Watch Nidhi Razdan  The rise of far right in Europe - video Dailymotion

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00:00The significant gains made by far-right parties in the recently concluded European Parliament

00:07elections have made headlines around the world. Even though the centrist bloc actually held

00:13its own in these elections, and that's one way of looking at the outcome, the fact also

00:17is that far-right parties have made enough gains in order to now be taken seriously when

00:23decisions are made, particularly decisions related to immigration, related to stricter

00:29border controls, even the environment on which they have a very different position from the

00:33centrist and more left-leaning parties.

00:37Apart from the general implications of this as far as policymaking for the EU is concerned,

00:42what will also be immediately put to test is to see just how popular these parties are

00:46on the ground in countries like, for example, France. And that is why President Macron of

00:51France has called a very sudden national election, which will take place at the end of this month

00:56and in early July. Now, many experts think that what he did was absolutely crazy. France

01:03wasn't prepared for this. The economy has been fighting its own challenges. Paris is

01:09hosting the Summer Olympics in just a few weeks from now. And the announcement of these

01:13elections sent the stock markets tanking and has really worried, of course, many political

01:19figures in France because they had to suddenly look for their candidates and get their act

01:24together. But actually, when you look beneath the surface, Macron, who's known to be a risk

01:29taker, might actually be taking the right kind of risk because experts close to him

01:34say that he's betting on the fact that it's actually time to test just how popular the

01:41far right is on the ground in France when it comes to actually governing France. And

01:45it's much more difficult, he believes, for them to prove their numbers as far as the

01:50French system is concerned. But also, he's betting on the fact that if they do make significant

01:55gains, that it would be better to do that when he is still the president and not when

01:59Marine Le Pen, who has her eyes set on the presidency in 2027, should she become president

02:05and then her party also come into power in the government there. That, he believes, would

02:12be a double disaster. Will this gamble work? We'll have to wait and see. But it perhaps

02:17would be the right risk to take to actually test the popularity in terms of governance

02:23of these far right parties on the ground.