An ongoing court-ordered investigation into French Presidential candidate François Fillon has raised further doubts over his increasingly troubled bid for power.
Despite a promising start to his campaign, having secured the conservative candidacy and defeated former President Nicolas Sarkozy, François Fillon’s campaign hopes have been tinged by scandal and allegations that he paid family members a salary for fake jobs.
According to the allegations, Mr Fillon paid his spouse and parliamentary assistant, Penelope more than €680,000 (£581,000) of taxpayers’ money for work. In addition, the issuing of comfortable salaries for two of his children, Marie and Charles is also under consideration. Last week, a judge announced the appointment of a magistrate to pursue a formal investigation into the claims, plunging the Fillon camp into crisis.
On Wednesday morning, the French politician (and self-professed Margaret Thatcher admirer) postponed a scheduled appearance at the annual Paris farm fair, which further called the future of his candidacy into question. The fair is traditionally considered a significant opportunity to address rural voters and farmers across France, and thus is a notable setback for the conservative’s bid for the Presidency.
In response to the cancelled appearance, Florian Philippot, a close adviser to far-right National Front opponent Marine Le Pen commented: “It’s like symbolically giving up on your candidacy.”
Whilst initially Mr Fillon presented a viable alternative to Le Pen’s extremism populism, this latest scandal has only further fueled anti-elite sentiment among the French electorate. Fillon had built his campaign around his image as a traditional conservative, with a remarkable “clean” past. Indeed, polls now place Marine Le Pen as first in the initial round of the presidential election, with a growing agricultural support base.
Nevertheless, in the same poll, independent candidate Emmanuel Macron was on set to easily unsurp Le Pen in the secondary round of voting.
Still, the threat of Le Pen’s potential candidacy should not be underestimated. The implications for Europe remain particularly pertinent in the midst of an increasingly protectionist US under President Trump and similar trends visible in Britain following its vote to leave the EU. Le Pen’s victory as a populist, far-right candidate would only place further strain upon the European project – can it afford a protectionist France?
Elsewhere on the European continent, former Chancellor George Osborne warned against the Government pursuing the “biggest act of protectionism in British history” should it proceed with Brexit without a pre-negotiated deal with the European Union.