The ultra-right Front National (FN), which has won the EP elections in France, was called extremist and fascist on Tuesday, 27 May by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble. FN vice-chair Florian Philippot then responded by demanding that French President François Hollande summon the German ambassador to Paris to demand an explanation.
"For our French colleagues, but not only for them, we must now ask what kinds of mistakes we have been making such that one-fourth of French voters chose not a right-wing party, but an extremist, fascist one," Schäuble said at a conference in Berlin, according to Reuters. "It is not up to a minister of another country, a German minister, to tell the French who they should vote for," Philippot responded on the France 5 television station.
"Such people are no longer respecting election results," Philippot said, referring to the fact that Schäuble is a hardline advocate of the EU. The victory of the French nationalists under the leadership of Marine Le Pen is one of the most significant successes for any radical party in those EU countries where such parties have based their strategies on rhetoric aimed against greater European integration.
A similar shake-up was sparked by the victory of British nationalists who want their country to withdraw from the EU. Ms Le Pen has long done her best to rid the FN of the reputation it earned as an extremist organization while her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was that the helm.
Mr Le Pen has previously been convicted of denying Nazi crimes and was given a suspended prison sentence. Schäuble is known for using sharp words; earlier this year, for example, he compared the covert Russian invasion of Crimea to the German annexation of the Sudetenland by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in 1938.
