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Frexit

Frexit (a portmanteau of "France" and "exit") is the hypothetical French withdrawal from the European Union (EU). The term is similar to Brexit, which denotes the UK leaving the EU. The term was mostly used during the campaign leading to the French presidential election of 2017.

The legal promotion of the withdrawal from the EU by the article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon was first promoted by the Union Populaire Républicaine (UPR), a political party created in 2007 by François Asselineau. Their principal agenda is to quit both the European Union and the Nato but also to depart from the Eurozone in order to go back to the French franc . Today, French politicians advocate for two types of Frexit, the hard one like François Asselineau and the soft one which promotes bargaining and concertation between France and the European Union.

According to Europe 1 and due to the difficulties of the Brexit negotiations between the two interested parties, it is more likely that a Frexit will not occur, as Marine Le Pen stated that "by the renegotiation of the European treaties, I am convinced that we could improve the live of the French citizens in different domains without quitting neither the European Union nor the Eurozone" .

In 2018, only 37 per cent of the French had an unfavourable view of the European Union, the third-largest share of the votes after the UK with 47%, but far away after the Greek opinion and its 62% of EU disapproval .

The French media France 24 in association with the website Toute l'Europe stated in 2019 after a survey conducted by Ifop, that only 23% of the French people from both sides of the ideological line are favourable to leave the European Union .

Political Positions

Leaders from both sides of the political spectrum such as Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan founder of Debout la France or Jean-Luc Mélenchon leader of the leftist movement, La France Insoumise and Benoît Hamon former member of the Socialist Party during the 2017 Presidential Election have, like François Asselineau, advocated either for the renegotiation of the EU treaties or the total exit from the European Union, in other terms, they have either promote a soft or hard withdrawal .

1. Marine Le Pen, leader of the renamed FN, the Rassemblement National, always advocate the 'hard exit of the European Union' as she called during her first Presidential campaign in 2012 to "embrace the principals of a respectful Europe for the national sovereignty, languages and cultures and which must really be in the interest of the people" . In 2016, the far-right leader, days after David Cameron's promise to deliver a referendum on whether or not the United Kingdom should remain a member of the EU, followed the lead and promised to her constituency that if she was elected President, a referendum on the Frexit will be her first presidential act . During an interview to the British Press, she said she will be the "Frexit Lady if the EU does not give their monetary, legislative and border's sovereignty back" . This idea of Frexit is the most important of her political agenda and if French people say no to a referendum she will resign as President (if she was elected) as 70% of her project will be unrealisable, said the RN's leader .

2. Like Asselineau in 2007, Nicolas Dupant-Aignan founded (NDA) the Gaullist and Souverainist movement Debout la France. The former Presidential candidate party in 2012 and 2017 and then running-mate of Marine Le Pen's second-round in 2017 held very similar ideas such as sovereignty, patriotism and economic independence. He is considered less hardline than she, although . His main priority is that France leaves the Euro and returns to the French national money . Even though he is really critic about the European institutions which "endorsed a Federal Dictatorship model, opposed to the interest of the nations" , he is not interested in promoting a Frexit nor a hard withdrawal but rather denounce and renegotiate the European Treaties to regain the control over their laws, borders and budget .

3. Ideologically on the other side of the aisle compared to Le Pen, Asselineau and NDA. The socialist Benoît Hamon, critical about the social-liberal politics engaged by the former president François Hollande, announced his candidature for 2017 to seek the higher seat of the French Republic . During his Presidential campaign, he did not foster a hard Frexit but rather a "new treaty of democratisation of the economic governance of the Eurozone, by creating a new Parliamentary Assembly that will seek to replace the meetings of the Finance Ministers (Eurogroup), which in his opinion, are not under the scope of neither the European citizens nor the representants of the European Parliament . The same idea goes for the rest of his European agenda (favourable security cooperation, an extensive European integration and a greater role of the European Central Bank to facilitate the bailout of countries' debt), to do so he prefers to concert and negotiate with his European political homologues, as he is formally against a hard Frexit .

4. Eventually, on the same ideological line than Hamon, however on a more leftist agenda. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder and Presidential runner in 2017 of the movement La France Insoumise, with which he came in the fourth position of the first-round vote of the election with almost 20 per cent . His European agenda was far more 'aggressive' than Benoît Hamon or Nicolas Dupont-Aignan as he declared in the French Media, Libération, that "he will support a referendum as it can put a form of pressure on European Union and especially on Germany" . This thus goes further than the idea of just negotiating the EU treaties since he openly criticises the supranational institution of the EU of being corrupted through neoliberalism by having disproportionally increased the profit of the financial industry and rich people at the expense of the poor and the working class . In fact, J-L Mélenchon delivered two options during his campaign, what he called 'Plan A' and 'Plan B'. On the first hand, the A plan seeks to negotiate the retreat of France on certain rules and laws stated by the Lisbon Treaty and on the other hand, a more radical plan which fosters the unilateral exit of France by the article 50, if the 'sortie concertée' does not go through . Similar to Hamon, this dual proposition has one priority, the restructuration of ECB by "putting an end to its independence, modifying its missions and status, authorising the bail-out of the Member States and finally forbidding the ECB to cut Member State's liquidity" . As he said during the Presidential debate: "Europe is a great idea but its treaties that organise the institutions are odious. The EU: whether we change it or we quit it now" .

Even within the same ideological column, on the one hand, far-right's figures Mrs.Le Pen and Mr.Dupont-Aignan and on the other hand, leftist candidates Mr.Hamon and Mr.Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have very divergent ideas on how a Frexit should become possible either through radical negotiations of the treaties or through a unilateral and "hard" exit of France.

Frexit's Future

The Brexit, an unprecedented political referendum held in June 2016, saw the UK citizens vote 'yes' in favour of leaving the European Union by a very tied majority, 52% compared with 48% Remain . The transition did not go as smooth as envisaged, the Brexit was meant to happen on 29 March 2019, but this deadline was twice extended after MP's rejected the deal made by former Prime Minister, Theresa May . On 31 January 2020, the UK is officially no longer an EU member as both Parliament in the UK and EU institutions ratified the withdrawal agreement after months of talks, negotiations, disagreements of "being trapped in a policy maze, with no consensus on how to leave the EU" . Indeed, this process had vast consequences on the hypothetical withdrawal of France from the EU as "The United Kingdom descended into political chaos and became a cautionary tale for other countries" . Eurosceptic politicians have since backed off calls for similar referenda and focused instead on changing the EU from within, trough reconfiguration of the treaties .

Consequently and also due to her loss during the 2017 Presidential election against Emmanuel Macron, hard Frexiter Marine Le Pen shifted her standpoint about France leaving both the European Union and the Eurozone, instead she wants to recreate the EU as what she called an alliance of nations . Rachel Donadio correctly quoted in the media The Atlantic this idea as "a new European Political Bloc [who] wants to dismantle Europe" because even though withdrawal is momently held by eurosceptics, they remain buoyed "by discontent over low economic growth, migration and the perceived imperiousness of EU. elites" .

Marine Le Pen and her alliance of nations entails coordination in which each country does whatever it wants in domains like fiscality, agriculture, security and international relations policies, which in short, means to reduce at maximum the legislative and executive role of the EU institutions, while remaining within the Union . All the other political leaders discussed above, follow the same line of thoughts and renounce to their Frexit project, either hard or soft and agree as Emmanuel Macron said that "the Brexit sound a historical alarm that obliges to rethink the principles of the European Union" .

However, two political figures believe that the official withdrawal of the UK "rings the start of the EU's end", namely of François Asselineau, founder of the first Frexit movement (UPR) and Florian Philippot, ex-number two of Marine Le Pen, who founded a new Frexit movement in 2017 , Les Patriotes. They follow their beliefs of a unilateral withdrawal of France in every domain related to the European Union ever after the Brexiters spent almost three years to find a suitable deal .