LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE, Belgium — Students at a Belgian university got a lecture in European politics with a difference on Tuesday — as French President Emmanuel Macron took on the role of guest professor.

In a style that has become familiar since he swept to the Elysée palace last year, Macron offered a mixture of high-flying pro-EU rhetoric and stern rebukes to students he deemed to be out of line.

Officially, the event at the Université Catholique de Louvain, 40 kilometers from Brussels, was billed as a dialogue on Europe with Macron and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. But Michel was relegated to the role of teaching assistant as the students directed most of their questions at Macron.

More than 1,000 students filled a giant lecture hall to hear the French president warn that nationalists could triumph in next year's European Parliament election.

"There is a summa divisio which is emerging in Europe between those who believe in European solutions and those who no longer do,” Macron warned, using an uncommon Latin phrase which means “the highest division.”

Helpfully for those left scratching their heads, Macron rammed the point home, declaring that people have forgotten Marine Le Pen’s victory in the European Parliament election in France in 2014. “But I haven’t,” he added.

Macron said Le Pen's National Front (now renamed the National Rally) is leading the European election race in France. That's true, in terms of share of the vote — the party is polling at around 21 percent, a point or two ahead of Macron's centrists. But a POLITICO projection shows the two rivals on course to win the same number of seats. It also shows there is little chance at present of Euroskeptic parties coming out on top Europe-wide.

Nevertheless, Macron told the students, it is a “possible scenario” that “we will wake up the day after the elections and they [the nationalists] will have won.”

Total denial

Having outlined his belief in “a Europe of several speeds” where decisions would no longer need the approval of all EU countries, Macron took a question from a student who brought up the resignation of French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot before asserting that the oil company Total is successfully lobbying French policy.

“When you ask questions about such delicate subjects you need to be very precise,” Macron rebuked the student, provoking winces and intakes of breath in the audience.

“I cannot let it be said that the Total group has in any way influenced strategy in France,” he said. “It’s factually false. And the people who say that are lying. I say that to you — even if you are far back over there — eye to eye.”

Adding some literary edification by citing the poet Arthur Rimbaud, Macron was in full flow. Michel sometimes added a few words of agreement after Macron finished speaking.

But as Macron was describing the importance of prioritizing his battles against Euroskeptics, he was interrupted by a protester who unfurled a banner and shouted at the president about police brutality toward students in France.

Macron asked for the protester not to be removed and was willing to engage in debate with him. But he still snapped at him not to “throw those pieces of paper around because someone will have to pick them up and it won’t be you.”