Insights from Brussels - While we wait for Le Pen
EU leaders are in a hurry with their long-term budget. They are afraid that Marine Le Pen will get her hands on it in the spring.
It's not easy to get into West Norway Brussels Office when there is a summit in the EU capital. There are roadblocks and brusque police officers on all sides of the Schuman roundabout and the EU quarter. Not everyone is equally receptive to the message that some of us are going to work for Western Norway within the barbed wire. So the question is whether there is too much control for too little anyway. When the heads of state and government arrived in Brussels on Thursday, one after the other struck a pessimistic tone with regard to a possible agreement on the long-term budget.
As I wrote in the previous Insights from Brussels , the tug-of-war over the 2028-2034 budget is characterized not only by tough contradictions between the countries that pay the most and those that receive the most, but also by the structure: should the EU deal more with "new" issues such as security and technology, or continue to deal mostly with the "old" such as agriculture and regional equalization? When, despite the contradictions, there is still agreement that progress is urgent, it is due not least to the following three words: Marine Le Pen.
French President Macron is pressuring his colleagues to reach an agreement before the New Year . Council President Antonio Costa is warning member states that it could be a full year before the budget is in place if they fail to do so this autumn, as next year's elections in several key member states will hamper progress. Marine Le Pen herself says it would be a "democratic scandal" if the budget is adopted before French voters have had their say.
Polls in France continue to suggest that the Rassemblement National candidate will beat any current challenger in the second round of the presidential election. This applies to pro-EU center-right candidates like Eduard Phillipe and Gabriel Attal, and even more so when pollsters pit Le Pen against the other EU critic who has a chance of reaching the final round in April: left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
It is important to emphasize that a lot can happen in the six months leading up to the election, and that the polls in the autumn in advance do not usually turn out to be the result when France elects a president. Nevertheless, Le Pen's slow march forward, election by election, has created an increasingly strong sense that the big breakthrough is imminent. Moreover, the winter before the election could become a kind of perfect storm in France, with angry youth demonstrating in the streets, skyrocketing energy prices and a general crisis of confidence in traditional politicians. This weekend's riots, and the almost apocalyptic images from French cities after looting and fires, only fuel this sense of deep crisis.
Le Pen was clearly present at the summit, even if she did not attend. Earlier this week she appeared in Brussels and gave a brief press conference. What would a President Le Pen do with the EU? She has removed her most radical proposals from the agenda. There will be no “Frexit” if the far right comes to power, and France will not leave the euro either. Still, a victory for Le Pen could be a watershed moment for the EU. Her vision is to return power from Brussels to member states.
As president, Le Pen will set a "strict ceiling" on France's net contribution to the EU of five billion euros, which is equivalent to almost halving it. In the green area, she will not only put the brakes on, but put the policy in reverse. While the EU has ambitious goals of becoming independent of fossil energy, Le Pen will demolish French wind farms, withdraw France from European energy cooperation and stop the EU's Green Deal . In connection with the press conference, she also announced that she will stop financial support for Ukraine within six months of the election, and Le Pen remains skeptical about the energy sanctions against Russia.
Perhaps the most important difference between an EU with and without Le Pen will be what will not happen. Even in a union of 27 member states, the relationship between Germany and France is a driving force for the development of the EU. If France steps down from that role, much will come to a standstill. That is why the election campaign south of the border is being followed with great excitement in the EU capital.
Is this important for West Norway ? Quite directly, no. Marine Le Pen doesn't mean anything about Western Norway.
But in practice? Yes. The size and structure of the EU's long-term budget are also crucial for the future of a number of programs and cooperation in which Norway participates. The government will announce which EU programs Norway wants to participate in early 2027, and without agreement on the budget, we also do not know what we have to deal with from the Norwegian side. And more generally, we will of course be strongly influenced by whether the EU machine pushes forward towards closer cooperation, or whether the brakes are put on.
When the Belgian police packed away the barbed wire on Friday, they probably didn't put it far back in the warehouse. There will soon be more overtime, and the barriers will have to be put up again when the EU leaders return to Brussels. There will be an extra summit at the end of November. That's what happens when you disagree about everything except the urgency of reaching an agreement.