Pascal Lamy, a 77-year-old "globalist" Frenchman who has staked his decades-long career on the idea that more Europe is always better than less, has told FRANCE 24 he's hopeful that the solid gains by hard-right and Eurosceptic parties in the EU elections will spur Europe's 500 million citizens to build more bridges. Speaking to Douglas Herbert, Lamy also discussed the new political landscape in his native France, following President Emmanuel Macron's shock decision to call snap elections. He predicted that the most likely outcome is that France will have "an extreme-right government sometime in July".
Lamy, a former two-term head of the World Trade Organization who was once ranked in the top 50 of the world's leading thinkers by the British magazine Prospect, built his reputation as a champion of pro-European causes during the nine years he served as chief of staff to European Commission President Jacques Delors, from 1985 to 1994.
