President Francois Hollande yesterday urged French voters in this month’s European Parliament elections to reject Eurosceptic parties, warning that they wanted to reverse decades of Euro-pean integration.
In a column in Le Monde daily, he condemned protectionist, anti-euro policies of the far-right National Front of Marine Le Pen, which polls show emerging as France’s largest party in the May 25 election amid widespread voter apathy.
“As a result of the economic crisis, certain forces in France and other countries are trying to unravel [the EU] by betting on disappointment and despondency and digging up fears,” the Socialist leader wrote.
“[But] the end of the euro would mean implacable austerity, the end of financial solidarity and a currency abandoned to the whim of speculators.”
French President admits France has failed to tackle youth unemployment
Hollande stressed that France still wanted to defend its key industries, regulate trade and guard against wage competition from low-cost rivals, but added: “How can a country that exports more than a quarter of its output run the risk of isolation?”
Le Pen called earlier this month for fellow Eurosceptics to unite in the new European Parliament and use their weight to block any further EU integration.
Support for the EU has crumbled in co-founding member state France in recent years. A survey by pollster CSA this month showed just 51 per cent of the French backed EU membership, down from 67 per cent a decade ago.
The National Front is among a handful of Eurosceptic parties in the 28-nation EU forecast to perform better than mainstream centrist peers on May 25, mining the disenchantment of working classes hardest hit by financial austerity.
Hollande cited recent deals on EU banking union and a pan-EU tax on financial transactions to show the bloc was seeking to deal with the root causes of the 2009 sovereign debt crisis from which its economies are only now recovering. However, he acknowledged that France and other countries had failed to tackle high youth unemployment and called on voters to use the election to make their voice heard on EU policy.