EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson is promoting a new European electricity market design and long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with the promise of “stable and affordable prices”. Now, she says, the focus is on getting these PPAs to companies. Manuel Berkel analyzes how the breakthrough of PPAs can be achieved and how medium-sized companies can benefit from them.
In Germany, politics and business are intensively discussing how to reduce dependence on China. However, the situation is apparently not as dramatic as previously thought, according to a study that examined the profit situation of German companies in the People’s Republic. There is no critical economic dependence of the Federal Republic of Germany on China, the study says. Nevertheless, the authors provide some recommendations, as Christiane Kühl reports. Among other things, they urge EU member states to act in unison on the China issue.
However, there was no talk of European unity after the controversial statements by French President Emmanuel Macron about China and Taiwan. On the US side, there also seems to be a need for discussion: In a phone call with Macron, US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his stance that peace and stability must be maintained in the Taiwan Strait, according to a statement from the White House.
In France, people are now using pots and pans and other utensils to make noise in their protests against Macron and his policies. The phenomenon of “Casserolade” is currently being discussed in a rather lighthearted manner in France. However, the tense atmosphere in the country and Macron’s damaged image are cause for concern, writes Claire Stam in her Column.
According to a new study, Germany’s economy is far less dependent on China in most sectors than is generally assumed. This is the conclusion of a study published on Thursday by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the German Economic Institute (IW), the China Institute Merics and the Federation of German Industries. The study systematically analyzed the profit situation of German companies in China – according to its own information for the first time ever – including special analyses of Bundesbank data.
Between 2017 and 2021, profits amounting to seven to eleven billion euros flowed back to Germany each year from the direct investments of German companies in China. This puts China’s significance at about the same level as the USA, with a share of 12 to 16 percent of companies’ foreign profit returns. The EU’s share, however, was significantly higher at an average of 56 percent. The overall economic significance of the profits generated by German companies in China is relevant, but limited.
Despite its growing importance, the People’s Republic continues to play a relatively minor role as a destination for foreign direct investment compared to the EU, the authors write. They argue that Germany’s economic dependence on China is not critical. This is a rather surprising conclusion given the heated debate about excessive dependence on China.
The authors see their findings as an all-clear signal. According to the study, China accounted for only 6.8 percent of German foreign direct investment in 2020, at around 90 billion euros – compared to 34 percent for the EU including the UK and 27 percent for the USA.
Below are some of the key findings of the study:
Especially large corporations like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and BASF continue their investments in China regardless of the discussion about China in Europe. VW has been calling China its “second home market” for years; BASF is currently building a large Verbund site in southern China.
“More transparency is required here, also at the level of German companies particularly exposed to China,” demands Juergen Matthes, Head of the Global and Regional Markets Department at the IW. “Investors should have an interest in learning more about such cluster risks.” It is “in the overall interest of the German economy that affected large companies safeguard their own existence against geopolitical worst-case scenarios (such as an invasion of Taiwan by China),” the authors warn in the study.
But the investment flow could even rise further. A clear majority of the companies surveyed in the study want to replace exports from Germany with local production by 2030. The trend is well known – in this way, companies are following Chinese demands for more localization, among other things.
“These plans threaten to weaken Germany’s future export prospects. In the medium term, this could be to the detriment of Germany as a business location and the jobs that depend on exports to China and Asia,” warns Merics head economist Max Zenglein. The previously accepted thesis that investments in China automatically benefit Germany as a business location no longer necessarily applies, he says.
The authors provide recommendations for the German government’s economic policy and China strategy. “Germany’s new China policy should be oriented independently of individual corporate and sectoral interests,” says Cora Jungbluth, China expert at the Bertelsmann Stiftung. “Securing prosperity for the entire German business location should be the main focus.”
The authors make further recommendations:
“Stable and affordable prices” – with this prospect, EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson is promoting a new European electricity market design and, in particular, long-term power purchase agreements. The question now, she says, is how Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) can reach the breadth of companies.
Medium-sized companies with high energy consumption rarely have the financial means to finance entire wind farms. They are also confounded by the many different types of long-term purchase agreements. Ideally, companies with a PPA buy green electricity from a single solar or wind farm. In this way, they theoretically benefit from low generation costs.
But because generation fluctuates, the remaining electricity volumes have to be purchased on the wholesale market. “The customer assumes the structuring risk from the supplier,” explains Michael Claußner of the consulting firm Energy Brainpool. If the customer does not want to pay a service provider, they need their own procurement department – another reason why the complex contracts have so far been the domain of energy-intensive large companies.
Many industrial companies also still do not want to commit for long and possibly miss out on falling prices. “Typical terms for PPAs are up to five years, in individual cases even ten,” says Wolf Stötzel of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), representing green power producers and marketers.
At the heart of the EU reform for this is a risk that is relatively easy to address: the potential default of electricity purchasers. Some energy-intensive companies would not be rated by rating agencies. As a result, banks lack the decision-making basis for financing new green power plants through direct contracts, according to the commission. With the reform, member states should ensure that the financial market provides hedging instruments – supported by government guarantees if needed.
However, Stötzel objects that precisely such financial hedges already exist in Germany on the EEX power exchange. The contracting parties could register their PPA with the exchange, which would assume the default risk for a fee. Nevertheless, the chambers of commerce and industry are convinced that state guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprises can turn things around. “In Norway, there are already guarantees for PPAs, which has boosted the market,” says DIHK energy officer Josephine Möslein.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs is already examining ways to improve the financing of PPAs, for example, via KfW and default guarantees, writes the BMWK in its key points for a wind energy onshore strategy. For wind farms in particular, there are currently hardly any PPAs, says Tibor Fischer, head of renewable energies at the German Energy Agency (Dena). In the case of wind power, it is clear that it is not just a matter of giving small and medium-sized companies easier access to green power projects. The supply is simply too small.
There are still too few new, approved areas for wind farms. As a result, public tenders have been signed and government premiums are even more attractive for operators. “The PPA market in Germany currently consists mainly of segments for which there are no longer any subsidies,” says Fischer. He says these include wind farms, for which the 20-year subsidy period has expired, and especially large solar plants over 20 megawatts in capacity. They are already excluded from subsidized tenders in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).
But even if the political expansion targets are achieved in the next few years, PPAs are unlikely to be a panacea for high electricity costs. Levies and surcharges still account for up to one-third of the electricity price for industrial customers and about half for commercial customers, even considering the recent relief provided by the elimination of the EEG surcharge.
“Medium-sized companies would benefit above all from reduced network charges, which would be subsidized by the German government,” says Möslein. In the DIHK’s view, another “big step” for SMEs would be higher de minimis limits for so-called on-site PPAs. In this case, the renewable energy system is located on the customer’s premises and operated by a service provider. In this way, the company saves on all surcharges. However, according to Möslein, it becomes an electricity supplier as soon as it feeds surplus electricity into the grid to supply its neighbors and must meet the full regulatory requirements.
In order to help PPAs achieve a breakthrough, contracts would also have to be highly standardized, says management consultant Claußner: “A medium-sized company can’t spend 24 hours on energy procurement.” Another advantage of standardization: Contracts would become more comparable and prices would possibly fall. The rapporteur in the European Parliament, Nicolás González Casares (S&D), has already announced that the Commission’s legislative proposal will be tightened up with a view to greater transparency.
In the long term, Dena expert Fischer is convinced that the market for small and medium-sized enterprises will develop in two directions: “If there is sufficient supply, SMEs can form pools and thus spread risks and share transaction costs because PPAs will remain more complex than normal supply contracts.” Such pooling is already widespread in the USA and Australia.
The second, currently more widespread option: “Companies can also purchase green power from energy suppliers that conclude PPAs. In this case, the companies only obtain green power indirectly, but from additional plants, and they have less effort because the supplier takes over the structuring,” explains Fischer.
This additionality is, according to the Dena expert, the second crucial reason, alongside the pricing issue, why more companies could opt for PPAs in the future. Own green commitments and sustainability standards are motivating suppliers and corporations to green their production through green energy. “Compared to other measures, it is still fast and uncomplicated,” says Claußner as well. However, the vast majority of the green energy certificates used for this purpose come from decades-old Norwegian hydropower plants.
“PPAs for new plants have a different value,” Fischer is convinced. The wind industry, on the other hand, is still sobered by the experience with special certificates for regional electricity from Germany. “Demand from industry and end consumers has been very restrained so far,” says Stötzel.
But Fischer currently sees growing interest in high-quality green power across Europe: “The Epex Spot power exchange got back into trading guarantees of origin last fall, and you can already see there that certificates from unsubsidized plants and certain countries are fetching higher prices.”
Especially since the cheap alternative from imported certificates is not assured. “Last summer, the Norwegian parliament had already made a push to use guarantees of origin to decarbonize its own industry,” Fischer recounts. “Since more than 90 percent of the guarantees of origin traded in this country come from Norway, many companies in Germany would then have had no more proof of green electricity.”
A noun that first appeared in France around 1830 has resurfaced in recent days: Casserolade. The word refers to a form of protest which consists of a group of people making noise by banging pots, lids, pans and other noisy utensils. Protesters sometimes take a decidedly creative approach to their protest, and the same goes for the accompanying memes.
Last Monday, for example, more than 350 noisy concerts began at 8 p.m., scattered throughout France, as French President Emmanuel Macron gave a televised speech. “Macron doesn’t listen to us, we don’t listen to him either,” the protesters shouted. The response wasn’t long in coming: “It’s not cooking pots that will move France forward,” the French president said last Wednesday during a factory visit in Alsace. The traditional pot manufacturer Cristel, however, saw things differently.
Meanwhile, all of France is laughing at the ban on cooking pots, also known as “portable sound devices” in official parlance, issued yesterday in Ganges (southern France). The reason for the ban was Emmanuel Macron’s visit to a school in Ganges.
The result is a veritable dialogue of deaf ears between the French executive and civil society, with each insisting on its positions. This status quo and its explosive potential did not escape the notice of EU parliamentarians who gathered in Strasbourg this week for a plenary session and exchanged views on the French constitutional framework in the corridors. Almost invariably, one question emerged: How could a law as important as the one on pension reform be passed without parliamentary approval?
“It is crucial to understand that it is not necessarily constitutional jurisdiction that is being questioned, but the conditions under which it is exercised in France,” writes Lauréline Fontaine, a professor of public law, in a guest editorial in the daily Le Monde.
The French constitutional system is heavily focused on the executive branch, and in particular on the president of the republic, write Laurent Pech, professor of European law at Middlesex University in London, and Sébastien Platon, professor of public law at the University of Bordeaux, in a study commissioned by the European Green Party. The current French constitution also allows executive interference in the legislative sphere in some cases, the two researchers further point out.
However, the ongoing protests since January show that the French are less and less willing to accept this vertical power. This is all the more true because the exercise of this power is taking place in a context in which the functioning of the health, education and justice systems has deteriorated. And galloping inflation is only adding fuel to the fire of already fierce political protests.
What about the structural counterforces? It is well known that the countervailing forces offered by a federal administrative and political structure in a country like Germany do not exist in France. This lends particular weight to the action of civil society as a counterforce.
“Is this country really exemplary in terms of the rule of law? It must be noted that civil liberties have been weakened over the last decade,” writes Thomas Perroud, professor of public law at Panthéon-Assas University, in the study mentioned above. Indeed, to respond to the terrorist attacks and later to the health crisis, successive governments introduced prolonged states of emergency that were then normalized in the current legal framework, he explains.
The French constitutional framework thus allows for a solitary exercise of power, which France’s traditional partners felt during his trip to China. Macron’s statements on China and Taiwan caused all the more confusion because they seemed to ignore all the talks and meetings held with them in advance.
A year after his re-election, Macron seems quite isolated, with a badly damaged image, even abroad. And the French head of state will begin the second year of his second term next Monday, burdened by an unpopularity that could make him dangerous. A year after his re-election, he must try to regain control of this strange five-year term that seems to be slipping away from him.
Because there are real questions and concerns about the future of France. The far right has arrived at the center of power in Italy, Sweden and Finland, and is knocking on the door in Belgium and Spain. The fact is that there is more at stake in France than the reform of the pension system. The country is in a social, political and democratic crisis. The fact that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party is the big winner of Macron’s crisis is hardly disputed in France at the moment.
EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson is promoting a new European electricity market design and long-term Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) with the promise of “stable and affordable prices”. Now, she says, the focus is on getting these PPAs to companies. Manuel Berkel analyzes how the breakthrough of PPAs can be achieved and how medium-sized companies can benefit from them.
In Germany, politics and business are intensively discussing how to reduce dependence on China. However, the situation is apparently not as dramatic as previously thought, according to a study that examined the profit situation of German companies in the People’s Republic. There is no critical economic dependence of the Federal Republic of Germany on China, the study says. Nevertheless, the authors provide some recommendations, as Christiane Kühl reports. Among other things, they urge EU member states to act in unison on the China issue.
However, there was no talk of European unity after the controversial statements by French President Emmanuel Macron about China and Taiwan. On the US side, there also seems to be a need for discussion: In a phone call with Macron, US President Joe Biden reaffirmed his stance that peace and stability must be maintained in the Taiwan Strait, according to a statement from the White House.
In France, people are now using pots and pans and other utensils to make noise in their protests against Macron and his policies. The phenomenon of “Casserolade” is currently being discussed in a rather lighthearted manner in France. However, the tense atmosphere in the country and Macron’s damaged image are cause for concern, writes Claire Stam in her Column.
According to a new study, Germany’s economy is far less dependent on China in most sectors than is generally assumed. This is the conclusion of a study published on Thursday by the Bertelsmann Foundation, the German Economic Institute (IW), the China Institute Merics and the Federation of German Industries. The study systematically analyzed the profit situation of German companies in China – according to its own information for the first time ever – including special analyses of Bundesbank data.
Between 2017 and 2021, profits amounting to seven to eleven billion euros flowed back to Germany each year from the direct investments of German companies in China. This puts China’s significance at about the same level as the USA, with a share of 12 to 16 percent of companies’ foreign profit returns. The EU’s share, however, was significantly higher at an average of 56 percent. The overall economic significance of the profits generated by German companies in China is relevant, but limited.
Despite its growing importance, the People’s Republic continues to play a relatively minor role as a destination for foreign direct investment compared to the EU, the authors write. They argue that Germany’s economic dependence on China is not critical. This is a rather surprising conclusion given the heated debate about excessive dependence on China.
The authors see their findings as an all-clear signal. According to the study, China accounted for only 6.8 percent of German foreign direct investment in 2020, at around 90 billion euros – compared to 34 percent for the EU including the UK and 27 percent for the USA.
Below are some of the key findings of the study:
Especially large corporations like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and BASF continue their investments in China regardless of the discussion about China in Europe. VW has been calling China its “second home market” for years; BASF is currently building a large Verbund site in southern China.
“More transparency is required here, also at the level of German companies particularly exposed to China,” demands Juergen Matthes, Head of the Global and Regional Markets Department at the IW. “Investors should have an interest in learning more about such cluster risks.” It is “in the overall interest of the German economy that affected large companies safeguard their own existence against geopolitical worst-case scenarios (such as an invasion of Taiwan by China),” the authors warn in the study.
But the investment flow could even rise further. A clear majority of the companies surveyed in the study want to replace exports from Germany with local production by 2030. The trend is well known – in this way, companies are following Chinese demands for more localization, among other things.
“These plans threaten to weaken Germany’s future export prospects. In the medium term, this could be to the detriment of Germany as a business location and the jobs that depend on exports to China and Asia,” warns Merics head economist Max Zenglein. The previously accepted thesis that investments in China automatically benefit Germany as a business location no longer necessarily applies, he says.
The authors provide recommendations for the German government’s economic policy and China strategy. “Germany’s new China policy should be oriented independently of individual corporate and sectoral interests,” says Cora Jungbluth, China expert at the Bertelsmann Stiftung. “Securing prosperity for the entire German business location should be the main focus.”
The authors make further recommendations:
“Stable and affordable prices” – with this prospect, EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson is promoting a new European electricity market design and, in particular, long-term power purchase agreements. The question now, she says, is how Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) can reach the breadth of companies.
Medium-sized companies with high energy consumption rarely have the financial means to finance entire wind farms. They are also confounded by the many different types of long-term purchase agreements. Ideally, companies with a PPA buy green electricity from a single solar or wind farm. In this way, they theoretically benefit from low generation costs.
But because generation fluctuates, the remaining electricity volumes have to be purchased on the wholesale market. “The customer assumes the structuring risk from the supplier,” explains Michael Claußner of the consulting firm Energy Brainpool. If the customer does not want to pay a service provider, they need their own procurement department – another reason why the complex contracts have so far been the domain of energy-intensive large companies.
Many industrial companies also still do not want to commit for long and possibly miss out on falling prices. “Typical terms for PPAs are up to five years, in individual cases even ten,” says Wolf Stötzel of the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), representing green power producers and marketers.
At the heart of the EU reform for this is a risk that is relatively easy to address: the potential default of electricity purchasers. Some energy-intensive companies would not be rated by rating agencies. As a result, banks lack the decision-making basis for financing new green power plants through direct contracts, according to the commission. With the reform, member states should ensure that the financial market provides hedging instruments – supported by government guarantees if needed.
However, Stötzel objects that precisely such financial hedges already exist in Germany on the EEX power exchange. The contracting parties could register their PPA with the exchange, which would assume the default risk for a fee. Nevertheless, the chambers of commerce and industry are convinced that state guarantees for small and medium-sized enterprises can turn things around. “In Norway, there are already guarantees for PPAs, which has boosted the market,” says DIHK energy officer Josephine Möslein.
The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs is already examining ways to improve the financing of PPAs, for example, via KfW and default guarantees, writes the BMWK in its key points for a wind energy onshore strategy. For wind farms in particular, there are currently hardly any PPAs, says Tibor Fischer, head of renewable energies at the German Energy Agency (Dena). In the case of wind power, it is clear that it is not just a matter of giving small and medium-sized companies easier access to green power projects. The supply is simply too small.
There are still too few new, approved areas for wind farms. As a result, public tenders have been signed and government premiums are even more attractive for operators. “The PPA market in Germany currently consists mainly of segments for which there are no longer any subsidies,” says Fischer. He says these include wind farms, for which the 20-year subsidy period has expired, and especially large solar plants over 20 megawatts in capacity. They are already excluded from subsidized tenders in the Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG).
But even if the political expansion targets are achieved in the next few years, PPAs are unlikely to be a panacea for high electricity costs. Levies and surcharges still account for up to one-third of the electricity price for industrial customers and about half for commercial customers, even considering the recent relief provided by the elimination of the EEG surcharge.
“Medium-sized companies would benefit above all from reduced network charges, which would be subsidized by the German government,” says Möslein. In the DIHK’s view, another “big step” for SMEs would be higher de minimis limits for so-called on-site PPAs. In this case, the renewable energy system is located on the customer’s premises and operated by a service provider. In this way, the company saves on all surcharges. However, according to Möslein, it becomes an electricity supplier as soon as it feeds surplus electricity into the grid to supply its neighbors and must meet the full regulatory requirements.
In order to help PPAs achieve a breakthrough, contracts would also have to be highly standardized, says management consultant Claußner: “A medium-sized company can’t spend 24 hours on energy procurement.” Another advantage of standardization: Contracts would become more comparable and prices would possibly fall. The rapporteur in the European Parliament, Nicolás González Casares (S&D), has already announced that the Commission’s legislative proposal will be tightened up with a view to greater transparency.
In the long term, Dena expert Fischer is convinced that the market for small and medium-sized enterprises will develop in two directions: “If there is sufficient supply, SMEs can form pools and thus spread risks and share transaction costs because PPAs will remain more complex than normal supply contracts.” Such pooling is already widespread in the USA and Australia.
The second, currently more widespread option: “Companies can also purchase green power from energy suppliers that conclude PPAs. In this case, the companies only obtain green power indirectly, but from additional plants, and they have less effort because the supplier takes over the structuring,” explains Fischer.
This additionality is, according to the Dena expert, the second crucial reason, alongside the pricing issue, why more companies could opt for PPAs in the future. Own green commitments and sustainability standards are motivating suppliers and corporations to green their production through green energy. “Compared to other measures, it is still fast and uncomplicated,” says Claußner as well. However, the vast majority of the green energy certificates used for this purpose come from decades-old Norwegian hydropower plants.
“PPAs for new plants have a different value,” Fischer is convinced. The wind industry, on the other hand, is still sobered by the experience with special certificates for regional electricity from Germany. “Demand from industry and end consumers has been very restrained so far,” says Stötzel.
But Fischer currently sees growing interest in high-quality green power across Europe: “The Epex Spot power exchange got back into trading guarantees of origin last fall, and you can already see there that certificates from unsubsidized plants and certain countries are fetching higher prices.”
Especially since the cheap alternative from imported certificates is not assured. “Last summer, the Norwegian parliament had already made a push to use guarantees of origin to decarbonize its own industry,” Fischer recounts. “Since more than 90 percent of the guarantees of origin traded in this country come from Norway, many companies in Germany would then have had no more proof of green electricity.”
A noun that first appeared in France around 1830 has resurfaced in recent days: Casserolade. The word refers to a form of protest which consists of a group of people making noise by banging pots, lids, pans and other noisy utensils. Protesters sometimes take a decidedly creative approach to their protest, and the same goes for the accompanying memes.
Last Monday, for example, more than 350 noisy concerts began at 8 p.m., scattered throughout France, as French President Emmanuel Macron gave a televised speech. “Macron doesn’t listen to us, we don’t listen to him either,” the protesters shouted. The response wasn’t long in coming: “It’s not cooking pots that will move France forward,” the French president said last Wednesday during a factory visit in Alsace. The traditional pot manufacturer Cristel, however, saw things differently.
Meanwhile, all of France is laughing at the ban on cooking pots, also known as “portable sound devices” in official parlance, issued yesterday in Ganges (southern France). The reason for the ban was Emmanuel Macron’s visit to a school in Ganges.
The result is a veritable dialogue of deaf ears between the French executive and civil society, with each insisting on its positions. This status quo and its explosive potential did not escape the notice of EU parliamentarians who gathered in Strasbourg this week for a plenary session and exchanged views on the French constitutional framework in the corridors. Almost invariably, one question emerged: How could a law as important as the one on pension reform be passed without parliamentary approval?
“It is crucial to understand that it is not necessarily constitutional jurisdiction that is being questioned, but the conditions under which it is exercised in France,” writes Lauréline Fontaine, a professor of public law, in a guest editorial in the daily Le Monde.
The French constitutional system is heavily focused on the executive branch, and in particular on the president of the republic, write Laurent Pech, professor of European law at Middlesex University in London, and Sébastien Platon, professor of public law at the University of Bordeaux, in a study commissioned by the European Green Party. The current French constitution also allows executive interference in the legislative sphere in some cases, the two researchers further point out.
However, the ongoing protests since January show that the French are less and less willing to accept this vertical power. This is all the more true because the exercise of this power is taking place in a context in which the functioning of the health, education and justice systems has deteriorated. And galloping inflation is only adding fuel to the fire of already fierce political protests.
What about the structural counterforces? It is well known that the countervailing forces offered by a federal administrative and political structure in a country like Germany do not exist in France. This lends particular weight to the action of civil society as a counterforce.
“Is this country really exemplary in terms of the rule of law? It must be noted that civil liberties have been weakened over the last decade,” writes Thomas Perroud, professor of public law at Panthéon-Assas University, in the study mentioned above. Indeed, to respond to the terrorist attacks and later to the health crisis, successive governments introduced prolonged states of emergency that were then normalized in the current legal framework, he explains.
The French constitutional framework thus allows for a solitary exercise of power, which France’s traditional partners felt during his trip to China. Macron’s statements on China and Taiwan caused all the more confusion because they seemed to ignore all the talks and meetings held with them in advance.
A year after his re-election, Macron seems quite isolated, with a badly damaged image, even abroad. And the French head of state will begin the second year of his second term next Monday, burdened by an unpopularity that could make him dangerous. A year after his re-election, he must try to regain control of this strange five-year term that seems to be slipping away from him.
Because there are real questions and concerns about the future of France. The far right has arrived at the center of power in Italy, Sweden and Finland, and is knocking on the door in Belgium and Spain. The fact is that there is more at stake in France than the reform of the pension system. The country is in a social, political and democratic crisis. The fact that Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party is the big winner of Macron’s crisis is hardly disputed in France at the moment.
