Press

“We live in a French EU at the moment,” says Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank based in London. 

“Macron won’t have everything his own way,” said Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform. “Some Central and Eastern European member-states will oppose French policies, the British will remain a headache and the Germans may thwart some French ideas.”

Twitter’s current terms of use prohibit a range of content not necessarily illegal, for example, expressing a wish that someone dies or posting excessively violent content, said Zach Meyers, a senior researcher at the think-tank the Centre for European Reform. “Twitter would be free to loosen its current content moderation policies while still complying with the DSA – for example, by reversing the ban on Trump,” Meyers said.

"The big tech firms will heavily resist other countries adopting similar rules, and I cannot imagine the firms voluntarily applying these rules outside the EU,", said Zach Meyers, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform think-tank.

"La UE en tanto que proyecto no se puede permitir una victoria de Marine Le Pen. Porque aunque ella haya bajado el tono por lo que se refiere al Frexit y la salida del euro, su proyecto significa una obstrucción desde dentro, al estilo polaco o húngaro. La diferencia es que no es lo mismo tener este estilo agresivo contra la UE en Polonia y Hungría que en pleno motor franco-alemán", explica a EL ESPAÑOL Camino Mortera-Martínez, directora de la oficina en Bruselas del Centre for European Reform.

Nonetheless, Ian Bond, a senior British diplomat for almost 30 years who is now director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform think-tank, said a Le Pen win could mean the end of France’s historical trans-Atlantic defense role. “The French were quite often quite difficult in NATO discussions,” he said.“But where the French didn’t go was to suggest, ‘Actually the Soviet Union isn’t that dangerous, is it?’ They accepted the case that the Soviet Union was the big problem that we had to face. And if Le Pen doesn’t accept that that is true of Russia, then that is problematic.”

"In negotiating the Digital Services Act, EU law-makers balanced tackling disinformation with protecting free speech. The Commission’s last-minute proposal for stricter regulation of tech platforms during crises undermines this balance," said Zach Meyers, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform (CER) think-tank.

"Le Pen does not specify what military threats France faces, and barely mentions Russia. This perhaps reflects the ambiguity of her relationship with Vladimir Putin," says a report for the think-tank the Centre for European Reform (CER) on what a Le Pen presidency would mean for Europe.