The first round of the French presidential election is barely over when, in Germany, everyone is already anxiously imagining the « catastrophe » what a possible victory for Marine Le Pen would represent, during the second round, on April 24.
This scenario has never seemed so plausible seen from across the Rhine. “Right-wing populist Marine Le Pen could win”, notes the public channel ARD, while the centre-left weekly The time evokes a time when “the unimaginable becomes imaginable”. “If Marine Le Pen won, it would be a disaster, and not just for France”, value this medium.
“It’s Macron or the disappearance of a united Europe”
The observation is widely shared regardless of political tendencies, apart of course from the German far right. Michael Roth, Social Democrat and Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the Bundestag, calls on the French to “gather behind Emmanuel Macron” . “It’s him or the disappearance of a united Europe. It seems to dramatizebut it’s like that “, he wrote on Twitter.
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On the Phoenix television channel, Armin Laschet, the former boss of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) also took on solemn accents. “More than 50% of French people voted for the extreme left or right and against the European project”, he observes. Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon want, according to him “weaken the European Union, get out of NATO”.
For this Christian Democrat, this election is “even more important” than the last general elections in Germany where, ” Unlike France “the top three candidates were “all for Europe”.
“As if the CDU and the SPD had disappeared in Germany”
The liberal daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) also begins to imagine what it would be like to put Marine Le Pen’s European program into practice, “close to Vladimir Putin”if she were to be elected. “She announced that the first thing she wanted to do as president was to remove the European flag. She does not want to be the “governor of a European province”, but to preside over a proud national state. If it no longer envisages Frexit and does not want to abolish the euro, it wants to defend a path of national affirmation on the model of Hungary and Poland”, notes the daily, considering the result of April 24 as “decisive for the future of the EU”.
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“If the French presidency were to fall into the hands of the Lepenists, Europe’s self-awareness would be destroyed from within. However, France forms, with Germany, the pillar of the Union.recalls the FAZ.
The virtual disappearance of the PS and the Republicans, sister parties of the German SPD and CDU/CSU, also raises questions. “Macron is quite alone in the center”, notes the FAZ. “It’s as if the CDU and the SPD have disappeared in Germany. The French have once again reinforced the extremes,” notes the Frankfurt daily.
Few German newspapers and political leaders draw, however, a parallel between this situation considered catastrophic across the Rhine and the difficulties encountered last year by the German Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. “The situation was difficult for them, but they maintained above 20% of the vote. There is nothing comparable with the Socialist Party and the French Republicans,” observes political scientist Tilman Mayer of the University of Bonn.