{"id":484532,"date":"2025-10-09T02:40:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/484532\/"},"modified":"2025-10-09T02:40:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T02:40:17","slug":"the-eus-worst-nightmare-has-never-looked-so-real-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/484532\/","title":{"rendered":"The EU\u2019s worst nightmare has never looked so real \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

At both the presidential and parliamentary levels, victory for Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally is now distinctly possible, meaning a Euroskeptic, far-right figure might soon speak for France in the EU\u2019s core institutions, adding to a growing chorus of populist, right-wing voices.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a continent that has experienced war, lockdown, a kind of light dictatorship in Budapest, we are used to continuing to function with a lot of shocks\u201d said a European Commission official, who like others quoted in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0\u201cLe Pen is different,\u201d he reckoned, referring to a widely shared assessment in Brussels that a radical change in French leadership would have far-reaching consequences for the EU.<\/p>\n

While the far right has been urging Macron\u00a0to call new parliamentary elections, this week\u2019s events also raise the prospect of earlier presidential elections if Macron is at some point forced to step down \u2014 something he has always strongly ruled out, vowing to stick around until the end of his term in 2027.<\/p>\n

If the National Rally accessed executive power in France it would significantly add to the EU\u2019s headaches, already personified around the Council table by Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orb\u00e1n and Slovakia\u2019s Robert Fico, and likely soon to be joined by Andrej Babi\u0161 after his recent electoral triumph<\/a> in the Czech Republic.<\/p>\n

The renewed populist surge\u00a0threatens to derail the bloc\u2019s policies in critical sectors, with concerns particularly acute on Russia and defense policy. Orb\u00e1n and Fico have both stood in the way of the EU\u2019s efforts to impose sanctions on Moscow since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At both the presidential and parliamentary levels, victory for Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally is now distinctly possible,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484533,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[23404,71115,346,6659,473,33,34,2000,299,5187,21604,1105,36,24402,42,44,22708,2597,8041,6565,48,6566,2663,1781,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-484532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-ammunition","9":"tag-andrej-babis","10":"tag-cars","11":"tag-crisis","12":"tag-defense","13":"tag-elections","14":"tag-emmanuel-macron","15":"tag-eu","16":"tag-europe","17":"tag-european","18":"tag-euroskeptics","19":"tag-far-right","20":"tag-france","21":"tag-french-political-crisis","22":"tag-jordan-bardella","23":"tag-marine-le-pen","24":"tag-mercosur","25":"tag-military","26":"tag-nuclear-weapons","27":"tag-populism","28":"tag-rights","29":"tag-robert-fico","30":"tag-sanctions","31":"tag-viktor-orban","32":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115341900118081804","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}