On April 23, French voters will choose two presidential candidates–the two highest vote getters–to advance to a run-off scheduled for May 7. Recent polls suggest a tight race. The projected victors of the first round–National Front’s Marine Le Pen and En Marche’s Emmanuel Macron–are both expected to net 22 percent of the April 23 vote. But after two successful debate performances, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon is hovering just behind the front-runners at 20 percent. Francois Fillon, the conservative candidate who is ensnared in a corruption scandal, is right behind at 19 percent of the first-round vote. Though 11 candidates are in the mix, one of these four is likely to be France’s next leader.

Marine Le Pen

Le Pen, the self-professed “candidate of the people” needs no introduction. A populist firebrand in the same vein as U.S. President Donald Trump, Le Pen heads the National Front Party on a platform steeped in anti-immigrant and anti-EU messaging. With a potent brew of Islamaphobia and nationalism, Le Pen has stunned political observers with her success so far, especially considering her family tree. Her father, the former National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, was a blatant anti-Semite and racist. Under his leadership, the party was a fixture of France’s fringe, but never gained traction with a large chunk of voters. That is changing under Marine.

Francois Fillon

Fillon’s campaign has been marred by a corruption scandal that has overshadowed his policies. Fillon has been accused of paying his wife Penelope a hefty salary for a job that didn’t actually exist when he was a member of Parliament. His politics resemble a traditional conservative in the U.S.: he has pledged to cut taxes, open up the market, cut public spending, and increase the number of law enforcement officers.

Emmanuel Macron

A centrist and political novice–though he did serve as Minister of the Economy–Macron’s campaign has surged in recent months as French voters seek a candidate without Fillon’s establishment ties or Le Pen’s anti-EU nationalism. Macron is pro-EU. He has proposed a tax cut for corporations, and an influx of public spending. His social views are largely liberal, and he supports France’s secular society; he has said, however, that Muslim head scarves should not be banned at universities.

Jean-Luc Melenchon

In recent days, Melenchon, a 65-year-old admirer of Mao Zedong and Hugo Chavez, has been biting at the heels of Macron and Le Pen. His views are so far left that some worry he is an undercover communist. He would like to see a huge increase in public spending, he is skeptical of the EU, and he proposes France leave NATO. This is not his first rodeo; Melenchon ran in 2012, capturing 11 percent of the vote. But with his competitors stalling, and as France, like much of the rest of the West, seeks radical solutions, his star is on the rise.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Private employers in European Union member-states can now legally ban employees from wearing head scarves or other religious garb, the bloc’s highest court ruled on Tuesday. The European Court of Justice’s ruling comes at a time of creeping anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe, most notably in France, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Head scarves are not the only targeted religious ornaments; the ruling could affect Sikh men who wear turbans or Jews who wear yarmulkes, for instance. Applying only to the workplace, the ban is binding for EU member-states, as all ECJ rulings are. Some European politicians who are bracing for heated elections later this year welcomed the ruling. Francois Fillon, the scandal-plagued presidential candidate in France, called the ruling an “immense relief,” and said it would be “a factor in cohesion and social peace.”

France’s far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, has built her campaign around anti-immigrant, and specifically anti-Muslim, policies. She is expected to advance to the second round of voting, which will take place on May 7. In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is seeking to supplant Chancellor Angela Merkel in an election in September, though the party has recently dipped in the polls. The party’s Berlin leader, Georg Pazderski, applauded the ECJ’s ruling, saying it “sends out the right signal, especially for Germany.”

The ruling was based on two separate cases brought to the court by France and Belgium. In the first case, Samira Achbita, who worked for a security company in Belgium, was fired when she refused to remove her head scarf while at work. The ECJ ruled that Achbita had not been discriminated against because her workplace’s ban of religious attire applied to all religions, not just Islam.

“An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court said, adding that the rule “treats all employees to the undertaking in the same way, notably by requiring them, generally and without any differentiation, to dress neutrally.”

In the second case, Asthma Bougnaoui was fired after a customer of her France-based IT consultancy firm complained that her head scarf was “embarrassing.” The ECJ ruled that she had, unlike Achbita, been discriminated against, because a customer complaint does not justify the firing of an employee. But that does not mean an employer cannot have a policy that employees are forbidden to wear religious attire in the workplace. The ECJ ruling allows for such a policy, which many religious and civil rights groups worry could lead to discrimination, specifically against Muslim women.

“It will lead to Muslim women being discriminated in the workplace, but also Jewish men who wear kippas, Sikh men who wear turbans, people who wear crosses,” said Maryam H’madoun of the Open Society Justice Initiative. “It affects all of them, but disproportionately Muslim women.”   

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen’s campaign officially began with a speech on Sunday, where she painted France in the same grim, dystopian hues that propelled President Donald Trump to victory in America. In front of thousands of supporters in Lyon, Le Pen delivered a screed against Islam, the European Union, and globalization. As the tides of populism, anti-globalization, and nationalistic fervor grip much of the Western world, France is the next liberal democracy that could retreat inward.

Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front party, opened her speech with a populist motto straight out of Trump’s playbook: “I’m against the Right of money, and the Left of money. I’m the candidate of the people!” she declared. As Le Pen spoke, a screen behind her read “In the Name of the People.” Images of the ideas Le Pen rails against flashed on the screen as well: criminal immigrants, jihadists, and, slightly out of place but equally as dangerous in Le Pen’s view–EU bureaucrats.

“After decades of cowardice and laissez-faire, our choice is a choice of civilization,” Le Pen, 48, said. “Will our children live in a country that is still French and democratic?” Le Pen praised Trump, called the EU a “failure,” and, citing the knife attack at the Louvre last Friday, said France is threatened by the “yoke of Islamic fundamentalism.” She promised to secure France’s borders, pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, and renegotiate French membership in the EU, possibly even holding a referendum on membership for a so-called “Frexit.”

Recent polls suggest Le Pen’s populist message is connecting, and will likely fuel her to the run-off round of France’s two-stage election process. The first round, a popular vote contest between a handful of candidates is set for April 23; the second, a run-off between the top two vote-getters, is two weeks later. While her nationalist, anti-elite ethos is certainly resonating, Le Pen’s greatest boon could be her opposition.

Seen until recently as the likely victor in the spring election, Francois Fillon is embroiled in a nepotism scandal that is threatening his candidacy, though he is staying in the race. But between the crumbling Fillon and the ascendant Le Pen is a third candidate who could win the day: Emmanuel Macron. The 39-year-old independent centrist is running on a starkly different platform than Le Pen–pro-EU, pro-globalization, pro-immigration–that could ultimately capture the majority of ballots.

Like Le Pen, Macron, a former banker and economics minister, is running as an outsider. In fact, his party, En Marche! (Let’s Go!) is less than one-year old. In his campaign kick-off speech on Saturday, Macron, in front of 10,000 supporters, spread his message beyond France’s borders, and reached out across the Atlantic: “I want all those who today embody innovation and excellence in the United States to hear what we say: from now on, from next May, you will have a new homeland – France,” he said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Earlier this week, while Americans were busy analyzing our President-elect’s latest round of ill-advised tweets, France held a presidential primary, and the results could have some major impacts on the country’s 2017 presidential elections. On Sunday, candidate François Fillon beat out his two opponents, Alain Juppé and Nicolas Sarkozy, in the primary elections for France’s center-right Republican party. The victory was a major upset, considering that just last month, Fillon, France’s former prime minister, was trailing far behind Juppé and Sarkozy in the polls, making it unlikely that he would even be a competitor.

If you’re wondering why this news should matter to an American preparing for Trump’s presidency, it’s because France is poised to be the next nation to watch as Western countries are trending strongly toward populism and ultra-nationalism. These attitudes, which led to Brexit and our own President-elect Trump, have also been on the rise in France, a country which has traditionally been known for its left-wing politics.

If you’ve heard Marine Le Pen’s name being thrown around recently, it’s because she’s the leader of France’s far-right National Front, a party that has been known for certain extreme views against immigration and the European Union. Le Pen’s father, who was the party’s former head, was expelled from leadership after anti-Semitic comments.

After the Brexit decision, Le Pen wrote an op-ed for the New York Times calling the European Union a “prison of peoples” and declaring “The People’s Spring” inevitable. While the Brexit decision certainly gave Le Pen more ammunition to use in her cause, it is likely that Trump’s election will further increase the anti-establishment attitudes reflected by Le Pen and her supporters. She herself called Trump’s win a “sign of hope” and an indication that “people are taking their country back.”

Fillon’s victory on Sunday is significant because the Republican party was considered the greatest hope to prevent Le Pen’s victory in the presidential elections. While Fillon is a social conservative who has vowed to fight “Islamic totalitarianism,” he is still considered to be preferable to the left over Le Pen, whose plans to appeal to the working class and those fed up with the “establishment” and “elites” mirror the familiar rhetoric of the Trump campaign. It is unlikely that the left will have any representation of its own in next year’s race, as the low popularity of current Socialist President François Hollande indicates that the party will be unable to compete. Hollande announced today that he would not be seeking re-election, but polls indicate that any alternative candidate chosen by the Socialist Party will likely not be able to challenge Fillon and Le Pen.

If Le Pen is victorious in 2017’s elections, it could spell trouble for the future of the European Union and would likely be a discouraging outlook for liberal politics all over the globe. As the “Trump effect” sends ripples that will undoubtedly shake up the world order, the French election is one to watch.

Mariam Jaffery

Mariam was an Executive Assistant at Law Street Media and a native of Northern Virginia. She has a B.A. in International Affairs with a minor in Business Administration from George Washington University. Contact Mariam at mjaffery@lawstreetmedia.com.

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