 Bonjour tout le monde, vous êtes les bienvenue chers amis de l'Institut. I suppose it's true to say that this session of the institute could well and aptly be called thinking the unthinkable, the unthinkable being of course for most of us anyway the election of Marine Le Pen to be president of France. What worries me basically is the number of people in France who have said to me that this is impossible. Where did we hear that before and quite recently and in my case including from the American ambassador so in the case of the US elections. It's true that in 2002 Marine's very controversial father Jean-Marie was stopped from becoming president by the Socialist Party joining forces with the right in the second round to elect the goldist Jacques Chirac and it was Lionel Jospin who had been the Socialist candidate. However we have a very different France 14 years on and this has been a very different campaign. We have a France still defiant of course still a great republic but demoralized after a cancunna five years of Socialist rule under one of the most unpopular presidents I think it's true to say the most sorry the most unpopular president ever and the first not to run for a second term. France unlike its neighbour Germany which it which it watches with not a small amount of envy I have to say haven't been there recently has suffered much from the recent recession and is only now beginning to come out of it but still with high unemployment particularly amongst the young in agriculture which is such a central part of French life not particularly an economic center that as well but a cultural center historical center very most French people very emotionally involved and there is devastation in the countryside and in villages and a high result resulting in a high level of suicides among agriculture. There is a growing disaffection with Europe not only in France of course as being the cause of or at least some of its sales. There is an urgent need to reform French public life as we all know and perhaps in France a willingness but not among those who would be the most defected mainly public servants. There is a large wave of the French people who are now switched off from traditional politics particularly on the left who feel abandoned and have now turned towards the front national as being their last and only hope. There is huge disaffection of course also on the right who see life in France changing beyond what they are prepared to put up with and I'm talking I suppose mainly about immigration and of course there is terrorism and the ongoing threat thereof and of course how can anyone anyone forget we all forget of course by times but how can any person in France forget Paris the attempt the attack at Tante or Nice and even the less spectacular horrors such as the elderly priest dying in a small village by having his throat cut on his own the church of his own altar of his the altar of his own church. But a few months ago the forever resilient French Republic was settling down for the upcoming election campaign and a change of president which most people even on the left were surely fairly sure that it would come from the right. François Fillon presented a radical plan for reform a right-wing plan but nevertheless a plan that people found credible and Fillon had survived his years as Sarkozy's Prime Minister relatively relatively unscathed I think would be the term. And that is a feat in itself. And a practice in Catholic he had the he had the credentials and the what the French call probably l'allure présidentielle the they look for l'allure the aura aura thank you. So he had a lot of things going for him and he was he was the one who was expected to win certainly hands down against Marine Le Pen and he was a safe pair of hands and then disaster struck and it struck in a strange way it struck through on the pages the front pages of this of this magazine of this newspaper which many of you will be familiar with the Canare en Chine in all three of these that I happen to have I locks in them off afterwards if you like but they and the the accusations and the proof indeed of how he had defrauded the state totally changed things and we don't know how much it has changed things but today we will we have two eminent observers of France and to talk to us more about the campaign and especially what might be the denouement of this the denouement of all this which has in clear incredible serious implications for the French people in the first place of course but also for the people of Europe and that I don't think is an exaggeration and I'm sure John will talk about that so without further ado I'm going to introduce Laura who no stranger to the Institute I'm sure you've you've heard of before some of you and she's been a journalist for 30 odd years she's worked in Washington, Paris obviously and the Middle East she is an incredibly I've said this before about an incredibly versatile journalist because she can turn her hand to any story as far as I can see and judge but she has been reporting assiduously and particularly well on this French campaign she's obviously she has had several awards in her time and of course one of them being the lesion donna so Laura with that in mind we allow you to have the floor thank you the last time that I spoke to the Institute in the beginning of November 2014 I fear I told you that Anna Juppé would be the next president of France so I got it wrong but everybody else got it wrong too he was just flowing in the polls he was very very high and no one just imagined how Juppé could could be defeated what has happened is what Jean-Luc Mélenchon one of the four leading finalists calls dégagisme which dégagé means get lost basically and he took the term from the Tunisians who overthrew Ben Ali in Tunisia and in the last sort of six months or so we've seen circles we basically everyone thought that everyone feared that this presidential election would be a contest between Nicolas Sarkozy and François Fillon that was the sort of worst-case scenarios we would have a replay of the 2012 election well Sarkozy came in third as you know and in les républicains primary and Hollande was so unpopular he had to pull out in December but other people have been victims of this dégagisme as well Juppé because he's too associated with the past and even Manuel Valls who was a great hope of many socialists of the sort of more liberal centrist Jacques De Laure style socialist so all of these people been eliminated and in fact the two of the most powerful arguments against leading candidates are against Fillon because he was prime minister for five years under Sarkozy so he's associated with the past and with the establishment and even Macron who was an advisor economic advisor to Hollande and then of course economy minister under Hollande nothing is certain I thought a very good analogy which I got from a pollster on Friday was that he said in the past a French presidential election campaign was a bit like a Mondrian painting you know it was all lines and boxes and you could sort of analyze it and figure it out and he says this is a Jackson Pollock painting paint just squirted everywhere and so for in recent weeks we've kind of settled into the idea that the that Marine Le Pen will be will come in first probably in the first round on April 23rd and Emmanuel Macron will come in second and then they would go on to the runoff on May 7th and Macron would just wipe out Marine Le Pen and he would with the polls show he would win by 60% to 40% approximately for Le Pen but in the last two or three days one thing the most significant thing I think that's happened is Jean-Luc Mélenchon who's very far left has overtaken François Fillon he's now in third place and he has real momentum he's siphoning off all the votes that we're going to Benoît Amon the socialist candidate so he and Fillon are well Fillon is at 17% in a poll published today Mélenchon 18% but within they're almost within reaching distance of Macron and Le Pen who are tied at 24% so anything could happen and there could be a terrorist attack there could be another big scandal a sexual scandal or a financial scandal it's really impossible to predict what is going to happen so it's a four-way race I think I'll just sort of go through very briefly in order of probability okay if we're just based on the polls at present the most probable next president of France is Emmanuel Macron who as you know is only 39 years old that would make him the youngest ever president of France he has a lot going for him he's young he's good-looking he has charisma he has a very unusual love story which I'm sure you all know about his wife Brigitte is 24 years older than him she was his drama teacher when he was 16 years old he fell in love with her eventually she was married with three children his parents did everything they could to thwart this romance sent him to Paris to live with his grandmother and love triumphed and he married Brigitte in 2007 and she's very much present in the wings of his campaign Macron has a very broad appeal he basically appeals to the more centrist socialist the center and the more centrist right-wing people for example a lot of Alan Juppey's voters went to Macron after Juppey was excluded he his emphasis on renewal of the political class and on bringing civil society into politics getting rid of career politicians is also very popular the factors that are working against him are that his base is as of support is very undecided about half of his supporters say they're not certain that they would vote for him in the second round and that's compared to Le Pen who's got 86% of her voters say they will vote for her come hell or high water no matter what and Fionne has also pretty strong base about 70% of his supporters they're certain to to vote for him another factor working against Macron is his association with Francois Hollande who you know as Joe said is the most unpopular president ever in France and he was very much an Oland protege I know for a fact that Hollande is secretly hoping or not that secretly it's good the word has got round but he's he's hoping that Macron will win he sees Macron as his sort of spiritual son and Macron does not want Hollande's public support it could be the kiss of death for him the the Fionne camp has taken to calling referring to Macron as Emmanuel Hollande which is very damaging now another another problem for Macron is his he's actually is I hate to say minus the good looks and the and the charm he's very much like Hollande in his rhetoric in France do the on Thursday night had a big interview with them and they put together a montage of him saying en même temps you know at the same time to say well you know it is a beautiful day in Dublin today but en même temps at the same time we have rain clouds you know and he does this constantly and for example his response to the the chemical attack in Syria he said we must bachar al-Assad must no longer be in the game but I don't agree with the people who want to eradicate him what does that mean he can't be involved but you don't want to eradicate him on every problem that comes up every issue Macron has the on the one hand on the other hand and this drives people crazy and Marine Le Pen in the in the first debate said just listen to him talking and said you've been speaking for seven minutes and I couldn't possibly summarize what you've said she said you know you say a little of this and a little of that and and it's just is meaningless and that was quite damaging and then actually in the second debate there was a similar comment by a sort of one of these maverick candidates a little candidate called a silly no who said but you always agree with everybody you know and this was this was Hollande's legacy Hollande was the l'homme de la Sainte as the man who always brings arrives at a consensus not tell you held the Socialist Party together so people are a little bit leery of this this side of Macron that is kind of flu kind of blurry kind of all over the place and that that is hurting him he on his policies I think I think the most important policy of Macron is his pro-Europeanism he is the only real defender of Europe in this campaign he loves Europe he says I love Europe and he wants and I thought I was kind of surprised because I thought it had totally gone out of fashion it was finished forever he wants European integration he wants a federal Europe he wants to create more European institutions he wants countries to to give up he's against intergovernmental Europe he says it's dead and that's his biggest difference with fion because fion wants the continuation of these summits of heads and state who turn out the the the communiques and so on he also wants to relaunch the Franco-German engine he wants to reform the labor market actually most of his policies are quite similar to fion's policies but I would call them fion light you know instead of firing 500,000 civil servants he wants to get rid of 120,000 civil servants instead of fion wants to abolish the wealth tax the ESF imposter la fortune and Macron says well I'll abolish it on stocks and bonds and shares and capital investments but I won't but I'll keep it on property there's another example of him doing always balancing he always does the balancing act and I was very struck I'm reading two two books right now one about Montroteau which is the family Chateau of the Le Pen's which is actually very amusing and and a more serious book by Macron which was called Revolution which is his sort of manifesto and it's very interesting the character difference he and Marine Le Pen who are likely again to be adversaries are complete opposites because Le Pen goes on about how she's persecuted how everyone is out to get her she's a victim and so on so and when you read Macron's book for example he never mentions that his parents tried to keep him away from Brigitte and sent him to be raised by his grandmother it's just everyone is wonderful in his book he likes everyone he's very he's nice as the French say he's smooth you know and and he's he's positive he's cheerful pollsters say that the most important determinant between Macron and Le Pen voters is whether you're an optimist or pessimist and if you're an optimist you vote for Macron and if you're a pessimist you vote for Marine Le Pen and this is even more it's also a social class vote because the more educated affluent people tend to are voting for Macron in fact and that's something else that hurts him he's seen as the candidate of the bankers the candidate of the elite and I hear people say all the time I say the selam des banquiers you know and that that that hurts in France but if I had a pollster told me on Friday if you're a working-class person you would probably vote for Le Pen except if you're an optimistic worker in which case you would vote for Macron and if you're affluent if you're earning a good living you should be voting for Macron unless you are very pessimistic if you think the country is going to the dogs and that is being destroyed by immigration and Islam you will vote for Le Pen despite the fact that you're affluent so I thought that was very very telling I'll go very quickly I mean he's at 17% he looks and acts sounds presidential you when you hear him speak you think wow you know he he's imposing he's playing on experience also on the thirst on the French right for what they call alternance and I'm not really satisfied with any translations I found of alternance it's a change but it's it's also it's you know the in France we've had left right left right left right and and they alternate in power and the right feels it's their turn to come back to power and what's happening and I can see it around me as a lot of them are disgusted with fion and they're there with good reason because of the fake job scandal and the free suits for 50,000 euros and so on they think he's a crook but they say if it's if it's him or a continuation of Oland or Marine Le Pen we're gonna vote for for fion and I and I know people who had decided not to vote for fion who've now have come back to the idea because they like his economic policies because they think the country really needs to be reformed and shaken up so that could it's not impossible that that he could could win still and it would be by the way this election will be the first what we will have had not one but two candidates who are mise en examin which is basically you've been charged with corruption both fion and Marine Le Pen although she refuses to answer the judges summons two of the four leading candidates and fion's wife Penelope as well fion is compared to Margaret Thatcher and he seems to be several decades behind the times but he he really wants to to enforce rigor and austerity and totally reform the economy Melanchon who's made this amazing breakthrough his party is called La France Insoumise France Unbowed he's a trotskist he's changed a lot since the last campaign when he I was studying your colleagues over lunch in in 2012 he admired Hugo Chavez and now he talks about General de Gaulle in 2012 he played the international at his rallies and now he plays the Marseillaise and so on he has a chance as well if Melanchon wins he wants a 100 billion euro investment plan he's going to borrow to finance it and he wants to 173 billion euro in new expenditure so basically fion and Macron want to reform the economy they want to save money and Le Pen and Melanchon both want to spend a lot Melanchon by the way had a rally in the port of Marseille last night he had 70,000 people show up so he's really the the man who's got the momentum at the moment is Melanchon Marine Le Pen I can't not say something about Marine Le Pen it's a paradox that she is the most popular the the full national is actually the the leading party by all opinion polls she's getting 25 30% in elections in recent years but she will still lose because there's a sort of glass ceiling there's a deeply entrenched aversion to the extreme right and everyone believes that this will kick in and that she won't do more than she might get 40 she might get do better than expected maybe 45% in the second round but very few people believe that she will actually win although we're all nervous working against her or is this this feeling also she made an unfortunate comment yesterday she said the French were not responsible for the Valdives you know the big roundup of Jews in Paris during the Second World War which Shearac was the first president to admit that this this had been the fault of the French and then she kind of did a lot of back peddling and said no she said I believe like General de Gaulle believed that the true France was in London with General de Gaulle and the people who did that were not really French and so on so she's she's back peddling but that's that's hurt her and and it also reminds people of the sort of neo fascist foundation of the Front National and also the fact that she has she has neo-nazis in her immediate close circle guys like Frédéric Chatillon who used to celebrate Hitler's birthday and send condolence notes to each other on you know the anniversary of his death and I've been surprised that hasn't got too much attention so far but this her remark about the Valdives could she also has problems with her old father who every once in a while makes an unfortunate remark and with her niece who is a competitor really who's who's very attractive who's further to the right for Marine and if the Front National doesn't win this time they could win in 2022 and it could be Marion Marion Marion Le Pen instead of Marine and as you know Marines policies on I think if she's elected it's it's the end of Europe as we know it I just don't see how Europe could survive the she wants to leave the Euro you know all that a few very few points and I'll summarize here the fact that three out of four leading candidates are pro-Russian close to Putin Mélenchon Fillon and Le Pen all prefer Russia to the United States well with Donald Trump in office that's poor Emmanuel Macron is sort of left out on a branch because he is pro-American but he doesn't have any affinity for Donald Trump and then another question is the future of the Socialist Party if neither makes it to the runoff the two French political families that have ruled since the Second World War it will be more or less finished the big question about the legislative elections if if Le Pen or Macron or probably Macron wins in June can they get a parliamentary majority and to carry out their programs John Brennan is Jean Monnet professor of European integration in Ménouth he's obviously published a lot on Europe and integration has spoken in many places including in the Institute I think here and he now joins us to talk about the implications of all of this and I think they are serious from what Joe gathered for Europe and where Europe I suppose is going in any case yes well thank you very much indeed Joe and thank you for the invitation and it's a pleasure to share my speaking time with Lara whose work I've been reading like now you view for a very long time now I just have 10 minutes or so so I just want to throw out I think what might be the most important issues that link the French presidential election with European integration in general I think it goes without saying that the French presidential election is truly existential for the EU where Brexit is a minor irritation it's going to absorb a lot of negotiating energy and time perhaps over the next few years unless the talks break down very quickly which they might but the prospect of a Brexit is truly existential because it pretends the disintegration of the European Union and whereas I think up till recently the chief concern in Brussels and the national capitals was about obviously the prospect of a Le Pen victory the extraordinary momentum behind Mr. Melanchon over the last week I think is also giving Brussels pause for thought and the nightmare prospect I think is of a runoff between Le Pen and Melanchon and as Lara said given where they are respectively in the polls and the crime that Melanchon has made after the last televised debate last week it is not out of the question that it could be Le Pen, Melanchon even if it seems much more likely at this point in time that it will be a runoff between Le Pen and Macron and obviously the European Union is has a real interest in this result it was extraordinary I think to see the European Commission enter the fray in the French general election by setting up a fact-checking operation that was deliberately put in place to try and counter some of the lies mischaracterizations and so on that Le Pen campaign was was using was deploying now this election I think comes at a critical time obviously because it's one of a series of hugely important elections in Europe this year that will culminate with the German election in September with all due apologies to the Czech ambassador the Czech election comes a little bit later but it is of course the French and German elections that will decide the future direction of the integration process now I think however we should pay attention to some of the most recent electoral contest that we have seen where the evidence suggests that the wave of populism that has engulfed Europe in recent years may well have peaked you may remember in the Austrian presidential election the far right candidate was defeated when it was expected that he could well win in Bulgaria most recently the center parties that is Gerb on the center right and the Socialist Party on the left emerged as the two largest parties and Gerb will most likely form a centrist coalition of some kind in the Netherlands Geert Wilders seemingly unstoppable rise to the top was halted and it looks like he has very little prospect of being part of a coalition and in Germany I think it's worth noting also that Mrs Merkel who seemed to have fallen behind the SBD once Martin Schulz emerges as her challenger actually did very well in the Saarland lander election last Sunday week and again there the interesting comparison can be made between the AFD the alternative for Germany and the front national both of those parties seem to be flatlining in terms of their overall level of support over the last six months where they had seemed to have real momentum over the previous year to 18 months so I think there is a view in Europe a sense of quiet expectation if you like rather than trepidation which was there previously but I think the worrying thing in the French case which Lara has pointed to is the potential collapse in the centrist vote if for example Les Republicans and the Socialists if you put their combined votes together and they dropped to third and fourth or fourth and fifth place which is very conceivable in this election then we will have further evidence of the collapse in the centrist vote in these hugely important jurisdictions in Europe but of course that's contradicted by the fact that Macron is a centrist and if he wins it will be a triumph for the center as much as anything else. Secondly just to speak briefly about the French parliamentary elections which will follow the presidential elections in June I think these are going to be absolutely critical because if Macron wins it will inevitably be some form of cohabitation regime that emerges. His movement the Amarche movement is a very new one a lot of his candidates come from outside of mainstream or traditional party politics it's very difficult to say how they will actually do how many seats they will win in parliament but it's very likely that he's going to have to assemble some form of coalition in order to be able to govern so will we get an operable coalition in France from the European perspective instability would be certainly not as bad as a win for Le Pen or Melon Chong but it's something that will complicate I think the effort to repurpose European integration at the same time remember as the Brexit talks are ongoing. So I think the clear desire in most European capitals obviously is for a win for Emmanuel Macron and that opens up possibilities as Lara said Macron is for all the wishy washyness there is a commitment to European integration and federalism which is rather a novelty these days in centrist politicians of the right or left federalism is one of those things that is just not embraced in the same way that it was previously in different European jurisdictions but I just wanted to take up Lara's point about Macron's opposition to intergovernmentalism there I think we might run into a problem because if Mrs. Merkel is reelected and she remains as committed to what she calls the union method of governing which is to privilege what goes on in the Council and the European Council and Macron's idea of Europe is very different in that he embraces a strong role for the Commission and the traditional community supernational structures then I think we could be running into a potential conflict between France and Germany however it is much more likely that we're going to see the reanimation or the repurposing if you like of the entire European integration process there's a space if you like potentially opening up that hasn't been there probably since the 1980s that will allow for a rethinking of the European Union a rethinking of its institutions and its purpose in the early 21st century are we likely to see a big leap forward what kind of initiatives might emerge well I know there is some hope to attach to the view that a progressive alliance might be possible that if Mr. Macron wins in France and if Martin Schultz were to trump so to speak Merkel in Germany in September that will allow for a rethinking of European integration along progressive lines and this would be very different to the kind of Blair right approach to Europe. Macron of course is compared very often to Blair for very obvious reasons but Blair was never a federalist he was never really much of a supporter of the European integration process so I think it's probably more likely that we would see a progressive kind of Europe emerge if it's Macron Schultz but even if Mrs. Merkel is reelected I think she's going to have more space in which to be able to operate than she has had over the last number of years I think we're going to see a very different approach to Turkey for example in time and given Brexit and given the election of Donald Trump I'm sure that in her mind the reanimation of the integration process is hugely important now what form might that take well as yet it's very unclear I've been struck in the aftermath of the publication of the recent white paper of just how similar it is to all of the debates that were going on during and around the constitutional convention in 2005 all of that argument about variable geometry about the potential move to a core Europe and that France and Germany of course would lead that and that that in itself would act as a catalyzing force all those things are back in play of course but the one thing is missing I think is any focus on deprivation on welfare on the extraordinary problems in southern Europe in particular of unemployment and the link between that and the delegitimation of the European integration process I see no evidence that in Brussels that that has been taken seriously enough and finally just to deal with Russia because Lara mentioned that three of the four main candidates are in one way or another what might be perceived as pro Russian that will present a problem I think because the European the European Union's regime of sanctions against the Russian Federation has been difficult enough to preserve in the aftermath of the election of Trump in the United States I think it's going to be more difficult notwithstanding all of the difficulties and that he faces in Washington about those relations but I think that's definitely a space to watch that the relationship between Russia and the European Union to some extent is a prisoner of the Russian Washington relationship of course and but obviously again here the election of Macron would make things much easier for a coordinated European response to be maintained than if Melanchon Le Pen or Fiong was to win thank you very much indeed