It was the pillar of Marine Le Pen’s program in 2017: leaving the euro, this “Bankers’ currency” to allow households to return to the franc, “Lever of our competitiveness”. Deemed partly responsible for its poor score in the second round of the presidential election, the idea, yet at the heart of the ideological base of the National Rally, was quickly put aside, in favor of a program consisting more simply of emptying of their substance the European institutions.
Five years later, no one on the political scene seems to seriously question the single currency, and the hypothesis of its abandonment is perceived as a “Dangerous disorder for a fragile country”, according to Thierry Pech, CEO of the progressive think tank Terra Nova. Including elsewhere on the far right, where other candidates like Nicolas Dupont-Aignan have evolved on the subject.
Even Eric Zemmour, opposed to the euro in his books, now repeats that if “Entering the euro was a bad idea, leaving it would be worse”. Like Marine Le Pen, he rather imagines staying in the European Union while freeing himself from its rules, “To do arm wrestling” with institutions, and above all “Do what you want to do when you want to do it”. A form of “Soft Frexit” Who “Would be less scary, but that should not be ignored”, believes Thierry Pech.
Born in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis in 2010-2011, the euro issue was still associated with the Greek crisis in public opinion five years ago, with austerity policies and sovereignty issues with the specter of putting certain southern European states under supervision. A perception that the Covid-19 has come to shake up: the European Central Bank has flooded the markets with liquidity, allowing States to finance themselves massively and free of charge to support confined economies.
“There is a diffuse feeling that the euro has been an asset rather than a handicap in this crisis, estimates Brice Teinturier, Deputy Managing Director of the Ipsos polling institute. People understood that the public deficits had been made possible thanks to Europe. ” A study by the Jacques-Delors Institute published in December shows that, even if they have often criticized the European Union for being too liberal, the French remain very attached to its currency (74% of them are, against 79% on average of the inhabitants member countries of the euro zone).
Much less controversial subject
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