Issue Brief on “European Union Amidst Elections in Europe”

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According to the Ifop Fiducial daily tracking poll, Marine Le Pen, head of the far-right National Front of France is projected to take 24% of the first-round of votes on April 23, 2017, compared with 23% for Emmanuel Macron, former economy minister, and 18.5% for former Prime Minister Francois Fillon.[1]

Restoration of the control of the French borders and scrapping up of the euro is the promise of Pen which is likely to sway the French nationals in the upcoming elections of May 2017. She  has also promised an EU referendum in France within six months of taking office of the presidency while taking the template from Britain’s vote for Brexit.  This would help France face the “wild and anarchic globalisation”[2] more effectively. She considers Brexit as the most important event since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Donald Trump’s US presidential victory as “an additional stone in the building of a new world.”[3] She has warned the immigrants that “playtime is over.”[4] Long before the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, Le Pen had made a link between immigration and militant Islamism. In the immediate aftermath, she proposed a traditionally far-right view to strip dual-nationality Muslims of their French citizenship. According to BBC News, “She’s managing to get these approval ratings by doing a Trump.”[5]

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