In Le Pen defeat, Europe's far-right wave crashes to a halt

'The populists are crumbling'

BRUSSELS - The anti-EU French leader Marine Le Pen's larger-than-expected defeat Sunday in her nation's presidential election was a crushing reality check for the far-right forces who seek to overthrow Europe: Despite the victories for Brexit and Donald Trump, they are likely to be shut out of power for years.

Given one choice after another since Trump's U.S. presidential victory, Western European voters have delivered mainstream candidates to office despite a post-November sense that an anti-immigrant populist wave was washing over the Western world. Far-right candidates in Austria, the Netherlands and France have faltered. The euroskeptic far-right party in Germany has collapsed in recent polls ahead of September elections. And an unforgiving election calendar now offers few routes into power for years.

The thwarted momentum comes despite clear evidence that views that would have been taboo to express just a few years ago are no longer too toxic to exclude politicians from coming a breath away from leadership. When Le Pen's father reached a presidential runoff in 2002, his opponent refused even to debate with him, so unacceptable to the mainstream were his views. This time, many French citizens sat out the election altogether because they detested both Le Pen and Macron - even though the pro-European centrist Macron offered a vastly different platform from his opponent. Le Pen's result, just above 34 percent with most of the vote counted, was still a historic high for her party.

"French people have chosen the continuity candidate," a visibly disappointed Le Pen said in a brief concession address. She said she would seek to rename her National Front party, a measure of the extent to which her defeat rattled supporters who just weeks ago harbored hopes of capturing the Elysee Palace.

Instead, Le Pen's numbers sank in the two weeks since she placed second in the first round of the French elections.

Now the test for Europe's future will be whether Macron can rekindle France's relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel after it languished during the five-year term of France's current president, François Hollande, whose popularity hit record lows. If France continues to stagnate, Sunday's victory may turn out to be a five-year reprieve from the far-right rather than a decisive rejection of it.

But the failure of the far-right to seize office comes in stark contrast to expectations in November that Trump's ascendance in the United States would unleash a global wave of populist politicians. Le Pen was one of the first leaders around the world to congratulate Trump the night of his victory. Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders exulted the day after. And Trump advisers and top European far-right leaders conferred in the weeks after the U.S. election.

The subsequent elections have shown a clear trend in Western Europe: Voters are sick of the mainstream and fed up with their leaders. But they are still not ready to hand power to the far-right. The chaotic first months of the Trump presidency may actually have hurt Europe's populists rather than helping them.

"This is what happens when the refugee crisis doesn't dominate the headlines anymore and the right-wing populists are dismantling themselves," said Josef Janning, the head of the Berlin office of the European Council on Foreign Relations. "It isn't that simple after all to break Europe apart with nationalism."

In Central Europe, right-wing nationalist leaders are in power in Poland and Hungary. But none presents an existential challenge to the European Union as Le Pen did in France.

European leaders rushed to turn the page on a grim year for the bloc, embracing Macron's victory as the first step in the rejuvenation of an embattled alliance against forces that would tear it apart. Many mainstream leaders feared political Armageddon if Le Pen had won. In Brussels, the seat of the EU, cheers could be heard in the streets the moment the exit polls were released Sunday evening, as though a favorite soccer team clinched a match.

"The French clearly demonstrate that protest and a desire for change doesn't always have to lead to the election of right-wing populists," wrote Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz on Twitter.

Austria may be the far-right's best hope for a victory, where opinion polls suggest that the anti-immigrant Freedom Party may be able to lead a coalition after elections that must be held by next year at latest. But the party's presidential candidate lost an election in December, underperforming opinion polls ahead of the vote.

In Germany, meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany has collapsed in opinion polls in recent months following post-Trump heights. The party presided over a smaller but still telling defeat on Sunday, bringing up the rear in Sunday's vote in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with projections showing it winning less than 6 percent of vote. That result was far below the party's strong showing in local elections last year and came as its support is flagging in Germany following a scandal in which one of its top members made controversial statements on Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.

Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, meanwhile, easily came out on top in the state, projected to win nearly 33 percent of the vote.

In a Sunday night phone call with Macron, Merkel "recognized his espousal of a united and open European Union in the election campaign. The decision of the French voters therefore also was a clear commitment to Europe," said Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert.

Amid the celebration, there was acknowledgment that Macron's victory may be just a temporary reprieve, since anti-EU forces remain powerful and growing in France. If the new French president fails to deliver on his promises by the next election in 2022, Le Pen or another anti-EU leader may return stronger than ever. Elsewhere in Europe, the euroskeptic Five Star movement now tops Italian opinion polls ahead of elections that must be held before spring 2018, though it is not a far-right party.

Macron hopes to soften Germany's exacting insistence on fiscal austerity as he imposes sweeping pro-business reforms inside his own country. If he succeeds, he may help disarm anti-EU voices across the continent. But if he fails to jump-start France's economy - and Europe's - he will fuel questions about whether the European Union is helping or hurting its citizens' lives.

"If the mood in France and Europe is the same five years from now it becomes impossible," said Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian diplomat who now is a fellow at the Atlantic Council. "You cannot have forever a part of Europe that is growing and a part that is not."

With so much at stake, Macron remains a largely unknown quantity: this was his first bid for elected office, and he has no political party behind him. German leaders hope Macron will prove to be a Gallic version of themselves, wagering that his finance background will lead to German-style economic changes.

He may yet be tempted, however, to answer the problem of France's economic stagnation through more government spending. Should he move in that direction, Merkel would face a new and potentially potent challenge to German financial orthodoxy that has kept a lid on budget deficits - and economic growth - across the bloc.

Many elements remain unsettled, most notably the extent of Macron's own leeway to impose his vision on his nation. His powers will be severely limited if he fails to capture a working majority of the French legislature in June elections. Merkel, too, faces elections in September.

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The Post's Faiola reported from Berlin. Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin contributed to this report.