Darmanin says a Mélenchon or Le Pen win would end the EU as it exists

The French minister warned at a Barcelona forum, weeks after both parties voted against France's 30.9 billion euro EU budget contribution.

Gérald Darmanin, the French politician and minister, warned on 2 November that a victory by Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Marine Le Pen, the two French opposition candidates he named, would end the European Union as it exists today. Both of their projects, he told a forum in Barcelona, are built on the end of Europe. There would still be a continent of countries talking to each other, he said, but no European Community.

Darmanin called instead for a very pro-European candidate to win the French presidential election, whose first round is set for 18 April. The next head of state, he said, will have the task of transforming Europe into a Europe of power rather than a Europe of discussion.

The setting was the World in Progress forum, organized by the PRISA Group. There, Gérald Darmanin and José Manuel Albares, Spain's foreign minister, discussed violent protests in European cities. The two ministers also warned that European electoral processes could face interference from outside. Not all coverage left it at that, however. The news site 20 Minutes noted in its heading that the minister puts the two extremes in the same basket une nouvelle fois, which means once again, and presented the phrase without the condition if they are elected.

The warning came weeks after a vote in the French parliament that showed where the two parties stand. On 15 October, deputies adopted a French contribution of 30.9 billion euros to the EU budget, which France plans to allocate in 2027. LFI, Mélenchon's party, opposed the payment, and the National Rally, Le Pen's party, also voted against it. The adoption went ahead despite the opposition from LFI and the RN, and of the two, the National Rally argued most keenly for cutting the contribution.

Two media outlets, Le Parisien and 20 Minutes, reported the remark on 2 November. Le Parisien's headline carried it as conditional, under the words s'ils sont élus, meaning if they are elected. The excerpts reported no reaction from Mélenchon or Le Pen to the statement.