Politics in a foreign country can never be exactly similar to developments on the Greek political stage.

However, when the results of an election rock the political system of a country like France – which in the past has proven to be a political workshop that led to changes in the rest of Europe – no one can ignore the messages and signals they send to other European states.

The results of the 19 June French elections reminded everyone that political extremes – whether the extreme left or the extreme right – are looming.

The populist rhetoric of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s NUPES and of Marine Lepen’s National Rally found fertile ground in a substantial segment of the French electorate, because voters in France, as in Greece, face an unprecedented wave of inflation and an energy crisis.

Economic issues dominated the campaigns of parties ahead of the parliamentary election and offered extreme populists on all sides the opportunity to camouflage other unpopular positions of theirs and to promise easy solutions to complex economic problems.

This is not the first time that has happened.

Over the last decade, many European countries, including Greece, experienced an analogous rise of the extremes, which exploited and even cultivated the anti-systemic sentiments of public opinion.

Because this is the most recent case, however, we must listen carefully to the alarm bell that sounded in the Fifth French Republic.

Extremists still constitute a threat.

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