EsadeGeo

EsadeGeo Daily Digest, 01/07/2024

EsadeGeo | 1 Jul, 2024

Bloomberg - Samy Adghirni, Ania Nussbaum, and Jenny Che / Macron, French Left-Wing Rivals Race to Stop Le Pen Momentum

French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance and the left-wing New Popular Front are weighing whether to pull candidates from the second round of the legislative election on Sunday to keep the ascendant far-right National Rally out of power.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally dominated the first round of voting Sunday, locking up 33.2% of the vote, according to interior ministry figures. The New Popular Front got 28% and Macron’s coalition got 20.8%. Markets rallied after National Rally recorded a smaller margin of victory than some polls had indicated and as mainstream parties began exploring ways to keep the far right from securing an absolute majority.
Winning an absolute majority of seats in the second round would hand the premiership to National Rally President Jordan Bardella and assure the party’s ability to easily pass legislation. Traditionally, France’s mainstream has banded together to keep the far right — which has never held power in the modern French republic — out of government.
“The lesson of today is that the far right is at the gates of power,” French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told supporters Sunday night. “Our objective is clear: to prevent the National Rally from having an absolute majority.”

Financial Times - Alice Hancock and Rachel Millard / EU carbon market expansion to raise diesel prices

EU motorists are set to pay at least an extra 50 cents a litre on diesel from 2031 to cover carbon costs, according to new analysis which raises fears of fresh protests against climate laws.
Fuel suppliers will be required to buy allowances from 2027 to cover their carbon dioxide emissions and are expected to pass that cost to consumers.
Veyt, a carbon market analytics firm, expects the scheme will add 14 cents to a litre of diesel in 2027, with the premium reaching 54 cents per litre in 2031 as more measures are phased in.
missions from fuel for heating buildings will also need to be paid for, pushing prices of coal up 68 cents per kg by 2031, Veyt found.

The EU will not rush to reopen Brexit negotiations with the UK even if Labour is swept to power next Thursday, senior sources in Brussels have indicated.
They say they will welcome a change of government but the deep scars left by the Conservatives during Brexit negotiations along with the new priorities caused by the war in Ukraine, and the rise of the far right weigh heavily on the minds of influential figures in Brussels.
“It’s not that people are thinking good things about the UK, it’s not that they are thinking bad things. They are not thinking about the UK at all,” said one senior source close to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
A second senior source warned that despite the warmth Labour can expect “there is no appetite for Brexit in European capitals.”

Politico - Marianne Gros / Orbán’s Fidesz forming new far-right alliance with Austrian, Czech parties

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán and his far-right Fidesz party are forming a new political alliance with Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) and the Czech Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (ANO) Movement, with hopes of becoming a new group in the European Parliament.
The aim is for the group — called the “Patriots of Europe” — to become “the largest right-wing group in European politics,” Orbán said at a press conference in Vienna Sunday, alongside ANO leader and former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and FPÖ leader Herbert Kickl.
The announcement signified a “new era of European politics,” Kickl said, predicting that the “patriotic” alliance would be joined by other parties.
“We will prefer national sovereignty to federalism, liberty to orders, and peace to war,” Babiš wrote in a social media post.

Related article: Euractiv / Hungary takes on EU presidency amid concerns

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