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[...] A Harris Interactive/Epoka poll for Le Figaro published this week put the far-right, Brussels-baiting Rassemblement National (RN) of Marine Le Pen on 22.5 per cent of the vote, fractionally ahead of LREM, with 22 per cent.
Alarmed by the opinion polls — and the enthusiasm generated by the RN’s fast-talking 23-year-old campaign leader Jordan Bardella — Mr Macron has ordered in the big guns ahead of the May 26 election. Edouard Philippe, prime minister, and other cabinet members have been sent into the fray and told to inject energy into Ms Loiseau’s rallies to try to ensure that LREM emerges as the biggest French party in the European Parliament.
A win for the RN would bolster Europe’s nationalists and populists and deal a further blow to Mr Macron’s ambitions to upend the EU’s entrenched political order, as he did in France two years ago.
“In France he has broken the political parties, mainly the Socialist party, and weakened the [traditional] right,” said Pascale Joannin, an international politics expert who heads the Robert Schuman Foundation. “In the European family, maybe he expects to do the same, but it’s not possible because France is only one member state and there are 27 others.”
Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, his EU partner of choice, has lost political influence at home, while Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, her successor as leader of the Christian Democrats, gave a frosty response to Mr Macron’s latest European proposals, including one for a pan-EU minimum wage. [...]
At the same time, Brexit and the rise of nationalism elsewhere in Europe have markedly changed what was once a more welcoming environment for Mr Macron’s ideas. “Mr Macron’s very ambitious plans landed in a Europe that was reluctant to move,” said Ms Fabry.
But the worry now for Mr Macron is that he is being undermined by political failures in France as well as his difficulties in Brussels.
The anti-government gilets jaunes protesters, although fewer in number now, continue to demonstrate in city centres every Saturday as they have for the past six months.
And the government’s economic reforms, including an attempt to reduce the size and cost of the civil service, face increasing public resistance. [...]
Ms Le Pen, Mr Bardella and the RN are portraying the European vote as a domestic political fight, a chance for French voters to punish Mr Macron at the polls. [...]
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