Foreign observers, looking across from the other side of a national border at the implosion of France’s centre-right party, the UMP, might well turn away in confusion. The way that the party has torn itself apart after an inconclusive leadership contest is incomprehensible to many French citizens, so other Europeans could be forgiven for not understanding the niceties of this clan warfare.

Another possible response is a kind of voyeurism. The UMP appears set on an act of self-destruction to rival that of Emma Bovary. It is a fascinating, bewitching to watch, but the spectators may not be so untouched as they suppose.

Even as the UMP was breaking apart, MEPs were debating their approach to the European Parliament elections of 2014. The Parliament voted in favour of a resolution that calls for those elections to be held one month earlier (in May rather than June) and for the cross-border parties to put up a candidate for the presidency of the European Commission.

A consensus appears to have taken hold that the European Parliament elections must be made more meaningful if they are to awaken the interest of voters, and to avoid another record low level of participation, which was the dismal claim to fame of the 2009 elections.

Several of the political families appear to be taking more seriously the challenge of forging cross-border campaigns and transnational manifestos (the Greens have been pioneers in this respect). Unless the parties make that attempt, they are unlikely to persuade voters to treat those European elections as anything other than a mid-term protest vote about regional or national politics.

This is a development to be welcomed. Closing the gap between voters and the European institutions (the latter often behave as if they were well insulated from the former) would be to the benefit of both.

However, the fate of the UMP shows how fragile such developments are. One of the biggest political forces in the second-biggest member state of the EU is now engaged in civil war. That is bound to have an effect on the development of Europe-wide politics. True, the UMP has long been a difficult fit with the European People’s Party. The division of church and state in France led to a different tradition from the Christian Democracy of Germany, Spain or Italy.

In the European Parliament, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, whose centre-right MEPs had been members of the Liberal group, split his group in 1991 when he tried to lead them off into the centre-right EPP. The fit between French political parties and European political parties is much neater on the left than on the right or centre.

Whatever the causes, the UMP’s paralysis casts a shadow over the development of true Europe-wide politics. If the UMP is out of action, then the centre-right European People’s Party is at risk of becoming even more dominated than it already is by the German Christian Democrats. The British Conservatives have already taken themselves off into the political wilderness. The Spanish centre-right presides over a crippled economy. The Italian centre-right is struggling to recover from the malign influence of Silvio Berlusconi. Only the Polish centre-right represents a significant counterweight to Germany.

That is why the fate of the UMP matters to more than just France.