PARIS — Don’t freak out just yet, but maybe start packing emergency supplies.

Brussels’ fear of a founding member of the European Union swinging to the far right was abruptly reactivated this week as France’s snowballing political crisis gathered more momentum, leading one of French President Emmanuel Macron’s historic allies to join the chorus of opponents calling on him to step down.

The French president is under extraordinary pressure after his prime minister’s latest attempt at forming a functioning government collapsed in just 14 hours and with new elections in the coming months, if not weeks, looking more and more likely.

At both the presidential and parliamentary levels, victory for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is now distinctly possible, meaning a Euroskeptic, far-right figure might soon speak for France in the EU’s core institutions, adding to a growing chorus of populist, right-wing voices.

“We have a continent that has experienced war, lockdown, a kind of light dictatorship in Budapest, we are used to continuing to function with a lot of shocks” said a European Commission official, who like others quoted in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

But “Le Pen is different,” he reckoned, referring to a widely shared assessment in Brussels that a radical change in French leadership would have far-reaching consequences for the EU.

While the far right has been urging Macron to call new parliamentary elections, this week’s events also raise the prospect of earlier presidential elections if Macron is at some point forced to step down — something he has always strongly ruled out, vowing to stick around until the end of his term in 2027.

If the National Rally accessed executive power in France it would significantly add to the EU’s headaches, already personified around the Council table by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, and likely soon to be joined by Andrej Babiš after his recent electoral triumph in the Czech Republic.

The renewed populist surge threatens to derail the bloc’s policies in critical sectors, with concerns particularly acute on Russia and defense policy. Orbán and Fico have both stood in the way of the EU’s efforts to impose sanctions on Moscow since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Babiš has vowed to scrap the ammunition initiative for Ukraine, to challenge NATO’s plans to boost military spending, and to confront the Commission over the Green Deal — which is also in Le Pen’s crosshairs.

The French far-right leader has consistently spoken out against ramping up aid to Kyiv, accusing Macron of warmongering when, for instance, he pushed against the grain of European thinking and suggested putting boots on the ground in Ukraine.

While France has not been Kyiv’s biggest financial contributor for military aid, Macron’s rhetorical “leadership” on Ukraine has been a major driver of support for the embattled country and for building up Europe’s defenses, a senior official in an EU government said. Once he’s gone, “that would be completely at risk — we know that Le Pen wouldn’t continue on the same lines.”

The National Rally has vehemently opposed Macron’s vision when it comes to possibly sharing France’s nuclear umbrella or pooling military resources as war expands on the continent.

Asked recently on TV channel LCI whether French nuclear weapons could one day be stationed in Germany or Poland, Le Pen had a cutting response: “Then what next?”  

She also reiterated past pledges to leave NATO’s integrated military command, albeit vowing to keep collaborating with allies, including the United States, on key military missions. 

The worst-case scenario for Europhiles might, of course, never materialize. For all its bullish rhetoric, the National Rally has yet to prove that it can break through electoral barriers that have consistently constrained it.

In France’s peculiar two-round electoral system, parties must effectively be supported by more than 50 percent of voters in the runoff to win. That threshold has been particularly hard for Le Pen and her troops to surpass, with voters of different political persuasions motivated until now to unite behind mainstream candidates to keep the far right out — albeit with a shrinking margin.

Nonetheless, National Rally has made extraordinary gains and is now the lower chamber’s largest political group, controlling along with its allies roughly a quarter of seats. It had just a handful in 2017 when Macron was first elected.

Even in the current political mess, winning an absolute majority is a stretch, says Mathieu Gallard from polling institute Ipsos.

But the bitterly divided political landscape means the so-called Republican front, in which other parties gang up against the far right between the two rounds to keep it at bay, looks seriously weakened.

The National Rally is currently polling at around 33 percent (a level similar to what it got in last year’s legislative elections) for a potential future parliamentary vote, according to Opinionway, with the moderate left bloc estimated at 18 percent to 24 percent and Macron’s centrist camp trailing third with 14 percent to 16 percent.

If Le Pen’s party wins an absolute majority in a snap parliamentary election, or comes close, her protégé Jordan Bardella will be in a position to claim the premiership and appoint a far-right government.

That means the National Rally would preside over France’s position in the Council of the EU, where representatives from governments negotiate laws jointly with the European Parliament.

The far right in Brussels

While everyone in Brussels has the presidential election on their minds, people “are completely underestimating what a general confrontation would look like” in the Council, the same Commission official quoted above said, with France working to block legislation coming out of the Commission across a wide range of sectors. 

A future far-right France would still be in a minority, at least for now.

“On cars, for example, they will only have the Hungarians on their side. They will lose. On Mercosur, they will lose,” the official said, referring to a draft trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur group of South American countries that awaits possible signature on Dec. 5. 

The big question looming over Europe is whether the continent’s multiple brands of right-wing populism can at some point coalesce to form a blocking minority, grinding the EU’s machinery to a halt. 

Gallard from Ipsos said such a scenario was unlikely in the short term, despite far-right parties polling high in upcoming elections, such as the Dutch vote in late October. 

“When you look at other countries, you have situations that are actually quite contrasted,” he said. “For example, in the Netherlands, at first glance, [Geert Wilders’] Party for Freedom is leading in the polls, but it will likely be significantly lower than in the last election.”

Populist nationalists are also likely to be key players in elections next year in Sweden and Hungary, where Viktor Orbán is gunning for reelection. In Germany’s election in February this year, voters gave the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) its best-ever national result with 21 percent of the vote, making it the country’s second-largest party.

“The most strategic way to view it is to understand that every country will more or less have its ‘populist chapter’ moment,” said Grégoire Roos, program director for Europe and Russia at the Chatham House think tank in London. “The one thing we can hope for is that these chapters don’t all happen at the same time.”