” My God ! Where will the votes for Emmanuel Macron in the second round be able to come from? Pécresse made a disastrous score and the extremes (Le Pen, Zemmour, Mélenchon) are in the majority. » Posted at 7:57 p.m. on Sunday April 10, this tweet from Alexander Lambsdorff, vice-president of the Liberal Democratic (FDP) group in the Bundestag, summarizes the state of mind in which the results of the first round of the French election were welcomed into the ruling coalition in Germany.
In Berlin, the satisfaction of seeing Emmanuel Macron come out on top did not reassure those who are worried about a victory for Marine Le Pen in the second round. “Now everyone must rally behind Emmanuel Macron. It will be him or the end of united Europe. This may sound grandiose. But that’s the reality.” responded Social Democrat Michael Roth (SPD), chairman of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
The desire to see Mr. Macron win on April 24 is also shared by the Christian Democratic opposition (CDU). “Mme Le Pen wants to destroy the European Union. This is why a victory for Emmanuel Macron is decisive for the future of Europe”, declared former CDU chairman Armin Laschet on the Phoenix channel. “For Europe, the French presidential election is more important than the German legislative ones [de septembre 2021]. On the question of European unity, Olaf Scholz [SPD], Annalena Baerbock [Verts] and I agreed, rightly recalled the ex-suitor to succeed Angela Merkel, in reference to his two adversaries, one of whom became chancellor and the other, minister of foreign affairs.
In 2017, Mr. Macron’s candidacy aroused great enthusiasm in Germany, where many were seduced by “the child prodigy of politics”, who seemed to have everything of the ideal leader, “younger than John Fitzgerald Kennedy, more liberal than Tony Blair and more European than Gerhard Schröder”, as it was written Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung before the first round.
Inverted mirror
Five years later, the magic has worn off. “Today, Macron is the incumbent and part of the establishment. On economic reforms, he has his work cut out for him. In Europe, he didn’t go as far as we could have hoped. And on his promise to reconcile “the two Frances”, he failed”, wrote the major liberal-conservative daily on Sunday evening.
Seven months after the German legislative elections, a real political gap separates the two countries. In Germany, the extreme right (10.3%) fell by 2 points after a campaign that was made in the center. In France, it has never been so strong, its three candidates (Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan and Eric Zemmour) having totaled almost 33% of the votes.
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