https://arab.news/zbv2c
With Europe under fire for its lack of support for Ukraine and grappling with the prospect of losing Greenland to President Donald Trump — a shift that could spell the end of NATO — an appeal court in Paris could give the coup de grace to the future of the EU as a bloc, if Marine Le Pen’s appeal against a conviction relating to the embezzlement of European Parliament funds by her party succeeds.
It is not only the French far-right firebrand’s political future that hangs in the balance, but also the fate of France’s Fifth Republic and that of Europe, too.
Either Le Pen or her protegee Jordan Bardella, head of the patriotic French movement National Rally, will run for president of France regardless of the court decision. Right-wing skeptics have been on the rise across the Continent but have so far been kept at bay in major European countries such as France and Germany. But with their numbers growing, Le Pen’s legal troubles might not be sufficient to shift the vote away from a populist movement bent on winning the keys to the Elysee Palace.
Meanwhile, France’s mainstream political parties appear fragmented and in disarray, with none seeming to offer an appealing alternative to National Rally’s plan to radically change the country’s direction with anti-immigration and US-style “France first” policies and a euroskeptic agenda.
