Francois Hollande, the winner of the first round of France’s elections, said Europe’s austerity drive fueled despair and created conditions for the record-high score for anti-euro National Front leader Marine Le Pen.
Le Pen, the leader of the nationalist, anti-immigrant party, won 17.9 percent, or 6.4 million votes, surpassing poll estimates with the highest tally for the National Front created by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972. Hollande, the Socialist candidate, got 28.6 percent in the April 22 ballot, leaving him to face President Nicolas Sarkozy in next month’s runoff. Sarkozy won 27.2 percent.
“It’s this austerity everywhere that brings desperation to people and leads them to vote for the far-right,” Hollande said yesterday in a speech in Quimper, in Brittany, where the National Frontalmost doubled its score from 2007.
Europe’s front against austerity has expanded in recent weeks after Spain struggled to meet European Union-imposed deficit targets, election campaigns in Greece faced anti- austerity rumblings and a revolt against extra spending cuts in the traditionally budget-consciousNetherlands propelled Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s coalition toward an early breakup.
Anti-austerity views have boosted anti-European sentiments that play into themes at the core of Le Pen’s campaign. Le Pen, a member of the European Parliament, focused a large part of her campaigning against Europe, calling for France to exit the euro. She has repeatedly criticized the close relations between Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
No Tidal Wave
Hollande’s call for growth measures may generate fresh doubts about the German-driven strategy for coming to grips with the more than three-year-old European debt crisis.
Still, the imposition of fiscal discipline hasn’t resulted in “a tidal wave of far-right, anti-European, xenophobic parties,” Thomas Klau, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Paris. “Voters haven’t returned extreme parties to the government.”
The euro-area crisis in Europe has resulted in the ouster of leaders in Ireland, Portugal, Greece,Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland.
The European Commission “often calls on the region’s leaders not to give in to the temptation of populist speeches and to continue to move on with a Europe of peace and growth,” Olivier Bailly, a spokesman for its president Jose Manuel Barroso said, Agence France-Pressereported. The remarks echoed concerns across Europe after Le Pen’s record-high vote.
Protective Europe
“A Europe that doesn’t defend its citizens is finished, a Europe that doesn’t defend its borders is finished, a Europe that opens its markets without reciprocity is finished,” Sarkozy said at a campaign rally near Tours in the Loire valley yesterday.
Hollande has criticized Sarkozy for seeking to lure Le Pen voters, saying, “no doubt he will use all the elements of fear” to win them over.
“This is a vote of crisis,” Sarkozy said. “Political leaders, not just in France, but around the world, must see this rise of a vote of crisis. I don’t like the word populist.”
Merkel, who has dominated Europe’s crisis response, said debt reduction is the best route to economic health.
“Solid budget management is a factor for producing growth, but of course not the only one,” Merkel said yesterday at the Hanover trade fair, a showcase for high-tech products. “We’re still in the process of overcoming this crisis.”
Isolating France
Hollande’s repeated his criticism of the German-advocated austerity and said the European Central Bank needs to do more to support Europe’s growth, comments that may put him at odds with France’s neighbor and Europe’s biggest economy. One month before the first-round vote, Merkel ally Peter Altmaier warned him of a risk he could create for his own country.
The French Socialist lawmaker has said he would seek to add growth and investment measures to the fiscal treaty signed by its European partners.
“I hope that Mr. Hollande won’t place himself outside this broad consensus,” Altmaier said. “He would isolate France in Europe and that can’t be in anyone’s interest.”
Hollande’s support ranges from 53 percent to 56 percent, while Sarkozy’s backing is at 44 percent to 47 percent, recent polls showed. The surveys were conducted after first round voting ended by pollster CSA, BVA, Ifop and Ipsos.
Hollande said, if elected, he would send a draft proposal of the changes he would like to see to the treaty to the 25 EU leaders who signed the German-inspired treaty on March 2.
“If we win, France will refocus European construction and put growth, industry, sustainable growth (…) at the center,” said Hollande in the Brittany town of Quimper yesterday.
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