Elections in the shadow of an empowered far right

2022 will be an elec­tion year in France, as the coun­try goes to the polls to choose a pres­i­dent in April, fol­lowed by elec­tions to the Na­tional As­sem­bly in June. Yet there are doubts over turnout, after the local elec­tions in 2020 and the re­gional elec­tions last year saw record lev­els of ab­sten­tion. Added to that is the rise in Covid in­fec­tions, cast­ing doubt on whether there will be any major elec­toral ral­lies for the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. At the same time, the po­lit­i­cal cli­mate is be­com­ing ever more heated.

It makes for a tur­bu­lent sce­nario. As else­where, France has seen a rise in sup­port for far right par­ties. Ma­rine Le Pen is the stan­dard-bearer of anti-im­mi­gra­tion dis­course and has shown that there are votes in ex­tremes. Yet Le Pen now has a rival fur­ther to the right, Eric Zem­mour, a jour­nal­ist and TV pun­dit who has burst onto the po­lit­i­cal scene. With his Re­con­quest party, Zem­mour is look­ing to at­tract votes by tak­ing a harder line than Le Pen. Mean­while, doing well in the polls is Valérie Pécresse, a long-serv­ing politi­cian on the Con­ser­v­a­tive right wing who was a min­is­ter in the Sarkozy cab­i­net. At the other end, the French left is frag­mented. De­spite seven left-wing can­di­dates run­ning in April, not one of them looks ca­pa­ble of get­ting to the sec­ond round, while calls for a unity can­di­dacy under So­cial­ist can­di­date and Paris mayor Anne Hi­dalgo have not been an­swered.

Macron has de­layed an­nounc­ing his in­ten­tion to run while he ben­e­fits from the po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal of being the pres­i­dent who has pro­tected the French dur­ing the pan­demic. Polls say Macron has the sup­port of 30% of the elec­torate, much higher than his pre­de­ces­sors (Hol­lande and Sarkozy) at this stage. Yet it may not be enough for him to win the sec­ond round should Con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­date Valérie Pécresse man­age to bring to­gether votes across the right.

One chal­lenge France faces is the for­eign trade deficit, which could reach 95 bil­lion euros, or 3.8% of GDP, this year. The gov­ern­ment puts this down to dein­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, with com­pa­nies re­lo­cat­ing to coun­tries with cheaper labour costs. The ex­ec­u­tive’s re­sponse has been a spend­ing pro­gramme to in­ject 30 bil­lion euros of pub­lic money into in­no­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies, such as green hy­dro­gen, elec­tric bat­ter­ies and semi­con­duc­tors, to rein­dus­tri­alise the coun­try.