PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s reelection as mayor of Le Havre is positioning him as the leading candidate to take on the far right in next year’s presidential election. The contest was an important test for the center-right politician, as he had conditioned his bid for the Elysée on securing another term leading the industrial port city, which in the past tended to lean left. A poll released ahead of the vote showed Philippe in real danger of losing to a Communist challenger — an outcome that would have scuttled his plans to run for president. But Philippe shut down skeptics by winning the runoff by more than six points. Then a Toluna Harris Interactive survey conducted online just after polls closed in the nationwide municipal elections showed Philippe on track for a second-place finish in the first round of the 2027 presidential contest, though still trailing National Rally President Jordan Bardella by 17 points. Philippe looks primed to come out the other end of this make-or-break moment stronger. Building momentum now could help separate Philippe from the rest of a very crowded field of candidates in the race for the Elysée, though there’s still more than a year to go. “Everything sort of starts today,” Nathalie Loiseau, a MEP from Philippe’s Horizons party and one of its heavyweights, told POLITICO. “There are reasons to hope.” Philippe, who was the first of the center-right contenders to declare his presidential bid, is already rolling out campaign events, with April 12 bookmarked for a large-scale rally in Paris, according to two party officials — though Loiseau declined to confirm the event. “Le Havre’s people know that there is reason for hope when all people of good will come together … and reject the extremes and their simplistic solutions,” Philippe said in his victory speech Sunday from Le Havre. The politician’s strong performance in the first round and his comfortable win in the runoff drew a sigh of relief from his allies on Sunday — and led some of his most prominent rivals to publicly acknowledge his front-runner status. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin, himself a presidential hopeful, called on Philippe to unite centrists behind him. “He now needs to unite people [around him], for us to have an only candidate,” Darmanin said on France 2 last week. A person close to Darmanin told POLITICO that Philippe’s performance was “a bucket of cold water” for the justice minister’s presidential aspirations. EXPERIENCE VS. YOUTH France’s 2027 presidential race looks likely to be the most consequential in a decade, with the far-right National Rally consistently polling more than 15 percentage points ahead of other parties. Despite failing to pick up high-profile targets like Marseille, Nîmes and Toulon, the far right celebrated its performance Sunday. Bardella told supporters in Paris the far right had achieved the “biggest breakthrough of its history,” while his mentor Marine Le Pen said the National Rally had scored “dozens” of regional victories. The National Rally’s biggest win on Sunday came on the French Riviera, where one of its allies won Nice, France’s fifth-most-populous city. However, political watchers were quick to note that the victory was more attributable to local rightwing baron-turned-far-right-ally Eric Ciotti than to Bardella. Loiseau argued there was no National Rally “wave” in these local elections, flagging the party’s failure to achieve a decisive breakthrough in large and midsize cities. But she said the far right’s slow and steady rise, including in rural areas that used to be strongholds of moderate politics, shouldn’t be underestimated. Bardella is the National Rally’s most likely candidate next year unless Marine Le Pen successfully appeals the five-year election ban she was handed as the result of an embezzlement conviction. Bardella’s popularity has risen steadily, but he has never personally won election for local or national government. Philippe’s allies are hoping his credentials as prime minister during Emmanuel Macron’s first term and extensive background in politics will give him a decisive edge should he qualify to run against the National Rally in the 2027 runoff. Bardella’s opponents see his lack of executive-level experience as a key weakness in a presidential contest, especially as Europe is embroiled in two major international conflicts. “Edouard Philippe was a prime minister during a major crisis, which was Covid. He has an international stature,” said Loiseau. “You can imagine him facing Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. This isn’t necessarily true of everyone who is either an official candidate or would like to be a candidate.”

PARIS — The far-right National Rally looks headed for defeat in Marseille’s mayoral race Sunday, according to a poll shared exclusively with POLITICO. The survey from Cluster 17 shows incumbent Mayor Benoît Payan scoring 53 percent of the vote, 14 points ahead of the National Rally’s candidate, Franck Allisio. Martine Vassal, who is backed by centrists and conservatives, is on track to get 8 percent of the vote. In the first round of voting last Sunday, Allisio and Payan were neck and neck, raising hopes among National Rally supporters that the far right could take Marseille, France’s second-largest city. But far-left candidate Sébastien Delogu, who got close to 12 percent of the vote in the first round, pulled out of the runoff in the hopes of stopping an Allisio victory. Jean-Yves Dormagen, the president of Cluster 17, said his institute’s survey showed two-thirds of those who voted for Delogu in the first round are expected to back the center-left Payan. Despite Allisio’s historically strong performance in the first round, a far-right victory in Marseille was widely seen as a long shot. Still, the loss will sting given the National Rally was hoping to gain momentum ahead of the 2027 presidential election and prove it can break the glass ceiling keeping it out of power.

PARIS — Emmanuel Grégoire looks primed to extend the Socialist Party’s quarter-century rule of Paris in Sunday’s runoff election to lead the French capital, according to a poll shared exclusively with POLITICO. The survey from Cluster 17 shows Grégoire scoring 48 percent of the vote, seven points clear of conservative challenger Rachida Dati. Sophia Chikirou of the hard-left France Unbowed would come in third with 11 percent. Grégoire finished 12 points ahead of Dati in the first round of the election last Sunday, but the former culture minister made the race far more competitive by teaming up with center-right candidate Pierre‑Yves Bournazel, who finished a disappointing fourth. The decision of far-right MEP Sarah Knafo to drop out of the race gave Dati another boost. Grégoire chose not to team up with Chikirou on principle due to her party’s abrasive, confrontational approach to the local election. France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has stoked controversy recently with his unapologetic response to the killing of a far-right activist, and later with comments that were condemned as antisemitic. Jean-Cristophe Catalon contributed to this report.

LONDON — Britain’s Labour Party is paying a communications agency to find influencers who can promote struggling Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s cost-of-living message. The governing party has tapped up digital communications agency 411 to reach out to influencers, with the comms shop asking them to be part of a campaign “sharing the steps that this Labour Government is taking to ease the cost of living,” according to a message to influencers seen by POLITICO. The creators are hand-picked “micro-influencers” with less than 20,000 followers, which 411 believes have a more engaged and targeted audience, according to a person working on the strategy but not authorized to speak publicly about it. The influencers do not get paid by Labour or 411, with the same person describing the outreach as akin to a targeted press release. The quest for new messengers comes as Starmer’s government tries to convince Brits it can reduce costs and fights to turn around dire poll ratings. At the beginning of the year, Starmer announced that cutting the cost of living was his “number one priority.”  His government has, however, repeatedly struggled with its communications, with tanking poll ratings partially blamed by his own MPs on a failure to tell the story of his administration. Starmer’s Downing Street has cycled through multiple communications chiefs since taking office in July 2024. Mark McVitie, who works on social media strategy as director of the Labour Growth Group — though is not involved with the influencer outreach — described the latest move as “tactically fine and what a government should be doing in 2026.” But he warned it is “insufficient to the level of the challenge facing this particular government.” The Labour Party did not respond to a request for comment. The move is the latest by the British government to tap into the world of influencers as it tries to push its message. At the end of February, Starmer hosted a press conference solely for content creators, while Chancellor Rachel Reeves booked out seats at a pre-budget press conference for hand-picked online finance influencers. Starmer has started posting podcast-style videos in recent weeks in a bid to more directly connect with voters. A Labour MP, discussing the bid to reach influencers and granted anonymity to speak freely, said they were “delighted to discover we have a comms strategy of any kind.”

PARIS — Former French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is on track to win reelection as mayor of Le Havre, according to polling shared exclusively with POLITICO. The survey from Cluster 17 showed Philippe, who is running for French president next year, netting 47 percent of the vote in the runoff on Sunday. His main challenger from the Communist Party, Jean-Paul Lecoq, scored 39 percent in the poll. The far-right National Rally’s Franck Keller came in third with 14 percent. Should those numbers hold in the vote, it will be a major sigh of relief for Philippe. A poll released before the first round of the election last Sunday showed Philippe in danger of losing to Lecoq, which would have imperiled his presidential aspirations. Philippe is widely viewed as the centrist candidate with the best chance of beating the far right in the race for the Elysée. Philippe had already managed to temper predictions of doom and gloom by turning in a strong performance in the first round, beating Lecoq by nearly 10 points. Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — Norway should reapply to become a member of the European Union in light of their shared security challenges — namely Russia — the leader of the country’s conservative opposition party told POLITICO. The oil-rich Nordic nation applied to join the EU in 1992, but the bid was rejected in a referendum two years later. Since then, Norway has been a member of the European Economic Area, which means it adopts many of the EU’s rules and regulations, as well as being a member of NATO. But with wars and growing threats around the world, the arms-length relationship between Brussels and Oslo is no longer fit for purpose, argued Ine Eriksen Søreide, who was elected leader of Norway’s conservative party last month. “In my opinion, and my party’s opinion, we would be best served by being full members of the EU,” she said in an interview on Thursday as EU leaders were convening for a summit in Brussels. “I’ve been talking consistently about the need for a constructive debate based on the EU as it is today, not as it was in 1994 … and saying very clearly and loudly” that Norway’s interests lie inside the 27-member bloc, added Søreide, who was defense minister from 2013 to 2017 and foreign minister from 2017 to 2021. A recent spat between Oslo and Brussels over ferro-alloys (additives in steelmaking) had underscored the drawbacks of being outside the union, said Søreide. The spat, during which the EU imposed restrictions on imports from Norway, “very clearly illustrated that we are a part of the [EU] internal market … but that doesn’t help if something comes from the outside like these protective measures.” Iceland’s potential bid to join the EU is another spur for Oslo to seek membership in the bloc. “If Iceland then decides in a referendum to reopen negotiations, it’s a very different ballgame,” she said. “I’m not suggesting that what Iceland does will in itself change the view of Norwegians, but it can lead to certain institutional changes and also a kind of different approach for the EU, making it more difficult for us to be on the outside.” Beyond benefits on trade, Søreide listed defense, space, health and Arctic security as areas where Oslo would benefit from full EU membership. The fact that Norway isn’t part of the EU, but nevertheless transposes its laws, means that the country is “missing out in so many areas,” she said. While Norway had transposed some 14,000 legal acts from the EU into national law in recent years, the country nonetheless gets no say in setting the bloc’s agenda or weighing in on its strategic orientations. The ferro-alloy case shows how Oslo can be seen as “a second-tier member” of the club, Søreide added. ‘MORE OPEN’ TODAY The question of Norway’s EU membership has come up repeatedly during the past 30 years, with voters typically deciding not to join the bloc. Norway applied for EU membership in 1992 along with Finland, Sweden and Austria, but ultimately voted against membership in a referendum — with 52.2 percent against and 47.8 percent in favor — while the other three countries opted to join. In recent years, polls have shown that a majority remains against joining the bloc, with concerns about protecting Norway’s vast energy wealth outweighing the benefits of membership. Norway’s parliament has a majority of MPs opposed to membership. However, support for joining the EU has ticked up over the past 18 months amid tensions in the transatlantic relationship and U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of seizing Greenland. A tense exchange of leaked messages between Trump and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre — in which the former criticized the latter for not granting him the Nobel Peace Prize — drove home concerns about the transatlantic relationship for many Norwegians. On the prospect of EU membership, Søreide said it was unlikely to materialize “immediately.” Indeed, Norway’s current government has not shown interest in launching a national debate about membership, and the next parliamentary elections aren’t until 2029. But Søreide said that attitudes toward membership were shifting. “I do sense … there is a more open approach to the issue in Norway,” she said. “Now when you hear debates among everything from the business sector to large private sector organizations to people on the street, there is a difference in tone.” The conservative party leader also criticized Norway’s Labour Party minority government, which is backed by a center-left coalition, for making the subject of EU membership taboo. “I’m very disappointed and also quite surprised that the government, a Labour government, has kind of put even the debate off for the next four years,” she said, adding she found the approach “very strange in this situation.” Søreide’s Høyre party is currently the third most popular in Norway, with about 18 percent support, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. But that share has been inching up in recent months. Asked about her own plans, she said she aimed to make her party “significantly bigger than we did in the last election, which was a very poor election for us,” and would seek to become prime minister in 2029.

BRUSSELS — Most Europeans believe the U.S. could pull the plug on technology that Europe heavily relies on, according to a new poll. Eighty-six percent of people think a sudden U.S. move to restrict Europe’s access to digital services is “plausible” and “should not be ruled out,” and 59 percent called it “already a real and concrete risk,” in a survey conducted by SWG and Polling Europe presented to European Parliament members this week. European governments are trying to reduce their dependency on U.S. technology for critical services like cloud, communications and AI. One fear driving the shift to use homegrown tech is that of a “kill switch”; the idea that U.S. President Donald Trump could force the hand of American tech providers to cease services in Europe. Those fears peaked when the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan lost access last year to his Microsoft-hosted email account after the U.S. imposed sanctions on him. “During the last year, everybody has really realized how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies,” the EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen told an audience in Brussels earlier this year, at an event organized by POLITICO. “In these times … dependencies, they can be weaponized against us,” Virkkunen said. The survey quizzed 5,079 respondents across all 27 EU member countries in January. For 55 percent of those interviewed, charting a “European path” has become a “central strategic issue.” The European Parliament and a series of national government institutions have already taken steps to move away from ubiquitous U.S. tech — though EU capitals have cautioned the transition won’t happen overnight. The European Commission is also finalizing a set of proposals due in late May to reduce reliance on foreign tech, including defining what qualifies as a sovereign provider and which critical sectors should rely exclusively on them to safeguard European data and day-to-day operations. The poll suggests U.S. efforts to debunk and dismiss the “kill switch” scenario haven’t convinced Europeans. U.S. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross told an audience in Munich in February that the idea that Trump can pull the plug on the internet is not “a credible argument.” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in Brussels last year that the “kill switch” scenario was “exceedingly unlikely” to happen, but acknowledged it’s “a real concern of people across Europe.” He pledged to push back against any prospective orders to suspend operations in Europe. U.S. firms at the same time are rushing to assuage the concerns with safeguards, like air-gapped solutions that would prove resilient in the case of operational disruptions.

BRUSSELS ― For much of the past decade, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has succeeded in bending the EU’s agenda to his will by forcing leaders to overcome his vetoes in one high-level gathering after another. On Thursday he’s ready to do it again — possibly for the last time as he faces a tough battle for reelection against rival Péter Magyar next month. By threatening to block, at a gathering of EU leaders in Brussels, a €90 billion loan for Ukraine that he’d approved in December, Orbán has crossed a red line when it comes to opposing Brussels. In doing so he is setting himself up for a reckoning with the bloc that could come soon after the Hungarian election, five EU diplomats and one national European government cabinet minister said. While the bloc has so far shied away from a major confrontation with Hungary — it hasn’t stripped Budapest’s voting rights, for example — this cautious calculus may well change after the election. At that point, fears of feeding into Orbán’s campaign narrative will be displaced by the need to dissuade other leaders from copying the Hungarian strongman, said the same diplomats and officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive summit preparations. A reckoning was in the cards regardless of the outcome of Hungary’s April 12 election, the officials said, but would arrive much faster if Orbán is re-elected. He is currently nine percentage points behind Magyar, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. “The behavior from Hungary is a new low,” Sweden’s Europe Minister Jessica Rosencrantz told POLITICO ahead of Thursday’s European Council. Asked if Stockholm would consider using legal tools against Hungary, including deploying Article 7 of the EU’s Treaty to take Budapest’s voting rights away, she said: “Absolutely, we are open.” Swedish EU Affairs Minister Jessica Rosencrantz speaks to the media in the Europa building in Brussels on March 17, 2026. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images If Orbán is reelected, “there will be a serious conversation among a group of countries about how to handle this going into the future,” one of the diplomats said. That conversation would likely play out differently if Magyar prevails, as he “indicates that he wants to play a more constructive game,” while EU leaders would likely play a “waiting game” to see how the new government behaves. What exactly the EU would do to rein in a reelected Orbán remains an open question. So far it has proven impossible to obtain the backing of 26 out of 27 EU countries for an Article 7 proceeding against Budapest. But other legal options, such as tying EU funds to even more stringent rule-of-law conditions, are already on the table, the diplomats said, as is dragging Orbán to court over his obstruction on the loan. During a closed-door meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels earlier this week, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul showed just how little patience the EU still has for Hungary, warning that Budapest’s obstructionism could no longer be tolerated, according to three diplomats who were briefed on Foreign Affairs Council talks. The diplomats disputed an account of the exchange by the Hungarian PM’s political adviser — who wrote in a post on X that Wadephul had threatened Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó with “very serious consequences.” The diplomats described the German minister’s remarks as “very direct,” “very clear” and “leaving no doubt that this can no longer be tolerated.” Other unnamed foreign ministers had been even more direct with Szijjártó, leaving him “taken aback,” according to one of the diplomats. “Prime Minister Orbán should understand that he is all the time testing the limits of what other member states are willing to put up with,” said a second senior EU diplomat from a mid-sized country. “This cannot continue.” A third diplomat said: “This will definitely have consequences after the elections. We are just waiting for that to happen.” Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter Szijjártó speaks to the media in Brussels on March 16, 2026. | Thierry Monasse/Getty images ROCK AND HARD PLACE What’s especially galling about Orbán’s latest standoff to many of his critics is how well he laid his trap — and how easily EU leaders walked into it. Merely blocking the EU’s 20th Russian sanctions package wasn’t a big enough spectacle for the Hungarian PM. But the Druzhba oil pipeline, which Kyiv said had been damaged in a Russian attack in January, fit the bill perfectly. Orbán seized on the halt in Russian oil deliveries to block the €90 billion loan, reneging on his own word to other EU leaders and devising an ideal Brussels-Budapest-Kyiv standoff for his campaign. And the Hungarian, who is now the longest-serving leader around the EU Council table, made the most of it by detaining an armored convoy carrying Ukrainian gold and officials, and then posting a video of himself alleging that Ukraine had threatened his family. It didn’t help that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also escalated the situation by refusing to allow EU inspectors to examine the pipeline for weeks and then saying he had no interest in repairing Druzhba. “This was building for weeks, literally. And now here we are [in] the Council, and it’s his [Orbán’s] show again,” the third EU diplomat said. European Council President António Costa, the main EU official in charge of dealing with Orbán ahead of leaders’ summits, hinted at taking a harder stance against the Hungarian prime minister in a letter he sent Orbán on Feb. 23. The letter that warned that by reneging on his support for the loan, Orbán had broken the EU’s principle of sincere cooperation, thereby exposing himself to legal consequences. But Costa didn’t follow up on the threat, with a European Council official telling POLITICO that the idea of suing Budapest over the obstruction had been dropped because the Court of Justice would “take too much time” to act. The EU needs a short-term solution for the Ukraine loan, the official said. European Council President António Costa speaks to the media in the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels on March 18, 2026. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images “This is hard to understand,” the third diplomat said. “They should have played hardball, at least tried it out, in the meantime put some temporary measures on him. It would have been at least something than this wobbling. But nothing came.” Now leaders face a dilemma as Orbán once again threatens to steal the show at the European Council meeting: Call his bluff by taking the loan off the table, and risk infuriating Zelenskyy, who has been invited to the the meeting — or embrace a confrontation with Orbán that will inevitably seem like the EU is giving in to blackmail. “There is clear reluctance to give Orbán the spotlight,” the same diplomat said. “We won’t give him that space at the EUCO. But if we fail on the loan, Zelenskyy will rightly be furious.” 

PARIS — Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon is emerging from this month’s municipal elections as France’s chief political disrupter, building momentum he hopes will turn him into the leading contender against the far right in next year’s presidential race. The nightmare scenario for France’s beleaguered center left, however, is that Mélenchon would make for a highly divisive presidential candidate, and polling suggests he could ultimately gift a win to the far-right National Rally in 2027. The 74-year-old former teacher took a highly abrasive, confrontational approach to the local elections — stoking controversy with his unapologetic response to the killing of a far-right activist, and later with comments that were condemned as antisemitic. But this pugnacious strategy — slammed by his critics as a “brutalization” of politics — seems to have paid off, with his France Unbowed party winning big in key target areas like working-class and immigrant communities in Sunday’s first round. Mélenchon has hailed his results as a “magnificent breakthrough.” France Unbowed won the poor, diverse city of Saint-Denis in the suburbs of Paris outright, and he looks well-placed to win mayoral contests in the northeastern city of Roubaix and in France’s fourth-largest city, Toulouse. DIVISIVE LEADER Mélenchon’s performance now looks set to have major consequences across France’s political landscape. He is anathema to France’s centrists, and his political rise only heightens the perception that the country’s leftist camp will be rudderless and riven by internal feuds, just as the country faces its most momentous election in years, with Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella from the far-right National Rally as the current favorites for the presidency. For now, it also looks highly improbable that such an inflammatory figure as Mélenchon can stop the far right if he qualifies for the second round of the presidential vote next year. While he describes French politics as an “us-against-them” battle on the extremes, and sees France Unbowed as the only party that can lead a “single front” against the far right, polling suggests the French electorate is extremely wary of him. If Mélenchon were to make it to a runoff in 2027, a poll in November suggested he would be smashed by Bardella. According to the survey by Odoxa, 74 percent would pick the National Rally leader for the Elysée. “It’s not at all certain that France Unbowed can widen its electorate to the [centrist] Macron-backing voters,” said Ipsos pollster Mathieu Gallard. French far-right Rassemblement National party’s President Jordan Bardella speaks after the first round of France’s 2026 municipal elections in Beaucaire, south-eastern France on March 15, 2026. | Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images “Mélenchon is a great political machine that mobilizes the left-wing electorate … but he is also a machine that scares away more moderate voters,” he said. DISARRAY ON THE LEFT Not everyone agrees that France Unbowed’s results on Sunday were as emphatic as Mélenchon is making them out to be. The center-left Socialist Party and its allies are still on track to hold onto many more cities and towns, including Marseille and Montpellier. And the hard left’s combative messaging has not been successful everywhere. “There are towns where their results are quite disappointing,” said pollster Gallard, pointing to suburbs in Paris and Lyon. But even if the hard left’s victories turn out to be less impressive on closer inspection, they are still sending shockwaves through the rest of the left. The Socialist Party, which has been hoping for a comeback after a decade of center-right politics under Macron, is the first and most obvious of Mélenchon’s victims. The moderate left very publicly condemned France Unbowed when Mélenchon refused to distance himself from the ultra-left group that was involved in the death of far-right activist Quentin Deranque. Shock then turned to horror last month when Mélenchon was accused of antisemitism after mocking the pronunciation of Jewish names and playing up the Jewishness of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Marine Le Pen (L) and Jordan Bardella arrive at the Hotel Matignon to attend a meeting of party leaders on the conflict in Iran, hosted by French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, in Paris on March 11, 2026. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images “He’s the Jean-Marie Le Pen of our times,” said Raphaël Glucksmann, a Jewish politician from the center left who was targeted by Mélenchon. Glucksmann was referring to Marine Le Pen’s father, who founded the National Front and downplayed the Holocaust. In the wake of Sunday’s results, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure tried to hold the line against France Unbowed, pledging there would be no “national alliance.” But within hours the Socialists were striking deals at the local level, including in France’s third-largest city, Lyon.  “We’ll get attacked all week,” warned Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, a Socialist former lawmaker, who slammed the “lack of clarity” over the party’s position. “What we’ll win now, we’ll lose in the presidential election because we won’t be credible,” he said. In another sign of division, the Socialists and the Greens have also been at each other’s throats over whether to team up with France Unbowed. GAMING THE TWO-ROUND ELECTION For Mélenchon, such divisions are good news. Olivier Faure, first secretary of the Socialist Party, during a press conference in Lyon. France on March 10, 2026. | Albin Bonnard/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images After blowing up France’s traditional parties, President Emmanuel Macron has left a fragmented political landscape ahead of the 2027 presidential election, along with a weakened centrist coalition. With the French president unable to run for a third consecutive term, there’s a surplus of presidential hopefuls on the starting line. This could lower the threshold of votes needed to qualify for the runoff vote against the far right. Candidates such as Mélenchon, who have a dedicated and loyal voter base, may be able to pull past more consensual candidates who could cancel each other out. “That’s his strategy,” said a Socialist Party adviser who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to discuss party politics. “We are capable of taking a dive in elections, but France Unbowed never takes a dive, they never go under 10 percent” in national elections, the adviser said. “But there isn’t a scenario in which he wins in a runoff vote against Bardella.” The difficulty for the moderate left is compounded by the fact that Mélenchon is one of the most charismatic politicians on the left. He has even drawn the reluctant admiration of Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, who called him “the most cultured” politician around. But what’s true of the left is also to some extent true of the conservatives and the center right, which are enmeshed in internal squabbling to see who can assume Macron’s mantle. “What are the political offers on the table and who is there to embody them?” asked a close ally of the French president. “I can see what the extremes are offering, but in between, it’s really not clear,” he said. That’s a gap Mélenchon is trying to exploit.

The 21st century is more likely to belong to Beijing than to Washington — at least that’s the view from four key U.S. allies. Swaths of the public in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have soured on the U.S., driven by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, according to recent results from The POLITICO Poll. Respondents in these countries increasingly see China as a more dependable partner than the U.S. and believe the Asian economic colossus is leading on advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence. Critically, Europeans surveyed see it as possible to reduce reliance on the U.S. but harder to reduce reliance on China — suggesting newfound entanglements that could drastically tip the balance of global power away from the West. Here are five key takeaways from the poll highlighting the pivot from the U.S. to China. The POLITICO Poll — in partnership with U.K. polling firm Public First — found that respondents in those four allied countries believe it is better to depend on China than the U.S. following Trump’s turbulent return to office. That appears to be driven by Trump’s disruption, not by a newfound stability in China: In a follow-up question, a majority of respondents in both Canada and Germany agreed that any attempts to get closer to China are because the U.S. has become harder to depend on — not because China itself has become a more reliable partner. Many respondents in France (38 percent) and the U.K. (42 percent) also shared that sentiment. Under Trump’s “America First” ethos, Washington has upended the “rules-based international order” of the past with sharp-elbowed policies that have isolated the U.S. on the global stage. This includes slow-walking aid to Ukraine, threatening NATO allies with economic punishment and withdrawing from major international institutions, including the World Health Organization and the United Nations Human Rights Council. His punitive liberation day tariffs, as well as threats to annex Greenland and make Canada “the 51st state,” have only further strained relationships with top allies. Beijing has seized the moment to cultivate better business ties with European countries looking for an alternative to high U.S. tariffs on their exports. Last October, Beijing hosted a forum aimed at shoring up mutual investments with Europe. More recently, senior Chinese officials described EU-China ties as a partnership rather than a rivalry. “The administration has assisted the Chinese narrative by acting like a bully,” Mark Lambert, former deputy assistant secretary of State for China and Taiwan in the Biden administration, told POLITICO. “Everyone still recognizes the challenges China poses — but now, Washington no longer works in partnership and is only focused on itself.” These sentiments are already being translated into action. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney declared a “rupture” between Ottawa and Washington in January and backed that rhetoric by sealing a trade deal with Beijing that same month. The U.K. inked several high-value export deals with China not long after, while both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have returned from recent summits in Beijing with Chinese purchase orders for European products. Respondents across all four allied countries are broadly supportive of efforts to create some distance from the U.S. — and say they’re also more dependent on China. In Canada, 48 percent said it would be possible to reduce reliance on the U.S. and believe their government should do so. In the U.K., 42 percent said reducing reliance on the U.S. sounded good in theory, but were skeptical it could happen in practice. By contrast, fewer respondents across those countries believe it would actually be possible to reduce reliance on China — a testament to Beijing’s dominance of global supply chains. Young adults may be drawn to China as an alternative to U.S. cultural hegemony. Respondents between the ages of 18 and 24 were significantly more supportive than their older peers of building a closer relationship with China. A recent study commissioned by the Institute of European Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences — a Beijing-based think tank — suggests most young Europeans get their information about China and Chinese life through social media. Nearly 70 percent of those aged 18 to 25 said they rely on social media and other short-form video platforms for information on China. And the media they consume is likely overwhelmingly supportive of China, as TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, was built by Chinese company ByteDance and has previously been accused of suppressing content deemed negative toward China. According to Alicja Bachulska, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, younger generations believe the U.S. has led efforts to depict China as an authoritarian regime and a threat to democracy, while simultaneously degrading its own democratic values. The trend “pushes a narrative that ‘we’ve been lied to’ about what China is,” said Bachulska, as “social sentiment among the youth turns against the U.S.” “It’s an expression of dissatisfaction with the state of U.S. politics,” she added. There’s a clear consensus among those surveyed in Europe and Canada that China is winning the global tech race — a coveted title central to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s grand policy vision. China is leading the U.S. and other Western nations in the development of electric batteries and robotics, while Chinese designs have also become the global standard in electric vehicles and solar panels. “There has been a real vibe shift in global perception of Chinese tech and innovation dominance,” said Sarah Beran, who served as deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Beijing during the Biden administration. This digital rat race is most apparent in the fast-paced development of artificial intelligence. China has poured billions of dollars into research initiatives, poaching top tech talent from U.S. universities and funding state-backed tech firms to advance its interests in AI. The investment appears to be paying off — a plurality of respondents from Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. believe that China is more likely to develop the first superintelligent AI. But these advancements have done little to change American minds. A majority of respondents in the U.S. still see American-made tech as superior to Chinese tech, even in the realm of AI. As Washington and its allies grow more estranged, the perception of the U.S. as the dominant world power is in retreat — though most Americans don’t see it that way. About half of all respondents in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. believe that China is rapidly becoming a more consequential superpower. This is particularly true among those who say the U.S. is no longer a positive force for the world. By contrast, 63 percent of respondents in the U.S. believe their nation will maintain its dominance in 10 years — reflecting major disparities in beliefs about global power dynamics between the U.S. and its European allies. This view of China as the world’s power center may not have been entirely organic. The U.S. has accused Beijing of pouring billions of dollars into international information manipulation efforts, including state-backed media initiatives and the deployment of tools to stifle online criticism of China and its policies. Some fear that a misplaced belief among U.S. allies in the inevitability of China surpassing the U.S. as a global superpower could be helping accelerate Beijing’s rise. “Europe is capable of defending itself against threats from China and contesting China’s vision of a more Sinocentric, authoritarian-friendly world order,” said Henrietta Levin, former National Security Council director for China in the Biden administration. “But if Europe believes this is impossible and does not try to do so, the survey results may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” METHOLODGY The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Feb. 6 to Feb. 9, surveying 10,289 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany. Results for each country were weighted to be representative on dimensions including age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error.