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It’s a sunny May evening in Paris, but the calm is broken by a series of violent protests in the city’s suburbs. They quickly turn into some of the ugliest scenes in Western Europe for decades.

A couple of miles away stands the object of their angst. Waving to a mass of delirious supporters, a broad smile across her face, stands the newly-elected French president – Marine Le Pen.

Impossible? So was Donald Trump.

(Image: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Most pundits have written off the Front National supremo’s chances in the presidential election. The system used in France probably works against her – she may well win most votes in the first round, when there can be a dozen or more candidates.

But she would then have to triumph in a head-to-head run-off between the top two candidates. When her father, Jean-Marie, made it to the final two in 2002, he was trounced by mainstream conservative Jacques Chirac.

The same could happen again, particularly if conservative Francois Fillon makes the run-off, with left-wingers opting for the perceived lesser of two evils.

But it is by no means a foregone conclusion.

A poll this week put Le Pen a couple of percentage points ahead of Fillon, with both leading radical centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron while the ruling socialists – who are yet to pick their candidate to try to take over from Francois Hollande – trail badly.

(Image: AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

Le Pen has not led a second-round poll against any of her likely opponents, trailing Fillon 64-36% in the latest. But, unsurprisingly, she is bullish about her chances. And, having also moved away from some of the more toxic extremism of her father, she may have good reason.

Fillon, whose wife Penelope hails from Llanover, near Abergavenny, is regarded as an Anglophile but also a Thatcherite. Could there be a chance for Le Pen to exploit that among the many left-wing voters in France who may be appalled by some of Le Pen’s rhetoric – but equally by Fillon’s economic outlook?

And if Le Pen were to take further steps away from some of the more controversial views typically associated with her, might her anti-establishment pronouncements chime with an increasing number of compatriots?

“I want to be the champion of reindustrialisation and innovation,” she said last week. “My presidency will be that of economic justice.”

French voters weary of years of economic under-performance and wary of Fillon’s plans to fix it may well instead gravitate towards the leader of the Front National.

Le Pen may be the highest-profile right-wing candidate hoping to make electoral strides in Europe this year. But she is far from alone.

The French election falls a matter of weeks after an expected general election in the Netherlands for which polls have consistently shown the Party for Freedom, led by Geert Wilders, ahead.

Boasting a swept-back bouffant and sporting an orange glow of which even Trump would be envious, Wilders takes a strongly anti-immigration line which many say goes beyond the pale.

His views led to him being banned from the UK in 2009 and he was detained by border guards after landing at Heathrow. Although the decision was later overruled, it led to him describing then-PM Gordon Brown as “the biggest coward in Europe”.

And he survives despite – indeed, appears to thrive because of – every controversy. Wilders was last month convicted by a Dutch court of discrimination for a pledge to reduced the number of people from Morocco living in the Netherlands.

Wilders may struggle to form a government, given the system of proportional representation in place in the Netherlands.

But if his party were to win most votes, as it appears on course to do, it would be an undoubted body blow to the perceived establishment across the continent.

Indeed, in almost every national election scheduled to take place in Europe in 2017, a rising populist right-wing force is aiming to make significant strides, buoyed by Brexit and riding the Republicans’ success in the States.

(Image: AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

Among them is Germany. The biggest economy in the EU and the nation which drives the European project now, unthinkably to many, has a party which wants to dismantle it.

Angela Merkel – an affectionate ‘mutti’, or a mother figure, to her supporters, but whose detractors accuse her of liberalism on immigration of being rashly irresponsible in the face of the migrant crisis – is seeking re-election.

Her reputation has been hit by a series of incidents, most recently the Berlin Christmas market truck atrocity, which many (not least four-time Ukip leader Nigel Farage) decry as the obvious result of her open-borders policy.

Her centre-right Christian Democrats still lead, but they are being challenged – not only by their traditional opponents, the social democratic SPD, but by the rising force of the anti-mass immigration AfD, or Alternative for Germany.

Under Merkel, the CDU, together with its sister CSU party in Bavaria, has led in every single national opinion poll since the 2013 election, and most by double digits – some achievement for a three-term chancellor.

But the other obvious trend in Germany is the steady growth over the last 18 months of the AfD, which was only founded a matter of months before the last federal election in 2013.

Tottering along at about 3% in the summer of 2015 – a figure shy of the 5% needed for a party to get any members of the Bundestag – it has latched on to the migrant crisis and played on many Germans’ fears over what Merkel’s open-door policy could mean.

Today they stand in the mid-teens, just a small swing away from overtaking the SPD as Germany’s second-largest party. And their message is increasingly finding resonance.

(Image: AP)

“When does the German state fight back?” demanded Marcus Pretzell, one of the party’s MEPs, shortly after the Berlin Christmas market horror. Party leader Frauke Petry was more measured, but stated that the “milieu in which such acts can flourish has been negligently and systematically imported over the past year and a half”.

The attack on Merkel was thinly-veiled and may find increased resonance if Germans continue to view the chancellor’s policies as naive – and if they are able to use any momentum from strong showings by Le Pen and Wilders.

In reality, there is only a remote chance the AfD will be in a position to enter government following the election. The most likely outcome will probably be something similar to last time. But in that scenario, a ‘grand coalition’ between the Europhile CDU and SPD could well mean the AfD becomes the main opposition party.

It all spells more trouble for the EU, still reeling from the Brexit vote but determined to remain strong in negotiations with Britain to disincentivise others from following us out.

And it might not only be European leaders wincing if, some time in the summer, presidents Trump and Le Pen shake hands outside the White House or Elysee Palace, watched on by a bolstered Party for Freedom and AfD.

2017 could yet be as globally politically turbulent as the high water mark that was 2016.