Berlin, 1 Jul : After France’s far-right National Rally surged into the lead in the first round of legislative elections, some European neighbours on Monday cast a wary eye on the latest country to veer to the right on the continent.
\nThe French result comes after the European Parliament elections last month strengthened hard-right parties overall, though their performance varied from country to country.
\nIt also comes as Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, long known as a Eurosceptic, took over the European Union’s presidency for the coming six months.
\nPro-European politicians fear a further weakening of unity in the 27-nation bloc, which is already experiencing anti-European sentiment in many regions, triggered by issues such as inflation, migration, and Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine that has brought in millions of refugees looking for shelter.
\nA National Rally victory in the run-off elections could have serious consequences not only for France, but also for Europe. The far-right party is not only very critical of the European Union and pursues a \u201cFrance First\u201d policy, it also wants to move away from the strong partnership of France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest economies, which together have long been viewed as the motor of European integration.
\nGerman and Polish leaders said Monday it was too early to judge the election result before Sunday’s second ballot in France, but some still warned of a shift to the right.
\nPoland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former European Union Council head, said that \u201cthe French lesson is not finished yet, we still have the runoff\u201d, but also warned that the result was worrisome.
\n\u201cThis trend is really dangerous,” the Polish prime minister told reporters on Monday, adding that the election result was \u201ca very clear sign of what is going on, not only in France but also in some other countries of Western Europe\u201d.
\nGerman Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Monday in Berlin that \u201cit cannot leave anyone cold when (…) a party is far ahead that sees Europe as the problem and not the solution”, though she stressed that \u201cin a democracy, elections are of course in the hands of the voters”, German news agency dpa reported.
\nA spokesman for German Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to comment on the result when asked by reporters in Berlin.
\n\u201cIt will come as no surprise here that we will not be commenting in more detail before the second round of voting,” Steffen Hebestreit said, adding that \u201cwe work closely and trustingly with France, our most important partner in Europe. And we want it to stay that way\u201d.
\nAccording to results released early Monday in France, the far-right party, which has already dealt a major blow to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrists, could be on the brink of power. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Berlin, 1 Jul : After France’s far-right National Rally surged into the lead in the first round of legislative elections, some European neighbours on Monday cast a wary eye on the latest country to veer to the right on the continent. The French result comes after the European Parliament elections last month strengthened hard-right parties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-243408","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243408\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}