Candidate Marine Le Pen. By JÄNNICK Jérémy, CC BY 3.0, Link. President Emmanuel Macron. By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Link. Image modified.
CLIMATE POLITICSOPINIONPARIS CLIMATE ACCORD
Is Paris About to Leave the Paris Agreement?
Essay by Eric Worrall
President Macron has called a snap parliamentary election after devastating losses to right wing challenger Marine Le Pen in recent European elections.
France’s snap election: what happened, why, and what’s next?
In a shock move, president Emmanuel Macron called a parliamentary election, describing it as ‘an act of confidence’
Jon Henley Europe correspondent Mon 10 Jun 2024 08.01 AEST
In a shock move, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has called a snap parliamentary election that will be held within the next 30 days. What happened exactly, why – and what might come next?
What’s the story?
After suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally (RN) in the European parliamentary elections, the French president on Sunday evening unexpectedly announced a snap general election.
According to usually accurate projections, Macron’s centrist list, headed by MEP Valérie Hayer, scored between 14.8% and 15.2% in the European poll, less than half the 32%-33% tally booked by RN, whose lead candidate was the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, 28.
The president won re-election in 2022. His current term runs until spring 2027 and he cannot stand again.
What were Macron’s reasons?
The president said the decision was a “serious and heavy” one, but that he could not resign himself to the fact that “far-right parties … are progressing everywhere on the continent”.
…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/09/frances-snap-election-what-happened-why-and-whats-next
Bear in mind, when “The Guardian” say “Far Right”, they mean anyone to the right of President Biden. Le Pen is no President Trump. But she has promised to cancel wind and solar subsidies and instead concentrate on nuclear power, and she has also indicates she wants to protect French manufacturing – she regards driving manufacturing offshore with harsh climate rules but still using the manufactured products, importing the products instead of manufacturing them in France, as “climate hypocrisy”.
The following is from April 2022.
Climate discussed for 20 minutes in 3-hour-long Macron-Le Pen debate
By Nelly Moussu | Euractiv France | translated by Daniel Eck 21 Apr 2022
During the three-hour-long debate between French presidential candidates Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, climate was discussed for just 20 minutes, despite being one of the most anticipated topics. EURACTIV France reports.
Climate was one of the ten topics on the debate’s agenda on Wednesday (20 April), ahead of the final round of voting on Sunday.
…
Le Pen wants a slowed transition
For Le Pen, French purchasing power is at the heart of her discourse on the environment. The far-right leader promises to lower VAT on fuel, gas and heating oil while exiting “the European electricity market” to restore the purchasing power of the French.
While favouring the ecological transition, Le Pen wants “it to be slower than what is being imposed on the French, to enable them to cope with it.”
According to her, the current government is asking too much of the French people, and she blamed Macron for his “punitive ecology”.
Le Pen also believes that “wind power is an ecological and economic absurdity”. She promised a referendum on the dismantling of wind turbines and said she had “a plan to develop nuclear power” at the start of her mandate.
President Trump said nice things about Marine Le Penn back in 2017, as far as I know he still feels the same about her – though at the time Trump’s focus was mostly Le Pen’s pushback against Europe’s open borders.
If President Macron loses ground in this snap election, he will still be President – it’s a Parliamentary election, not a Presidential election. But Macron will be even more of a lame duck President than he is already, his hands would be tied on many issues, it would be an enormous embarrassment for him.
What can we conclude from all this, with regards to the Paris Agreement? Le Pen has said she plans to uphold France’s Paris commitments, but she also makes it clear the Paris Agreement is not her main priority. If greens play hardball, my crystal ball tells me Le Pen would choose economic sanity over damaging climate commitments. So we are seeing an entertaining though slim possibility that France is kicked out of the Paris Agreement, maybe even before Trump wins office at the end of the year.
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