2024.07.03.

Podcast

What the French Elections mean for Europe . . . and for France? – PART 2 (audio)

Analysis of the results from the first round and expectations for the second round.

Next weekend French voters go to the polls in the second round of elections to the French National Assembly after the "far Right"
National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen scored a strong but not decisive success in the first round.  France's President Emmanuel Macron had called the elections in a response to its victory in the European elections to demonstrate that the Euro-results were an aberration by rallying the other parties to defeat the NR nationally. But Macron's own party came a poor third p\ after the Rally and the left-wing Popular Front, This last round will decide whether the National Rally will leap over the cordon sanitaire that has excluded the party from office until now or face continued exclusion by a Centre-Left coalition. And if the former, will President Macron form of working partnership or "cohabitation" with the NR administration? Or will he seek to block it? And what is likely to be the impact on wider European politics?
In the second of three programs on the elections and their consequences between French,, American, and Hungarian experts, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet of the London Sunday Telegraph and Daniel Mahoney, author of several books on French and European politics, and Eszter Soos, a leading Hungarian academic specialist in French politics and culutrewill discuss these and other questions.