As soon as Emmanuel Macron was sure that Joe Biden had won the American election, he tweeted: ‘We have a lot to do to overcome today’s challenges. Let’s work together!’ There was no effusive tweet this week from the Élysée when 54 per cent of Hungarian voters re-elected Viktor Orban as Prime Minister for a fourth term.
The silence from Macron was deafening. Not so his principal rival in France’s impending election. On Sunday evening Marine Le Pen tweeted an old photo of the happy couple shaking hands with the declaration: ‘When the people vote, the people win!’ Le Pen will hope that Orban’s victory is a good omen ahead of Sunday’s first round of voting; they have much in common – a shared vision of the future, what Orban described in his victory speech as ‘Christian Democratic, middle-class conservative and patriotic politics’.
It is likely that she will not unseat Macron, who is odds-on to win a second term as president in the final vote on 24 April. An upset isn’t an impossibility given the way the polls have narrowed in the past month – there are now just five percentage points between them – but Macron is the safer option in this era of grave uncertainty. Better the devil and all that.
It’s been a challenging year for Macron, not at all what he expected when France assumed the rotating presidency of the EU Council on 1 January. It was the ideal dovetail as he readied himself for re-election, the consolidation of his power as head of the Republic and, to all intents and purposes, Europe. Angela Merkel had just shuffled off the international stage and the new Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, had the appearance of a rather bland successor. Macron envisaged himself the de facto president of Europe.
Scholz, however, has proved to be the most hawkish German leader for decades.
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