Populists and far right hope to unsettle Macron

Luke Baker -
Populists and the far-right in Italy and France are mounting a multi-pronged assault on President Emmanuel Macron, hoping to unsettle his centrist, pro-Europe agenda ahead of European Parliament elections in May, while also shoring up their own bases.
Italy’s two deputy prime ministers, Matteo Salvini of the right-wing League and Luigi Di Maio of the populist, anti-establishment 5-Star movement, have sought to rile Macron on a host of inflammatory issues.
Salvini and Di Maio appear to believe that in attacking Macron, a strong Europhile, their core voters in Italy will be motivated. Macron has been upfront in framing the European election as a battle between anti-immigrant nationalists and pro-EU ‘progressives’ like himself. In the ballot, he hopes to carry the centre and, along with allies, potentially build the largest bloc in the European parliament. The far-right and populists believe they may win a third or more of the vote, shattering traditional power bases.
With vocal support for France’s often violent “Yellow Vests” movement and suggestions that Macron’s administration is driving neo-colonialism in Africa, the Italian duo have ignored the convention of not interfering in another country’s politics. The rise in tension shows how divisive the May 23-26 election is set to be, and hints at shifts in Europe’s political landscape that resemble populism in the United States, with fringe parties looking to overturn centrists like Macron.
Macron and his ministers have mostly claimed the high ground, ignoring many of the Italian politicians’ charges, while issuing flat responses to others.
But on Tuesday, angered by Di Maio’s accusations that Paris is worsening poverty in Africa and encouraging migration to Europe, the French foreign ministry took the unusual step of calling in Italy’s ambassador.
On Wednesday the foreign ministry went further, dismissing Salvini’s claims that Macron is unpopular and his hope that Macron’s En Marche party will lose in the European ballot. “These unfounded statements should be read in the context of domestic Italian politics,” ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said. “They are unacceptable.”
In the National Assembly, Europe Minister Nathalie Loiseau said Salvini was playing to a domestic audience and would have no impact in France.
Asked if Macron had spoken about Salvini and Di Maio at the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux replied: “No, because we only discuss issues that are important to the country.” While Salvini has long been an outspoken critic of Macron, the assault by Di Maio is relatively new and is a sign of the problems his 5-star movement is having domestically, where it has been falling in polls ahead of the EU vote. 5-Star is seeking new alliances within the European Union and sees France’s “Yellow Vests”, who have said they will run candidates in the election, as a potential ally.
“Similar to other European governments, the French government is now mostly interested in protecting the interests of the elites and the privileged, but not of the people,” Di Maio wrote earlier this month. “Yellow Vests, don’t give up!”
Yet while Macron dismisses Salvini and Di Maio as meddling outsiders, he faces a similar assault at home from Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, who hopes to ally her party with Salvini’s in the European Parliament.
Le Pen, soundly defeated by Macron in the 2017 presidential vote, launched a campaign this month to turn the French against a new Franco-German treaty of unity and commitment to Europe.
In videos — including one on Twitter viewed 165,000 times — Le Pen claimed the treaty would involve France surrendering territory to Germany in the Alsace and Lorraine border regions, that French citizens there would have to learn German, and that Macron
was considering sharing France’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council with Germany. — Reuters