Le Pen win is Europe’s biggest risk: Credit Suisse

AFP: France’s Marine Le Pen is the biggest risk to European stability, Credit Suisse said in a guide launched yesterday to help investors navigate the upcoming “defining” months facing the continent.
Analysing possible outcomes in the Dutch, French and German elections as well as Britain’s triggering of Article 50 to kick-start Brexit and Greece’s debt negotiations, Credit Suisse strategists offered three scenarios for Europe’s immediate future.

Scenario one, billed as “positive” by Switzerland’s number two bank, sees pro-European, centrist candidates winning in France and Germany when the key continental powers vote in April and September, respectively.
This scenario also envisages a ‘benign outcome’ empowering a stable coalition in next week’s Dutch vote, with anti-establishment and anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party currently slumping in the polls.
The ‘central scenario’ sees the Greek bailout negotiations ‘drag on’ through the summer without definitive resolution and struggles in the Dutch parliament to form a coalition. In this scenario, France’s centrist and upstart candidate Emmanuel Macron wins the country’s presidential election but has trouble carving out a governing mandate.
The ‘negative’ option has Greece struggle for more debt funding and anti-immigration nationalist Le Pen of the National Front elected president of France.