I found this article informative. EU elections expected to trend to the right.
New PM Giorgia Meloni in Italy is looking to advance conservative issues within the EU system. Le Pen in France prefers to impede or disassemble the EU.
Issues: matters ranging from trade relations with China to Europe’s response to the war in Ukraine, climate policy and immigration
French election results boost stocks and the euro
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/french-election-results-boost-stocks-and-the-euro/ar-BB1pc5GG
French stocks and the euro rallied Monday after results from the first round of elections suggested the right will inflict a heavy defeat on President Macron but fall short of winning an outright majority in parliament.
So…
Riots break out in Paris after National Rally party wins first round of snap election
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/other/riots-break-out-in-paris-after-national-rally-party-wins-first-round-of-snap-election/ar-BB1pbqil
Protesters were seen wreaking havoc on the streets of Paris following the conservative National Rally party’s first-round victory. The activists took to the streets to vent their anger over the party’s first-round victory…
DB2
Europe like the US has increasing income inequality though to a lesser extent as Europe has a more extensive safety net.
And like the US there is a urban rural divide.
Europe’s modern urban-rural divide is a very real thing. According to Eurostat, the median net income of people living in the EU’s rural areas is 12.5 percent lower than that of people living in cities, towns and suburbs. Public services are less accessible and the perception of government indifference is huge: A 2022 Eurofound survey found that more than half of the EU’s rural inhabitants felt authorities ignored their communities and cared less about people in their area.
a widening divide between Europe’s rural areas and its cities. This divide may not be a chasm yet, but it is steadily growing wider as discontent mounts in rural communities, which constitute a quarter of Europe’s population.
Scholars have extensively documented the economic factors fueling the drift of rural areas away from cities. They include long-standing economic inequalities, exacerbated by poorly conceived or poorly implemented policies that have left rural residents often feeling ignored or disrespected. Globalization has reshaped the geography of where people work, and cities have drawn young talent and labor from rural areas, leading to the withering and aging of rural societies. As a result, the income and employment gap between rural and urban areas widened in the last decade. Lower income levels and a lack of employment opportunities have exacerbated rural discontent. And Europe’s recent cost-of-living crisis, which has seen a rise in the cost of many essential items including food and fuel, has served to further deepen these persistent disparities.
But politicians and elites have paid less attention to the growing political and cultural divide between rural and urban populations in Europe.
A similar gap is evident in the United States, where tensions between urban and rural populations contribute to political and cultural polarization
We saw a precursor in 2018.
The movement was initially motivated by rising crude oil and fuel prices, a high cost of living, and economic inequality. The movement argued that a disproportionate burden of taxation in France was falling on the working and middle classes,[68][69][70] especially in rural and peri-urban areas.
The protests have involved demonstrations and the blocking of roads and fuel depots, sometimes developing into major riots,[79] described as the most violent since those of May 68.
Macron killed the fuel tax and then began his delay, delay, delay tactics.
Months of townhall meetings to hear the complaints of citizens yet doing nothing to address issue of the goobers.
Eventually they had to return to work to put food on the table.
Perhaps the elections will be the revenge of the yellow vests? We shall see.
The National Rally party on Sunday won a crushing victory in the first round of voting for the French National Assembly, bringing its long-taboo brand of nationalist and anti-immigrant politics to the threshold of power for the first time.
Official results published by the Interior Ministry showed that the party and its allies won about 33 percent of the vote, far ahead of President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and its allies, which took about 20 percent to end in third place.
A coalition of left-wing parties, called the New Popular Front, won about 28 percent of the vote. Ranging from the moderate socialists to the far-left France Unbowed, the coalition was boosted by strong support among young people.
Turnout was high at about 67 percent, compared to 47.5 percent in the first round of the last parliamentary election in 2022, reflecting the importance accorded by voters to the snap election.
The results of the first round of voting do not typically provide a reliable projection of the number of parliamentary seats each party will secure. But the National Rally now looks very likely to be comfortably the largest force in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament where most power resides, although not necessarily with an absolute majority.