
Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, based in Brussels. He
previously reported from London, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, Prague, Moscow and
Bangkok. @StevenErlanger
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