The result of the first round of the French elections met expectations. This indicates that the residents' frustration with the current immigration policy and its consequences is now becoming a reality.
An example of these consequences was seen when an attack occurred at a wedding of Turkish background individuals in Thionville, France, where a group armed with assault rifles killed one and injured several people. The incident is reportedly linked to gang conflicts involved in drug trafficking.
If and when such events – and similar ones – occur repeatedly, it is understandable that people accustomed to European order are dissatisfied and thus desire the change offered by the National Rally.
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A Finnish journalist outlined four consequences of the election results. The first, according to her, is the reduction of France's support for Ukraine. This would mean a small victory for Vladimir Putin's Russia and is starkly opposed to the strongly pro-Ukraine stance of Finland's immigration-critical Finns Party.
The second issue the journalist mentioned that can be expected to change in France is the populist economic policy of the National Rally, which threatens to drive the country into an even deeper debt crisis. This is also a significant difference from the Finns Party, which has pushed for strict economic policies in government, causing the political left in opposition to resort to populist outcries.
The third potential change highlighted by the Finnish journalist was France's refusal to pay its membership fee to the EU. This would obviously have a massive impact on the entire Union, potentially pushing it back towards being a pure trade alliance. This would fit well with Finns Party's immigration-critical and EU-critical stance.
Finally, the journalist mentioned that the EU would become more value-conservative. This would mean not only stricter immigration policies but also a more conservative approach to sexual deviations and abortions.
In this respect, the relationship between the immigration-critical parties in France and Finland is not straightforward. In Finland, practically everyone supports the right to abortion, but many immigration-critical individuals view the hype around sexual deviations negatively.
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As my esteemed reader noticed, the message of this blog post is that although the immigration policies practiced across Europe have led to the emergence of large immigration-critical parties in both Finland and France – and many other countries – this does not mean that European politics is changing in all other respects.
This is particularly evident in these parties' relations with Russia and economic thinking, but also in many other aspects. Therefore, no hasty conclusions should be drawn from the first round of the French elections.
Additionally, it must be remembered that an unholy alliance is forming in France between Macron supporters and the left, which, if successful, could prevent the rise of the National Rally to power and thereby block the rise of the immigration-critical Gauls for another term.
