As EU divisions deepen, Macron stakes out electoral turf

Emmanuel Macron’s strategy for next year’s European elections is taking shape and the French president sees it in stark terms - an open battle between anti-immigrant nationalists on the one hand and pro-EU ‘progressives’ on the other.

During a tour of Nordic countries this week, he was quick to take up the gauntlet thrown down by Italy’s far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who jointly labeled Macron their number one enemy.

“It is clear that today a strong opposition is building up between nationalists and progressives,” Macron said when asked about the alliance struck between the two anti-immigrant leaders in Milan, Reuters reports.

“If they want to see me as their main opponent, they are right to do so,” he said.

Europe has seen a surge in support for far-right, anti-immigrant parties in recent national and regional elections, following a crisis that saw millions of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa end up in Europe.

Macron, a Europhile who during his French campaign said German Chancellor Angela Merkel had “saved Europe’s dignity” by taking in one million refugees, has been cast by EU opponents as a soft touch on immigration, despite his hardline reputation on the issue at home.

In Macron’s view, that split will be the determining one when voters in 27 EU member states elect new members to the European Parliament next May, an election nationalists see as a prime opportunity to expand their influence and stymie ever-closer EU integration.

Having built his own movement to win the French presidency, confounding traditional parties of the left and the right, Macron is hoping to repeat the feat at the European level, even if doing so is a more risky and unpredictable task.

“Beyond Emmanuel Macron’s European ideal, there’s obviously a very strong political objective at stake in this battle between progressives and nationalists,” said Bernard Sananes of polling institute Elabe.

“It’s about having the National Front as the sole opponent, a sort of re-run of the second round (of the French presidential election) and attracting France’s center-right movements towards his party,” he said.