‘Frexit’ may be off Marine Le Pen’s menu ahead of Sunday’s crucial presidential run-off against incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, but the threat of a seismic shift in France’s standing in Europe looms ahead. on polling day.

Citi strategists put the likelihood of a Le Pen victory at 35%, while other analysts have warned his triumph will shake financial markets even more than Brexit and Donald Trump’s 2016 victories.

Whether or not Le Pen wins on Sunday, his brand of conservative, deeply populist nationalism is gaining strength, in France and across Europe.

Brexit is one example, while Hungary‘s Viktor Orbán, who just got a fourth straight landslide, has honed it as an election winning strategy.

Orbán publicly endorsed Le Pen’s candidacy for the French presidency via video during a rally in February.

“Poland, Hungary and I probably share a common vision of the necessary transformation of the EU into an alliance of nations, as we do for the need for the primacy of national law over EU directives” , said Le Pen during the election campaign. earlier this week.

A logical next step would be to step up efforts to unite the right across Europe.

As populism rises, the moderate Christian Democratic and conservative parties that have ruled Europe for most of the last century are losing support. In France, the Republican Party failed to obtain 5% in the first round and risks extinction.

A UK opinion poll earlier this week found that 37% of those who voted for Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in 2019 would vote for Le Pen, if they were in France, while just 24% would support centrist Emmanuel Macron.

The margin is even wider among Leave voters in the 2016 Brexit referendum, who favor Le Pen over the current president by 35% to 19%. Stay partisan, meanwhile back Macron by a margin of nine to one.

The figures show how far the British Conservative Party has moved to the populist right.

The UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage’s political vehicle, has been dismissed as far-right and racist, like the National Front in France, led by Le Pen’s father, Jean Marie.

However, both Farage himself and Boris Johnson have the Teflon touch of being able to constantly rebrand themselves and appear to be in tune with the concerns of ordinary people. Le Pen also detoxified the brand of his party national rally.

One of Le Pen’s best rallying lines is that she speaks for the common people against the Parisian elites.

Although London is watching the French election closely, few believe the results will make much of a difference to the UK’s relationship with France and the rest of Europe.

The main change proposed by Le Pen is to reorganize the Treaty of Lancaster House, the Franco-British treaty on defense and security cooperation first signed in 2010, at the expense of reduced defense cooperation with the Germany and NATO.

She also expressed her admiration for the so-called Global Britain project during the presidential debate with Macron this week.

Elsewhere, his program on the EU is comparable to that of successive British Conservative leaders, including David Cameron.

“We want to reform the EU from within,” said Le Pen, adding that “the more we free ourselves from the Brussels straitjacket while remaining inside the EU, the more we will look to the rest of the world. It seems to me that this is what the English understood well.

However, a European Alliance of Nations that “aims to gradually replace” the EU looks suspiciously like a plan for phasing out the EU.

Similarly, the idea of ​​reintroducing permanent border controls between Schengen members would limit access to social security and housing to anyone without at least one French parent.

Similarly, the reduction in France’s budgetary contributions to the EU and the government’s obligation to “buy French” in supply contracts all point to the exit of the bloc’s founding member from the EU, its second-largest economy and greatest military power.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]