The French elections are near: is Europe going to fall?

On Sunday (April 23rd), French voters will go to the ballots and decide who among the 11 candidates is worthy of their trust.  But this year they will gather even more attention than ever, as a victory of the anti-europeanist Marine Le Pen might signify the end of the European Union as we know it. The candidate has expressed multiple times her intention to ask the French people via a referendum if they want to leave the EU and go back to the French franc. Without France, the EU will not be as strong as it is today, and many other countries might decide to leave as well. It is sad to say, but given the terrorist attack claimed by ISIS yesterday in Paris at the Champs-Élysées, the French people have fallen again in an atmosphere of deep fear for the foreigners and the muslims especially, fear from which Marine Le Pen will take advantage and votes from, given that one of her main campaign slogans is a stronger control of immigration and an effective and heavy fight against ISIS.

But there is some hope; Emmanuel Macron, the center candidate, is currently head to head with Marine Le Pen in all the polls. Opinionist think that Macron will have a possibility to defeat Le Pen thanks to the way the French system works; their elections are divided in two turns: in the first one, which is on Sunday, everyone will cast their vote for one of the eleven candidates. Then, on May 7th, if none of the candidates gains 50% plus one of the votes, the candidates with the two highest amounts of votes will go through another election to decide who is going to become premier. Many French commentators think that in the second turn, the French people will unite against Le Pen and let Macron win, who has the exact opposite views of Marine Le Pen regarding Europe. But again, as it happened for Brexit and for the US elections, nobody really knows what it is going to happen as the polls have shown to have a pretty great margin of error in the last few years. Well, we will see what happens in the next days, especially finance-wise, as the market will most likely react to this big event.