Less than six months remains before the presidential election in France, and one of the real contenders for the post of the next president is a leader of the ‘National Front’ Marine Le Pen. She is running on a far-right platform, advocating the exit from the euro zone and recognizes the results of the referendum in Crimea. It is believed that her victory will be a great present for Russia, since Marine Le Pen will undermine at least the unified position of Europe towards Ukraine and the anti-Russian sanctions. Comparing to an extremely unpopular incumbent president François Hollande, the leader of the ‘National Front’, who has the support of one third of the population, looks quite advantageous. So advantageous that the main question in the pre-election France is following: who among French politicians will be able to win the political battle against Marine Le Pen?
Perhaps, the first answer was given by the French conservatives. Unexpectedly for the vast majority of political observers and analysts the ‘primaries’ (by the way, carried out for the first time in the history of the party) among the French Republicans were won not by a faithful ally of the former President Jacques Chirac, mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppe, and even not by ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy. The both politicians, by the way, were implicated in the corruption scandals. Considered an ‘outsider’ the former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, who headed the government when Sarkozy won a convincing victory over his competitors, is now considered the most likely candidate for the presidency of the Fifth Republic. However, Donald Trump was also considered an ‘outsider’ among the American Republicans during the ‘primaries’, but this did not prevented him from becoming the president of the United States.
An expert of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) specializing in France, Claire Demesme believes that the chances of Marine Le Pen to be elected have declined significantly after Fillon’s victory in the internal elections of the party. Fillon is an extremely conservative politician, and his program intersects with the program of Marine Le Pen in some aspects. ‘’He is an excellent alternative for those voters who like the program of Le Pen, but they do not support the idea of leaving the euro zone,’’ the analyst said in an interview with Deutschlandradio.
If Francois Fillon is elected, a very interesting situation will develop in the foreign policy plane. On the one hand, Fillon openly opposes the anti-Russian sanctions and stands for the recognition of the Russian Crimea. At the same time the consistent cooperation with Russia, Iran and Turkey in the fight against the Islamist totalitarianism in Syria is an absolute priority to Fillon. The protection of the Christians of the the Middle East is also important for Fillon. "He wants to carry out a soft policy toward Russia and to cooperate with it in Syria. His attention is focused on Syria and terrorism, and we must understand that these issues play a very important role in France - especially after the terrorist attacks,’’Claire Demesme notes.
Despite the fact that Fillon’s planned structural reforms of the stagnant French economy meet the wishes of Berlin, the analyst warns that the election of Francois Fillon as the resident of France is fraught with rather serious problems for the German-French relations. ‘’We need to consider the following: What will happen with the French foreign policy? What will happen with the European policy? Fillon always says that he advocates for a Europe of nations. He wants France to remain a sovereign country. All these ideas and accents can hinder the German-French cooperation,’’ the analyst of the DGAP says.
In any case, the final alignment in the presidential race in France will be known only after the determination of the socialist candidate. In this case the chances of incumbent President Francois Hollande to be reelected are actually equal to zero. Now we can assume that at least two strong candidates for the president of France - Le Pen and Fillon - are planning to take a clear course for normalization of the relations with Russia.
