Hello, I'm Paige and this is the Euro Intelligence podcast covering current affairs in the EU and Euro area.

I am joined by Wolfgang and Susanna, directors of Eurointelligence in Oxford.

Uh, guys, the big story this week was the French regional elections and some surprising results.

Susanna, you wrote about it this morning, which narratives in French politics were turned on their heads this weekend.

Yes, it was a surprise, and it seems to be like polls do get it wrong ever so often in recent years.

And regional elections this time is no exception.

So what was surprising, the polls predicted predicted Rassemblement National.

This is the Pence party to lead in six of the 13 regions.

It turns out it only actually managed to be head on head

with the Conservative Party, Les Republicans, in one region

and everything else just didn't manifest.

Whoops.

That was kind of a big bummer.

Of course, Le Penna already has her narrative ready.

It's all about lockdown and people are still locked down in lockdown mode.

And also the narrative is that her voters are not so keen on regional issues

as they are on national issues. So she's preparing the narrative that in the end it doesn't matter

and for our national elections we will show up. However, what changed is the role that

Le Bar Piquin play, because what we've

seen is very strong performances of the party nationwide.

They got a third of the vote.

They've got more percentage points in the vote than even last time in 2015.

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