09:22You know, this will be, as every election, a tough election.
09:28It's still a long way to go.
09:30And I never trust the polls because when I personally started supporting Emmanuel Macron in 2016,
09:37he was far, far behind in the polls.
09:42But I know something for sure.
09:44The French are deeply pro-European.
09:46The French are proud of the role that their country is playing on the European stage.
09:51And Marine Le Pen, for a long time, has been the candidate of Brexit.
09:55She's been the candidate of leaving the euro.
09:57It's still far.
09:59But I'm quite confident that the French, like they've done so many, many times, will refuse extremism.
10:07I am saying this with a lot of humility because I think a campaign, you know, you need to campaign.
10:12You need to go meet the French.
10:14You need to listen to voters.
10:16You need to respond, propose a platform.
10:18We need to unify around a candidate because right now we have a lot of talents in the centre,
10:24but we have a fragmented political offer.
10:26So I think by the end of the year, we will have one candidate that can rally the centre and
10:31the centre-right.
10:31And then we will make a case.
10:33Once again, France has shown repeatedly, the French people have shown repeatedly,
10:37that they've said no to extremism, Euroscepticism and populism.
10:41At the same time, they're getting stronger and they did ever so well at the European Parliament elections.
10:46I think, you know, you have a broader sense of maybe loss of control in globalization.
10:53You have a world that's changing very rapidly where a lot of the certainties that we had in the 90s
10:58and the 2000s are crumbling.
10:59You know, trade is being weaponized as a tool of pressure.
11:03You see the rise of China and the subsidized overcapacities that are coming to our markets,
11:11that are destabilizing our industries.
11:13You see our traditional alliances that are being questioned and a war of Russian aggression on our continent.
11:20And so when you have all this transformation, uncertainties, and a lot of the pillars on which we had built
11:27our systems,
11:28our European Union, our transatlantic alliance that are being questioned,
11:32yes, I think, you know, these periods of transition paved the way very often for radical answers.
11:38I don't think they're the right answer.
11:39I don't think that in a world where you have the pressure from China, from the US, the threat coming
11:44from Russia,
11:45we would be stronger going it alone.
11:46I don't think we'd be stronger looking inwards.
11:49Benjamin Haddad, EU affairs minister for France, thank you very much for joining us on Euronews.
11:55Thank you.
