Hard left turn could lead France to recognise Palestine state

France will have a coalition government dominated by left-leaning parties that are demonstrably sympathetic to the Palestinians, as opposed to the National Rally (RN)—which, until days ago, was expected to form the country’s first far-right government since World War II.

According to Jean-Loup Samaan, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative, France may actually go ahead and formally recognise a Palestinian state—a change of policy that he calls “major” and “symbolic” at the same time.

“The (French) left coalition has been very vocal in demanding the recognition of a Palestinian state,” he tells TRT World.

More than two-thirds of UN members already recognise the Palestinian state. But until two months ago, only a few of the major Western powers were among those 140-plus countries.

Spain, Norway and Ireland declared their recognition of the Palestinian state in May in an attempt to increase international pressure on Israel to stop its brutal war in Gaza, which has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians since October.

Owing to its economic muscle as the seventh-largest economy in the world and the second-biggest economy within the European Union, France enjoys outsized influence in the international arena.

The previous centrist French government also toyed with the idea of recognising the Palestinian state, with President Emmanuel Macron saying the proposal was not a “taboo” for France.

EU-Israel relations took a major hit in recent months as the foreign policy chief for the 27-nation bloc declared support for the International Criminal Court, which is seeking an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Samaan says French recognition of the Palestinian state would have “no major consequence” apart from “irritating” the current Israeli government. In fact, this might be one reason why Macron will be open to the proposal in the new coalition government, he adds.

“But beyond this, one should not expect a major shift in French policy toward the Middle East,” he says.

Question of immigration

Immigrants accounted for a little over 10 percent of the French population in 2022. About one-third of them have already obtained French nationality, while up to 700,000 remain in the country as “undocumented migrants”.

The far-right RN party has condemned what it calls “uncontrolled immigration” as an assault on French civilisation. In the 2022 presidential election, RN promised to put a stop to the “flood of migration” that, it said, threatened to “submerge” the French nation.

But the surprise defeat of the far-right party at the ballot means the new government will “tone down” the right-wing rhetoric on immigration and Muslim communities, feels Samaan.

“This will heavily depend on the type of coalition that the government is able to assemble,” he adds.

Unrest at home

Like their counterparts in many European countries, French farmers have been holding protests against EU agriculture policies and overall business conditions for months.

They’ve erected roadblocks and driven tractors into densely populated urban areas to record their protest over deteriorating business conditions, which they say are caused by heavy regulations and unfair competition from abroad, particularly Ukraine.

Under a recent agreement, the EU will let Kiev export goods to France without duties and quotas until June 2025, thus allowing the $190 billion economy to sustain itself amid a drawn-out war with a much stronger adversary Russia.

But more importantly, analysts say the main reason for complaints from farmers across the EU is not necessarily imports from Ukraine, but rather environmental restrictions and tight product margins that have squeezed the income of smaller farms.

It has yet to be seen how the new coalition government will react to the farmers’ demands. Left-leaning parties have traditionally called for stricter action on climate crisis and have, in the past, supported carbon neutrality by 2050.

In contrast, RN leader Jordan Bardella, who was the presumptive candidate for prime minister from the far-right platform, previously called on the French government to scrap the EU’s Green Deal—which aims to limit the use of chemicals and control greenhouse gas emissions—while condemning the bloc’s environmental policies as “punitive”.

Speaking to TRT World, European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) Senior Economist Oscar Guinea says it was unclear at the moment what kind of “arrangement” exists between the leftwing New Popular Front and the Macron-led Ensemble.

But any future agricultural policy will consist of policies that both parties can support, he adds.

“For example, the introduction of minimum prices for agricultural products or an increase to the minimum salary for agricultural workers could be two policies that may be considered.”

Some of these policies may be limited by “level playing field considerations” to safeguard the EU single market.

“Yet any policy proposal on agriculture by the upcoming French government will rely on subsidies and public financial support to farmers rather than the elimination of environmental measures,” he says.