FT / Brussels Blog

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And breathe. The relief in Brussels after Emmanuel Macron romped to victory in the French election was palpable.

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With the French election on Sunday, the big names came out to urge voters to back their horse.

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Standing in front of 10 Downing Street, the prime minister thundered that Britain had been “misrepresented” by a perfidious foreign press and that “threats against Britain have been issued by European politicians and officials”.

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The opening gap is considerable The EU and UK are a distance apart on core divorce questions. For all the goodwill, there is a clear clash on what citizen rights to guarantee (continued EU rights versus UK rights for non-EU migrants). The UK side disagree with the premise of an exit bill. There is a big gap on what a “phased approach” means. And there are more hidden, but perhaps more fundamental, differences over the ambition of a trade deal, and when it will come.

If the lesson from Emmanuel Macron’s first-round win in the French elections was that an ardently pro-European campaign can be waged successfully in a large member state, it does not seem to have been absorbed by Matteo Renzi.

The energetic former Italian prime minister is bidding for a comeback as leader of the centre-left Democratic party in the wake of the December referendum defeat, which he hopes to use as a springboard for success in the national elections in 2018.

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Viktor Orban has declared 2017 to be “the year of revolution”, predicting the “defining dynamic” will be his confrontation with Brussels. The firebrand Hungarian premier, described by one former US ambassador as a “bare-knuckled street brawler,” came to the European Parliament on Wednesday to do battle with his many detractors.

Problems are piling up for president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who faces a cascade of criticism over the country’s slide into authoritarianism after a narrow referendum win that granted him sweeping new powers.

Europe’s pre-eminent human rights body has put Ankara on watch, saying the referendum was contested on an “uneven playing field” and that measures adopted after a failed military coup last July have “gone far beyond what is necessary and proportionate”. In Strasbourg on Tuesday the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, a body separate to the EU, invoked its “full monitoring procedure” in a fresh bid to persuade Turkey to uphold the highest democratic and human rights standards.

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Manuel Valls, France’s former prime minister, did not mince words about the paltry 6.36 per cent score achieved by his party’s candidate Benoît Hamon. The outcome was “bruising,” he told France Inter radio. “It is the end of a cycle, the end of a story.”

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Berlin and Brussels are breathing a hefty sigh of relief this morning on the news that Emmanuel Macron will face off against far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the second round of the French presidential election, with the centrist former economy minister firmly installed as the frontrunner.

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The machine gun attack on the capital’s famous Champs-Elysées boulevard has left one policeman dead, two others seriously wounded and another person injured. The attacker was also killed, and ISIS has claimed responsibility.

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There could be up to 5m fewer votes this year compared to 2012. History shows that a low turnout increases uncertainty about who will make the final run-off. It lowers the threshold required to qualify, which makes a François Fillon or Jean-Luc Mélenchon-shaped upset more likely.

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For the upcoming negotiations, the size of Mrs May’s majority in the House of Commons is of little concern when it comes to the EU27. Britain’s prospects during the Article 50 talks remain the same.

It was a tricky result. Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan scraped a narrow victory – 51.4 per cent – in a referendum to hand himself more powers, amid concerns over the veracity of the vote.

European leaders faced walking a diplomatic tightrope in their responses over the Easter break. After all, Mr Erdogan is still a crucial Nato ally and a keystone in the bloc’s response to the migration crisis. Turkey is, ostensibly, still a candidate to join the EU (but for how long, we do not know).

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It takes a lot to shock people who work with migrants in north Africa, but revelations of active slave markets in Libya managed it.

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Host Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, proudly tweeted the menu shortly after lunchtime, describing it as an “homage to Spanish cuisine”: artichokes with Spanish ham, sea bass cooked in Galician wine with leeks, followed by caramelised torrijas (a version of French toast) with ice cream. The white wine was a bone-dry Albariño, the red came from Rioja.

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Stockholm joined a miserable list on Friday. The Swedish capital became the latest European city – after London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin and Nice – to be hit by a recent terror attack.

Anyone getting too comfortable with the idea that Paolo Gentiloni and his competently low-key Italian government can make it until 2018 was given quite a jolt this week. Mr Gentiloni, who took over as prime minister last December from Matteo Renzi, is in fact skating on pretty thin ice.

This week brought a vivid reminder of that reality. In Italian politics, there is an ever-present danger that even the smallest accidents can spiral out of control.

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Few expected the professors of Budapest’s Central European University to push back so strongly when their turn came in the form of a bill rushed through parliament on Tuesday, which may force its closure.