Lawfare Daily: What French Politics Means for Europe and the United States

[Intro]

Tara Varma: Marine Le Pen’s former partner, Louis Aliot, who's the mayor of a city in the south of France called Perpignan, was also barred from elections. So a number of other people were convicted, but of course, she's the figurehead, and it's true that she is the embodiment, the incarnation of this party, now, as I said, which gathers over a third of the vote share in France.

Natalie Orpett: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Natalie Orpett, executive editor of Lawfare, with Tara Varma, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution,

Tara Varma: I really struggle to see them organizing themselves in a European manner. I think they're good at cooperating only when their interests align fully. And I think on defense, I, I don't see them aligning.

Natalie Orpett: Today we're talking about the latest in French politics. On March 31, far right leader Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzlement and banned from politics, though polling showed her in the lead for the 2027 presidential elections. In the last few weeks, current French President  Emmanuel Macron has been carving out a place for French leadership amidst the upheaval in Europe's relationship with the United States. Meanwhile, the push to build European defense capacity and Trump's new tariffs are raising a lot of complicated questions.

[Main podcast]

Okay, so Tara, I think we have to begin with the news that a French court has recently ruled that the far right leader, Marine Le Pen, who is of the Rassemblement National, or the National Rally party, has been, she's been convicted of embezzlement and she's been barred from running for the presidency in 2027. She had been—you know, we spoke of her last time and she's been a very prominent figure in French politics for years—but she had been polling ahead in the first round polls with respect to the presidential election in 2027. So it seems that this ruling from the court is a really dramatic development in French politics.

So I wanna talk to you about how the case came about and all of that, but first to situate us a little bit in the broader landscape. Can you just tell us who Marine Le Pen is, what her party is, and sort of what position she occupies in in French politics today?

Tara Varma: Sure Natalie.

So, you know, Marine Le Pen, as you said, is the leader of the Rassemblement National, the National Rally—now, honestly, the first political force in France, they're polling between 35 to 40% of the vote share. They're really ahead in the polls. They've grown their party at the National Assembly. And they've been in this process of normalization—dédiabolisation in French—basically taking the evil out of the party.

And I think it's important for our American listeners to, to understand that because the origins of the party are also quite dramatic. So her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen was the founder of the party in 1972, and this is a party which has pro-Nazi roots, really on the far right, Holocaust deniers, people who were celebrating collaborators, French collaborators with the Nazis under World War II—trying to really, again, renormalize the fact that some people collaborated, denigrating Charles de Gaulle, who is France’s liberator from the Nazis.

So a party which has very dark roots, who assumed completely these roots and was fairly marginal—very marginal, I would say—on the French political, in the French political landscape until the 80s, when they started basically winning local elections, municipal elections, elections at the, at the city level. And they started growing little by little in the south of France, but then also in the north of France in a number of areas which have been de-industrialized, where there are high unemployment rates, where there are really poor populations, economically vulnerable populations.

And she saw there an opportunity for the party to grow, but understood that she needed to get rid of that really horrid history. And so there was a lot of internal infighting that led at some point to her actually asking her father to leave the party, basically getting him to cancel his membership after he said, he said once again that he thought gas chambers—which were used as the final solution during World War II by the Nazis for the, the genocide of the Jews—that the gas chambers were only a detail of history.

He was condemned and convicted already by a French court in 1987 for saying this, and he said it again in 2015. And that was when Marine Le Pen said, I'm cutting ties, personal ties with my father, but also cutting him off from the political party. We are a party defending workers' rights. We're, you know, therefore the working class. And, and she's used a lot of left-wing rhetoric actually on, on economic and social grounds and this is how she's grown.

I think the roots of the party remain. I think that's also really important to recall. In the end, they, they remain xenophobic. They remain antisemitic. I think we had discussed this when we spoke last time, there were a number of candidates from the Rassemblement National who were candidates for the snap elections in July 2024, who were realized on social media were, you know, blatantly antisemitic and xenophobic and racist. So I think the roots of the party remains, but she's managed, at least on the surface to normalize it.

And she really presents herself as, as this defender of the workers. So you see in a number of, company closures, manufacturing closures, the only political party present there on the day of the closure is the Rassemblement National. And they make a big show of it, they publicize this on social media, so she's really seen as this person who listens to the French people who embodies frenchness. And that's how she's come to grow and, and really to be more popular than a number of the politicians.

And I think it's important to lay out this landscape because all the efforts that she's made to normalize herself, she's kind of undermining with her attitude since her conviction earlier this week. And I think that's very interesting because the fact that she's contesting the decision of the judg, that she's putting into question the independence of the judiciary, that she's saying that this judicial decision is actually a political one, and that the judges wanted to bar her from being a candidate in the 2027 presidential election is really interesting. It's a total contradiction of all the strategy that she's been implementing for the past 15 years.

And, and you can see that basically the radical part, the dark part of this party keeps coming back. It's really like, I think it's, it naturally, it is what it is. And so she couldn't help but undermine the, the democratic nature of, of that legal decision. And, and I think she's really trapped now in, in this moment where she, she almost managed to normalize herself, but actually the radical nature of her party just got back to her.

Natalie Orpett: That's really interesting because I know last time we spoke, we had talked about how the Rassemblement National was echoing a lot of the far right parties elsewhere in the world, including here in the United States, and from an American perspective, you know, the way that you've described her response since her conviction seems very much in keeping with what we've seen from the rhetoric on the right in our country that to delegitimize the courts to call things political in nature. We have certainly heard the word witch hunt on our side. I don't know if that's has a convenient translation in French and has been used there as well.

Tara Varma: Absolutely. It's the same expression, chasse aux sorcières, literally witch hunt, and she uses that quite a much.

Natalie Orpett: Okay, so that's interesting because it, it seems, I mean, as you're describing it, it's a contradiction with the normalizing that she had been doing and, and yet we had talked about how she was sort of embodying this far right populist movement that's happening all over the world. So can you talk a little bit more about why those things are in tension in a way that they are not from an American political perspective?

Tara Varma: Absolutely. So really, you know, the Rassemblement National—it was the embodiment of evil. It was the party against which all other parties would rally. The idea of the cordon sanitaire—so really the, a Republican Front against the National Rally—was prevalent in French politics until last year, basically. So there was really a sense that. all parties, even those parties who disagree but are considered mainstream parties, they need to ally in the face of the far right.

And what she's been attempting for the past 15 years is to break the cordon sanitaire, to break this idea that everyone must isolate the, the far right. And, and she wanted to, to, for the far right—for the Rassemblement National in particular —to be just a normal party, a party amongst many others. And, and she's really targeted her splinter party Reconquête as the, the radical party, the Nazi party. She, she keeps saying they are the radicals; they are the far right; we're just a patriotic party.

But then I think what was interesting was that evidently her team didn't prepare her for that decision at all. And I think we need to remind the listeners as well that she was found guilty of embezzling $4 million euros from the European Parliament. So what she's done is that she's used money that she gets from the European Parliament for parliamentary assistance—which are supposed to be used to help her do her work in the European Parliament—she's used them for political campaigns in France, which is forbidden by the bylaws of the European Parliament.

So she has been found guilty of this. And, and what has been controversial in the judge's decision—or at least the way she has portrayed it as being controversial, and she's got some support from other politicians in France—is that the judges, the panel, the three judges panel that came out with a decision, said that the decision needed to be applied immediately because of the risk of recidivism, because her system, the embezzlement of funds and misappropriation of funds has been so prevalent in the party for many years now that they know that if the decision is not applied immediately, she is bound to do it again.

And so this is what has been criticized. Generally there is a legal decision that is made, a ruling from a judge, but then you have the appeals process, and the decision is only implemented at the end of the appeals process. What is special here is what we've called in French, exécution provisoire, so, really the immediate application of, of that decision. So it's, she's barred from getting into politics for the next five years. She has a two year state prison sentence and two year electronic ankle, electronic bracelet on the ankle that she has to wear.

And what has happened this week is that basically the judges said that there would be an accelerated appeal process for her, which is supposed to provide a final decision by the summer of ‘26. So if she does win her appeal process, she could actually be in capacity to be a candidate in, in the presidential election in 2027, which is set to happen between April and May of that year. So again, generally the, the appeals process are much longer. In this very case, the judges said, well, you know what, actually to prove also that this is not a political decision, we will do everything we can to have an accelerated process.

But the fact that her—so she didn't stay, when, when she heard that she was being convicted, she actually left the court very angrily and you could see that her lawyers were a bit taken aback because this is not a reaction of, of what, you know, someone who proclaims to be the future leader of France, or at least one of the future leaders of France should have. She was totally taken aback; they were not prepared; there was no media communication strategy except to question the legitimacy of the judges and the legitimacy of, of the independence of the judiciary.

So that was really interesting that certainly it was, again, only a populous message that was being submitted. No comment on the grounds of the conviction. No comment on the fact that actually she did violate these rules, and, and that's interesting too. So, the vice president of her, the, the group that she belongs to inside the European Parliament, Patriots for Europe, who's a Hungarian, MEP, she said, well, you know, I don't think the misappropriation of funds really constitutes a big EU corruption scandal. It shouldn't be considered that important or that problematic.

So I think really the idea that what she has done and the fact that now it's demonstrated that she has indeed done what she's been accused of, all of that has been undermined. And what matters is that she was targeted, they say because of who she is, because of the fact that she was most likely going to be elected president of France in 2027, which we of course don't know. You know, we're talking about an election happening in two years. As we've seen in the U.S. in the past two and a half months, two years can be a very long time.

But it's really—they've transformed this into a political debate and a very touchy and controversial political debate in France, definitely. But it has also reverberated outside, because she received support immediately from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. She got support from Moscow, the Kremlin's spokesperson, Dimtry Peskov, said that this decision was, I quote, a violation of democratic norms, which is quite ironic to get that kind of a comment from the, from the Kremlin. Here in the U.S., Elon Musk said that the, the left had totally corrupted the judiciary. She also got support from Donald Trump Jr.

So we, we really see populists from around the world rallying around, around her and saying that, of course, it's her person who's being targeted, in the end, what she has done doesn't matter so much. But she is being targeted here and they're really trying to make a martyr or political martyr out of her.

Natalie Orpett: So a couple of quick questions on just the specifics of the French law here, I, I think the, the most salient of which is whether the ban from running for office is discretionary or required. Was this something that because of the nature of the crime that she was convicted of, that the ban is, is required or is it something that the, this three judge panel chose to implement?

Tara Varma: It was required.

Natalie Orpett: And it's, this is, I assume, a, a domestic implementation of a law that is required by the European Parliament.

Tara Varma: Absolutely. It is it is a domestic application of the law.

And one issue that is also really important is that France's current prime minister, François Bayrou, is accused and has been found guilty of exactly the same facts. So literally embezzlement of funds from the European Parliament to employ people officially in Brussels who, whose day-to-day occupations are actually to conduct political operations in France.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah, that was one of my next questions was, you know, unfortunately not to make France look bad, but there have been quite a lot of political embezzlement stories there.

But I wonder, you know, it, it's not necessarily obvious, I think, from a lot of people who are engaged in the realities of politics, how one would draw the line between work that aides do for the party versus the institution and in sort of what capacity they're doing different types of work. And there's sort of the additional layer when you're talking about the European Parliament versus domestic politics, that of course the Rassemblement National is the domestic party, but then it has sort of a counterpart that it is part of in the European parliament.

And so I'm curious how much this embezzlement scandal is something that is, you know, absolutely extraordinary, unprecedented versus something that's happening not only in France, but also in other countries dealing with this sort of what I'm sure many people can portray as fuzzy lines between working for the party versus working for the par, the European Parliament. What is your general sense of how to situate what Marine Le Pen has been convicted of?

Tara Varma: So, you know, you're right. I mean, of course it happens that tasks sometimes overlap between what you're doing for the party, what you're doing for your MEP, member of the European Parliament, especially when there are local campaigns—some of the staff from the European Parliament may be pulled into local campaigns. We've seen this before, and I think this happens in many countries.

In Marine Le Pen’s case, there are email exchanges of supposed parliamentary assistance employed with European Parliament Funds, who four months after the beginning of their employment send an email saying maybe I should meet this MEP, whom I'm supposed to be working for, whom I'm supposed to have been working for for the past four months.

So it's really blatant and, and there are numerous cases where you see that actually the people who are employed by Brussels, by the European Parliament have not set foot sometimes, once, twice, ever in Brussels at the European Parliament. In many of these cases, these people have done no work for the European Parliament or for the Rassemblement National’s work at the European Parliament. And this, I think there are many instances of, of this happening. The example that I quoted is really one amongst many others.

So I, you know, as you said, sometimes these, these occupations, they overlap. In this case they don't overlap at all and the, and made the very deliberate decision of hiring these people for them to work in Paris with, of course, more lavish salaries from the European Parliament than they would get in in Paris, and not to do any work for the European Parliament.

Jordan Bardella, but also Marine Le Pen are infamously known for being absent in key European Parliament votes; they, you know, don't show up that much. Even when they're in charge of reports or they have a presidency or vice presidency of committees or subcommittees, they do not show up, they do not do the work. So it's not even about—so of course there is a parliamentary assistance issue, but they themselves, as member of the European Parliament, are not doing the work that they are being paid for.

Natalie Orpett: Right, and I mean that's largely consistent with their ideology with respect to the European Union project writ large, right? They're, they're Euroskeptics. They think the whole project is a waste of time. So in some ways it's thumbing their nose at the system that they've quite obviously said that they are thumbing their nose at.

Tara Varma: Absolutely. And but the thing is they've been getting these European parliament salaries now for many years, and they're, you know, they, their agenda is to undermine the European Parliament, but also other European Union institutions, the European Council, the European Commission, really from the inside. They've understood—I think Brexit serving as a cautionary tale here—that it was not really worth leaving the EU as was, as their initial project was, but it would be just better to stay inside, to get as much money as you can and to undermine it from the inside; to really be a spoiler in the game as much as possible.

Natalie Orpett: Interesting. And did the embezzlement scandal touch on other people in the Rassemblement National? Is this affecting others in the party or, and is just the most prominent example, because I, I want to ask next about how this is being perceived domestically. So it's, it's useful, I think, to get an understanding of whether this is hitting, you know, the Rassemblement National’s figurehead or whether it's affecting its leadership more broadly, because the scandal has involved others as well.

Tara Varma: It has absolutely, you know, half a dozen persons are directly targeted. Marine Le Pen’s former partner Louis Aliot, who's the mayor of a city in the south of France called Perpignan, was also barred from elections. So the, a number of other people were convicted, but of course, she's the figurehead and it's true that she is the embodiment, the incarnation of this party now, as I said, which gathers over a third of the vote share in France. So there is a sense that she is targeted, but actually other people were convicted as well. So it's not, it's not just her.

And it's a much larger problem. I mean, as I said, Francois Bayrou’s party, the MoDem, a centrist party, has been doing it and they've been sidelined from, from ministerial positions because of some of the people who were figureheads of that party who were also involved in such schemes.

So it's something that has happened in other parties too, and one of the big, big problems that we have right now is that this person Francois Bayrou who is France’s prime minister—when, the ruling came out, he said that he was troubled by the judge's ruling and had to be contradicted by the spokesperson of the government who said that these were individual comments that that he was making in his personal capacity. And actually members from his own party had to disavow him and to say that they didn't understand why he was saying that he was troubled, that it was a clear decision, and that even if you disagree with the judicial decision, the legal decision, you're not supposed to comment on it politically.

This, this was kind of a norm in, in democratic societies, the acceptance of the separation of power. There is an executive branch, legislative branch, judicial branch, and all of these three functions separately, independently was kind of a given. And the fact that now politicians feel comfortable enough to comment on those—and not just members from Marine Le Pen's party, but actually members of other parties too—I think is, is really a true risk, a kind of a beginning of a breach in, in the support of a democratic system. We're seeing it in the U.S. but, but we're really seeing it in, in a variety of other places in Europe too.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah. So let's switch to the domestic front. So as we've heard, the, the party itself, Rassemblement National, is quite popular. Marine Le Pen had been polling ahead for the 2027 election, but it has all sorts of support at every level of, of French politics. And now it's been given this pretty significant blow both to Marine Le Pen, specifically as the leader of the party and sort of the personification of the movement, but also to others in the party. So how are people in France understanding what this court has done, and the ban on her, and on others in the party?

Tara Varma: So, you know, for all the noise on social media and all the support to her coming from the political class, if you look at the polls that have been coming out, the vast majority of respondents in France between who poll between 65 to 70 percent say that they understand the decision, that they understand that she was found guilty of, of crimes that she has committed alongside other people in her party, that they're not surprised.

And one even more interesting figure is amongst those 65 to 70 percent of people who understand the decision are 22 percent of general respondents and 25 percent of Rassemblement National sympathizers who say they see an opportunity there actually for the Le Pen clan to be sidelined of the, and for Jordan Bardella, her heir apparent and others to actually come to the fore, and for the normalization process to be completed.

And I thought that was very interesting because more and more people are saying, well, maybe the ultimate stage of the normalization process is Rassemblement National being headed, being led by someone who's not a Le Pen. And I think that's going to be very interesting.

So we need to see where the appeals process go, and we'll know more by the summer of 2026, but if she is indeed convicted once again, and if the, the, the ruling is confirmed by an appeals court, then there are several options. So Jordan Bardella seems to be today that the natural, most obvious option. He's been supported by her for many years now. He himself is quite popular and he manages to organize these political rallies, political meetings where there are a lot of young people, he's very popular on social media, on TikTok.

But after the ruling, Marine Le Pen was asked what she thought of Jordan Bardella taking over, and her response was, well, you know, Jordan has tremendous talent, but we'd rather use it later rather than sooner.

Natalie Orpett: She's not ready to let go.

Tara Varma: She is not ready to let go.

One other option would be for her niece, Marion Maréchal Le Pen to take over. So Marion Maréchal Le Pen had split from her aunt a few years ago and gone to the splinter party I mentioned, Reconquete, which is really on the radical far right, very close to MAGA, MAGA movement in the U.S.  But she betrayed her party at the elections last year to rejoin her aunt, I think thinking about her political future and precisely because a Le Pen has always been the presidential candidate of the Rassemblement National ever since it was created. I think she could say that she's also the natural heir because she is a Le Pen, she could take over.

And the third option after Jordan Bardella and Marion Maréchal Le Pen would be complete infighting inside the Rassemblement National, with a number of people laying claim to, to their leadership of the party. You know, people who've supported Marine Le Pen, Jean Marie Le Pen previously who've been behind closed doors—éminence grise and RN advisors, some of them actually architects of, of a number of political victories for the RN. But again, who, who are not well known from the French public who would come to the fore and say that they, they also have a legitimate claim to that. And I think that's also a fairly likely possibility because in the absence of a clear Le Pen leader, you, you could see some kind of infighting, which has not happened in the RN actually for the past six years. So that that would be one option.

And of course another option is that she wins the appeals and she can be herself, the candidate, her plan is for her to be the candidate and and winner of the presidential election, and that if they win the subsequent parliamentary elections, the Rassemblement National, that Jordan Bardella would be her prime minister. That's how they have portrayed it until now.

Natalie Orpett: So do you think it's fair to say, you know, with this infighting you're describing, the assumption I think would have to be, that they would have to uphold or support the ruling of the court. That they couldn't say this was illegitimate, this was political, because if there is party infighting to try to take on the leadership in her absence, you have to support what's going to create her absence.

So is it fair to say that not only is the, the messaging to de-legitimize the courts not catching on now, as you've said, is demonstrated in the polls, but there's a lot of interest even within her party in making sure that it continues to not catch on?

Tara Varma: I think so. I, and I think especially if the, the decision is confirmed in an appeals process, I think it's easier for some of her people who would be former supporters to say, well, now there are, you know, two courts who've kind of listened to her appeal. They've listened to her lawyers and they have found her guilty. Maybe this is, this is the time that the Rassemblement National needs to turn the page of the history of the, and to move on to something different.

And I really think there are quite a few people who are hopeful that, yeah, this would lead to the, the full circle of the normalization process. And I think they would probably support the court's decision also because they have a personal professional interest in making sure that Marine Le Pen is sidelined, at least for the next five years.

You know, something else could happen in a new political cycle, but I think the 2027 presidential election is such an important date right now in the French political calendar. Everyone's thinking about it even though it's happening in two years time, but it's focusing a lot of, of the political attention. So if we know by, by next summer that she's indeed either fully sidelined for that election or whether she's back in the game, we'll see really different scenarios.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah, so things continue to be extremely dynamic as they were the last time we spoke in in August, but I wanna take the view out to the international stage now because as we know, there's been just a tremendous amount of upheaval in the relationship between the United States and Europe, broadly the transatlantic relationship. And I think to—because that conversation could be so enormous, let's give it a little bit of a focal point to start, which is of course, Ukraine.

So there have been a lot of events in the news lately. I'll just recap. You know, of course there was the disastrous meeting in the White House between President Zelenskyy, President Trump, and Vice President Vance. But there have been a lot of other moves where Trump's administration has been indicating that the Europeans need to be the ones to provide the support to, to Ukraine, that it will have to start paying its bills. That, I mean, interestingly, seems to be suggesting that that has to be done more bilaterally between the EU and Europe than through NATO because it seems that the, the project of NATO is somewhat in question from the Trump administration.

In the meantime, it seems that President Macron, in particular, has been really trying to carve out a place for himself on that debate and on the international stage. And with respect to Ukraine, he has made a lot of public statements; he’s met with Trump. So talk to us a little bit about that dynamic. I think maybe let's start with what President Macron has been, has been saying that France will do, that he wishes with respect to support for Ukraine.

Tara Varma: So, you know, let me just rewind a sec for one second. Macron came to power for the first time in 2017, five months after Donald Trump basically came to power in the U.S. At the time where it was the first Trump administration, so quite different from the, the second one, but he was still very antagonistic to the EU. And it was the really the moment where Macron came out with his political manifesto in favor of European sovereignty, European strategic autonomy, the need for Europe to do more on its own, because we didn't know how, how long we could count on the U.S. and actually how reliable the U.S. security guarantee was.

So he's been in that framework for a long time and of course, worked a lot more closely with the Biden administration, the, the subsequent Biden administration, but I think he's also been saying, even under the Biden administration—last year, he came up with not a proposal, but at least a sentence saying we shouldn't rule out having troops on the ground in Ukraine. So that was February, 2024, which caused major uproar—as Macron's declarations often do.

But he didn't say, he didn't say whether they should be French troops, European troops, NATO troops. He just said, let's not rule it out because we're in in this conversation, or at least negotiation with Putin, and we shouldn't basically just give him all these concessions without fighting a bit more. And so this is something that he has put on the table several times. It's now actually a Franco-British proposal as well, even though the, the British proposal said, it's going to be hard for us to put troops on the ground without a U.S. backstop.

But I think, as you said, the events of the past weeks have kind of accelerated history and given a clear sense both to Ukraine and to Europeans that not only was the U.S. not really going to be as present as it was in Ukraine and in European security, but actually when it was going to be present, it might be antagonistic to European interest and to Ukrainian interest, which is I think the second part of that proposition was really not anticipated.

The fact that there would be some form of a U.S. withdrawal was. This transformation of, of the understanding of U.S. interest in Europe and a form of realignment with Russia was really not anticipated. I think it, you know, it was not even considered as a possibility. And so we're in a totally different situation in Europe right now where we have to think about European interests, I think, being separate from American interests.

What is happening is exactly what Europeans and Ukrainians feared, which is that the future of Ukraine is being decided by the U.S. and Russia over the heads of Ukraine and the Ukrainians and, and without the Europeans in the room. So both Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, have made personal appeals to President Trump, and, and he's been talking to them. He's refusing to talk to European Union leaders, but at least the, there's a sense that some kind of a conversation should still be happening.

The imposition of tariffs, and we might discuss this later, is not helping this transatlantic conversation that's supposed to be ongoing. But I think Macron is proceeding now in a fairly different way than he was proceeding at, at the beginning of his tenure, which is that he's cooperating, coordinating with Europeans in a totally different way.

So it's not just about Macron's leadership, even though that's important, and he embodies this idea of Europeans doing more for themselves, but he's working a lot more closely with Germany and, and you, the, the, the incoming German chancellor, Frierdich Merz, is much more aligned with Macron's position, even though he was ardent transatlanticist himself. I think Vice President JD Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference in February this year was really a, a true shock.

And so there's, you know, France, U.K., Germany, but also Polish leadership. And we're seeing the formation of this new European quad, I want to call them, where there's an alignment, or at least a convergence in their positions that we haven't seen in European history in a very long time.

So we're at this really special moment, which I think is important, where Europeans understand, I think, what's happening in the U.S., understand that they cannot rely on the U.S. They have to organize themselves. They're doing this at the member states level as well as the European Union level. But there is still a discrepancy in the time that we have between this really the velocity of the U.S. withdrawal and the transformation of U.S. interests in Europe, and the speed at which, and the velocity at which Europeans can organize themselves to be autonomous from the U.S.

And, and the discrepancy between these two unfortunately is incompressible. So we find a, I'm really worried that we just won't have enough time as Europeans to do what we need to do, but I do think that we're serious about increasing defense spending everywhere, understanding that at the same time there's a European social model, a European openness on the markets that is unprecedented, that's really a unique model that needs to be preserved and that Ukraine needs to be integrated in the European Union sooner rather than later.

And so there is this sense of, of common destiny, common interest at the European level that's happening, but what we're also seeing is the US negotiating a deal with Ukraine on critical minerals directly with the Ukrainians; discussion between President Trump and President Putin in Russia also happening just at the leaders level and Europeans are completely left out of that discussion much to their worry, so they say, and they’re right to say that actually. Even if the U.S. and Russia commit to a deal or come to a decision together regarding Ukraine, there's no obligation for Ukraine to implement that deal. And there's no obligation for the Europeans to implement it either.

And again, as I said there, right to say this, it's just that it's, it's still very hard to circumvent the U.S. in Europe right now. The U.S. still has a lot of leverage that it can pull and use against the Europeans, namely that they're the ones protecting the European continent today.

And so, I don't think we could have come to the point where we are at right now if we hadn't had for the past seven to eight years discussions about what Europe needs to do to, not to be in an autarky, but to be able to defend itself, which I think is kind of normal. And so there are many discussions right now about what form that must take, whether it's a full Europeanization of NATO, whether the EU should be attributed new competencies—and that's a very complicated process, change of treaty, et cetera—to build its own defense.

I don't think the EU is the vehicle for that, it was really not made for that. But to think about coalition of the willing, you know, as I said, the U.K., Germany, France, and Poland, they actually have a lot for themselves—like, they, they could pull resources together.

So to think about innovative ways for Europe to ensure that it can ensure its own defense and be enough of a deterrent to Russia because I think this is also where we are at, just to make sure that Putin is convinced that Europeans are in a capacity to defend themselves and that they would come to Ukraine's defense if, if things get worse on, on the battle ground.

But we also know that it is really important for the U.S. president to be the one to put an end to the war in Ukraine, so we're finding ourselves—Europeans and Americans—today a bit at, at odds, I think, in terms of the goals that we're attempting to achieve and how we want to achieve these goals.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah. I'm glad you spoke about the difficulty of figuring out what the vehicle is going to be for establishing European security if, if it seems we've gotten to more of a consensus point that it is in fact a priority to move quickly to bolster European security with the possibility of an absent partner in the United States that has been a, a loyal, reliable partner for, you know, since the end of World War II.

But it's, it's not always obvious, right? There had been some orientation around, do we mean that European countries should contribute more to NATO? Do we mean that they should contribute more of their GDP to their own country’s, sort of, domestic forces? Are we doing this through some European wide framework that involves the same sorts of partnerships and agreements as exist through different European political vehicles?

So what is, how is that fleshing out? I mean, I, I imagine especially given everything you were describing with respect to the speed that this is happening with, it's just beyond anyone's imagination, I think. But I imagine those conversations have been going on for a while in much more of a theoretical sense, and that the pressures as they exist now are giving new light to the discussion.

So what is your sense of the likelihood of various options for how Europe will concentrate on building its own security, especially in the possibility of an absent U.S. partner?

Tara Varma: So I do think the option of the Europeanization of NATO is the most likely scenario, with support from the EU because if most members of the EU are also members of NATO—not all of them are; there are neutral countries inside the EU as well who don't want to be part of NATO, but we had neutral countries like Finland and Sweden who actually joined NATO last year, really breaking a 200 year position of neutrality and history of neutrality. So we're also seeing so many breakdowns of taboos in Europe at, again, at a pretty massive speed by European standards at least.

But I do think with all the investment and the knowledge that is in NATO, it's kind of hard to find an institution that you would build from the ground up, build that kind of trust that exists. If it doesn't exist with the U.S. anymore, it still exists with the vast majority of members. They're used to working together.

The mechanisms and institutions already works, and it's a question of how do you replace the massive American presence and leadership inside NATO? Who can do that? And that's honestly an unanswered question. For now, it would require several other countries, so that is not easy.

We've seen the European Union, the European Commission in particular, come up with this re-arm plan where 800 billion euros of defense spending was announced, but actually it was 150 billion euro additional fund. The rest of the 650 billion are contributions that member states, it's the aggregate contributions that member states need to make on their own for their own national spending. But there is still now EU money being unlocked.

And starting very soon, in the next few months until 2027, will be the new multiannual financial framework, MFF—that's the, the budgetary process of the European Union—where they will ensure to secure actually additional funds for the European Defense Fund. In particular, ensuring that European defense companies, the, the, the European defense industrial base truly happens. So that you have European companies building tanks, building aircraft, building aircraft carriers, building infantry equipment, and they, that they do this in the most coordinated manner possible.

So it's really a number of steps that need to be taken. You need to have more professional armies in Europe as well. And I think politicians need to talk to their populations, to explain to their population that the risk that the war is going to come to the European continent is also a real risk. And to ensure that it's not only the populists who are bringing this debate to the fore, but that mainstream politicians, that governments in power also need to explain that there are ways to prepare for this.

And so I, as I said, all of these steps are being taken, but there are internal European debates about how to proceed. We're seeing, of course, a lot of obfuscation coming from Hungary, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban really is aligned with Vladimir Putin and actually Donald Trump in the U.S. Same for the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico.

Giorgia Meloni in Italy is a very interesting personality because she, so she was, before she came to power in Italy was anti-NATO, anti-EU. And as she came in under the Biden administration, she gave up on her anti-NATO stance. She remained fairly Euro-skeptical, but understood that she needed to be part of the NATO discussions. And even under the Biden administration was really perceived as a key European ally. And a key European ally too, because actually she had a very good working relationship with Ursula von der Leyen and the president of the European Commission.

And now Giorgia Meloni presents herself as one of the defenders of the transatlantic relationship. She says that, you know, we need to work with President Trump as much as possible, that we should understand his claims and his grievances. Even in the case of the tariffs actually, she's saying that she disagrees with them, but she said that Europeans need to find a way to make Donald Trump happy and to find a way to keep the transatlantic relationship going. And so we're seeing a diversity of voices in Europe as well.

So this, the future of this European defense system is, is not guaranteed because more and more voices are, are speaking up against it. And of course there's a question of the potential interference coming from the U.S. because what we're talking about right now is a huge debate that has been ongoing is about whether Europeans buy European only. Whether money coming from the European Union should go mostly to European companies, which is not the case at all today actually—over 60% of European defense spending goes to American companies.

In the previous Trump administration, when Europeans decided to spend more on on European defense through the European Defense Fund, actually Europeans and then-chief of EU diplomacy, Federica Mogherini, got a very angry letter from the Trump, Trump One administration saying that Europeans should not develop these capacities on their own and that they should spend their money and by American products.

We've not seen such reaction for now from the Trump administration, and we've not heard so much from the American defense industry, but I would imagine that they would not be too happy to envisage losing that pretty big market that is the, the European market. So it would be very interesting to see whether the, the, the American defense companies actually try to convince the administration not to be so antagonistic to the EU because it would pose a major, a major issue for them in terms of revenue.

But that would be a next step taken by the Europeans to say, actually we're going to, to work mostly with European companies and to develop our own defense industry, our own defense industrial capacities at the proper level. Because there are already a number of European defense companies that exist throughout the continent, but they do things not in, in the most coordinated manner.

Natalie Orpett: So it seems to me this is all gonna have interesting reverberations in, in French politics as well, and then of course, back in the other direction, back to the European level by extension.

But one of the main themes in, in French politics and of course is the, this is the case everywhere in every European country, particularly those in the EU or interested in being in the EU, is whether it should be a, a national project or a European project that should take priority. And as we've seen, there's been a real alignment of the Euroskeptic view with the populist view and it's not in every European country, but in most the, the sort of confluence of things seems to be far right, populism, and skepticism of the European project generally.

But now with this fundamental shift to the transatlantic relationship and questions swirling about what NATO's future will look like, what the European Union's relationship will look like, how Ukraine is going to fit into all of it—it seems to me that the sort of traditional—or at least as of the last couple of years and decades—the sort of traditional breakdown of ideologies in the domestic front is maybe going to have to shift a little bit to account for these realities. So what kind of things would you expect in that front?

Tara Varma: You're absolutely right, and I think that's also what they're hoping for. In a way, it would contribute to the normalization process that we consider them as normal parties, as having a stake in the elections and in the political debate, as with any other party.

What I have found interesting is that they had attempted to work also together across Europe on national issues, and hadn't managed to do so really until the 2024 European parliamentary elections. So we saw them actually get very high, a very high vote share in the European Parliament leading to the creation of a new group whose main claims are that they're anti-gender, anti-climate, anti-immigration.

And it used to be that these issues were not important or strong enough for them to actually get together, and I think that has shifted. And it has not only shifted in the European debate, but it has also shifted in the transatlantic debate. We came out with a paper this week in Survival Magazine with a colleague from Carnegie, Sophia Besch, which is entitled “The Alliance of Revisionists,” and so we look at how a number of MAGA strands and a number of European far rights—some of whom are in power, some of whom aren't in Europe—how they work together, how they converge on a, some, on a number of issues and where they might diverge.

And actually the list of convergence, in particular, their common antagonism towards the EU and EU regulation is overwhelming and, and clearly, you know, just is more important than their divergences. And I think that's quite striking. Anything that has to do with EU regulation, that has to do with the EU being this supranational body, which they portray as this invisible bureaucracy, very complicated, not at the service of the people, made up of all these technocrats based in Brussels, who, who don't care about ordinary citizens, is very, it's a very easy scapegoat.

It's it's an argument that works across Europe, as we've seen in the rise of far-right parties, really across Europe inside the European Union and outside. I mean, even in the U.K. elections last summer we saw the rise of the Reform party, which was quite astounding. Similarly, in German elections in February, 2025, the, the party that came in second the AFD, Alternative für Deutschland, managed to gather 20% of the vote. Marine Le Pen in France, still the leader of a far right party—she says that she's not from the far-right, but she, you know, by political scientist is still qualified as a far-right—is polling between 35 to 40% in terms of the vote share.

So we're seeing again, across Europe, these parties really gaining ground managing to impose themselves in the political debate, to impose their issues as being the key issues for their own populations. And so they're shifting, we can see that they're already shifting the debate even at the European Union level.

In her first term, Ursula von der Leyen as the, the president of the European Commission had two key priorities, which was basically helping member states go through an environmental and energy transitions towards more green energy and to work towards a digital transition. Her priority now in her second term is to work to control migration, so to work with a number of countries.

And so she's—I'm not saying that migration isn't an issue, but I do feel like she's given in really into this, this far right rhetoric, and she's not mentioning the fight against climate change at all. She's really only talking about migration and saying in a way that all these parties have legitimate claims. Again, some of them are already in power, others are polling very high in their own national member states, and they need to be listened to.

And that they're getting support from U.S. politicians at the very high level, I think is also making her life a bit more complicated because these European politicians are now getting the formal support of the tech oligarchs and, and sometimes the vice president of the United States, they're also getting access to the attention economy, they're getting access sometimes even to funds. So it's, it's really, we're seeing a major shift of, of that debate and accepting what was deemed to be unacceptable even a few months ago

Natalie Orpett: With respect to this project of build up, building up European defense capacity, you know, it seems to me that if, if people are really starting to feel a threat and really believe that the United States is not going to be there to back up to provide necessary defense, and the intensity of the threat or the nearness of the threat becomes really prevailing domestically, do you think it's going to be possible for these populist parties in, in France and in other European countries—of course, each has its own nuances, so I won't make you speak too broadly—but will they be able to disentangle the sort of demonization of the European Union, the European Parliament, these, you know, nameless, faceless bureaucrats that you were talking about that make such an easy scapegoat, from on the other side, the need to, or the push to develop a European wide defense capacity?

Tara Varma: I think they would push against it as much as possible. First of all, they're contesting the very idea that there's a threat of war. They're saying that the party in power, when they're themselves not in power, are the ones talking the flames of war and a fear in the French population, that they shouldn't be doing that. They're saying that the threat doesn't exist, particularly coming from Russia.  

And I think their knee-jerk reaction would be to focus only on the domestic aspect of things to defend jobs and job creation only in, in France, and that if you needed to develop the defense industry more, it would have to be only French companies, only jobs for the French people.

And, and I mean, I'm projecting here, but I really struggle to see them organizing themselves in a European manner. I think they're good at cooperating only when they're interests align fully. And I think on defense, I, I don't see them aligning. I see them rejecting the European Union, and they're already saying that it's not a competency of the European Union to deal with these issues, that the European Union is already exceeding its capacities, its competencies—that it's trying to build an empire, and that they are the ones fighting against against this European Union who wants to be an empire.

So they're really, again, presenting themselves as being part of this citadel under siege. I think they would focus really on, on their own national markets and people.

Natalie Orpett: Right. And then that of course makes it more complicated for those who are pushing for European-wide defense building to be able to implement that as they have to deal with pressures from their own domestic politics.

Tara Varma: Absolutely.

Natalie Orpett: So I think as we wrap up, I, I can't help but ask you though we have less than 24 hours since President Trump has announced formally the tariffs that had been expected, but I think we can safely say were quite a bit more in some instances than even had been expected. What is your sense of how French politicians and French people are going to be responding to the tariffs?

Tara Varma: So I think the first reaction is shock and fear, particularly for the French wine industry, but not only because the American market is a pretty important market for them. Second sense is really incomprehension. I mean, nobody understands what the strategy is behind these blanket tariffs across the board to literally every country in the world.

During the campaign, we were told that all of this was a strategy, that these were tactics that, you know, you needed to negotiate with President Trump directly, but the fact that there, there's no differentiation basically between allies and rivals, actually sometimes rivals getting less tariffs than allies is you know, a bit of a, an incomprehension. I think Iran got less tariffs than the European Union.

So there's a sense of really, yeah, incomprehension there, but also that because we were forewarned, there should be some kind of a response, despite Howard Lutnick saying that there should be no response from, from countries. I think we're already seeing in Germany, in France, a bilateral organization of how to respond. Of course, the European Union is also set to, to bring its own response and reciprocal tariffs.

And at the, the European Union level, but also at the member states level, politicians have have been communicating to their populations that they tried to dissuade President Trump from going in this direction that they were ready to do deals with with him, and that actually they were not heard, that they tried to circumvent them as much as possible and that again, all the while they tried to have a conversation, nothing came out of it.

And so again, I think shock, fear, incomprehension, but then also the, the realization that there needs to be some form of a, a clear coordinated response to that and understanding that it's going to hurt the American people, the American workers, in the same way that it's going to hurt the European workers and every other, actually, person who's going to be in impacted by this. Basically, everyone in the world is going to be impacted. You and I are going to be impacted as consumers as well. So, I do feel like there's been an explanation process, but then we're going to be hit by them in our daily lives, little by little.

And so there is a European reaction, which, which I think is important, but, but we've seen that the tariffs that have been announced are compounded to previous tariffs. And now there is a fear that that would be actually additional tariffs compounded to that maybe in a few weeks, maybe in a few months, and that we don't know where it'll stop. Because again, I think there has been a sense that everyone has been trying to understand what the administration wants to do with these tariffs, what they're trying to get of other countries, and, and, and that message has not been communicated clearly from, from the Trump administration team.

So I think there's, there's a fear there too, that actually not only are the current tariffs being imposed really massive and will have catastrophic impacts on the economy, that, but that there might be future tariffs coming too. And the unpredictability of what this administration is doing, I think is really stoking a lot of fear in allies, but also I think in rivals actually who don't know how all of this is going to develop. So I think yeah, a real fear that we're seeing the end of the economic system as we know it.

Natalie Orpett: Well, I think we're gonna have to leave it there on that bright note. But Tara Varma, thank you so much for joining us.

Tara Varma: Thank you so much for having me.

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