Gabriel Attal likes Questions to Government (QAG). The young Prime Minister displays his oratorical ease, and reprimands his opponents with chiseled formulas. This Tuesday, February 27, lightning struck Marine Le Pen, guilty of having criticized Emmanuel Macron’s comments on sending Western troops to Ukraine. “You were defending a military alliance with Russia only two years ago […] There is reason to wonder if Vladimir Putin’s troops are not already in our country”, says the head of government to the former head of the National Rally (RN). The former Minister of Education had carefully prepared its advance the day before. Insoumise France, on the other hand, was spared. And what does it matter if its warning of “cobelligerency” espouses frontist rhetoric.
Macronie has designated its opponent for the European elections: the RN, nothing but the RN. In a vote hit by abstention, the executive is banking on the nationalist danger to mobilize its electoral base. It’s urgent. The Renaissance list is 9 to 12 points ahead of that led by Jordan Bardella in opinion polls. June 9 will see the new face of the European Parliament as much as the end of Emmanuel Macron’s mandate. “If we finish ten points behind, the five-year term is over,” says a Renaissance executive.
Monopoly of European commitment
In 2019, the presidential party was on par with the far right by staging the opposition between “progressives” and “nationalists”. You don’t change a winning recipe. Five years later, the same dialectic is observed: the presidential camp claims a monopoly on European commitment, denounces the RN’s Europhobic project and makes other competitors invisible. “All this may appear tactical but that is the fight,” assures a minister. “That of a strong and sovereign Europe in the face of withdrawal.” This strategy is deployed with a mixture of cunning and sincerity. The argument is well established: this duel is the choice of the French; we deal with reality, but do not create it.
Each leads the other on their territory. The RN nationalizes the vote and is already demanding a dissolution of the National Assembly in the event of Jordan Bardella’s victory. The presidential movement seeks to Europeanize it. Which suits him. The majority is struggling to counter the RN in France. Does the immigration law deprive her of oxygen or does it legitimize her speech? Should we use moral arguments against Marine Le Pen or target her lack of credibility?
These strategic dilemmas fracture Renaissance. Not attachment to Europe, a consensual angle of attack against the far right. “Europe is extinguishing the fractures in our camp, from the sensibilities of the left to that of the right, admits Clément Beaune, MP for Paris and former Minister Delegate for Europe. This brings us together and creates a collective divide vis-à-vis others. .” And then, the RN has a record. The time has come to hold the 2019 winner accountable. Renaissance insists on the indigence of the legislative work of Jordan Bardella in Strasbourg, he who can embody alternation in France. And at the same time promotes its conquests, such as the common debt or the regulation of digital platforms.
The Ukrainian conflict in the background
The international environment feeds this strategy. The war in Ukraine revives the RN’s lawsuits of appeasement towards Vladimir Putin, which the majority intends to fuel. It portrays the extreme right as an agent of foreigners, permeable to external influences. Europe, as a shield against the Russian ogre. “This election will determine our way of life for the next twenty or thirty years, defends the deputy and campaign director of Renaissance Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade. To dismantle Europe as the RN wishes, is to condemn France to isolation and submission to other great powers.”
The speech has a national translation. A debate, followed by a vote, will be organized in the coming weeks in Parliament on the question of support for kyiv. The Assembly should examine in the spring a bill from Renaissance MP Sacha Houlié aimed at “preventing foreign interference” in France. Way of questioning the Frontist DNA, its patriotism. This dose of Manichaeism is assumed internally. “Fear is a lever for mobilization,” admits a strategist. The Macronist electorate, older than the average, is considered sensitive to these gloomy prospects.
Both of us, or nothing. The other lists are reduced to the rank of spectators. Condemned to observe the confrontation of the two blocs. As in 2019, Renaissance forgets them. She only opposes them with gentle contempt, guaranteeing their anonymity. Raphael Glucksmann? At best a “whistleblower”, at worst an “influencer”. “To talk about him and designate him as a target is to make him rise,” warns a Renaissance leader. “François-Xavier Bellamy? Are we just content to castigate his societal conservatism.
“They’re doing the 2019 remake, and it’s pretty well done”
The right observes this strategy of ignorance with resignation. She condemns a “cynical” maneuver… but notes its effectiveness. “They are doing the 2019 remake, and it’s pretty well done,” notes an LR hierarch. “Macron has an interest in bipolarization,” judges Eric Ciotti privately. The boss of the Republicans (LR) thus boycotted the second edition of the Saint-Denis meetings, annoyed by the promotion of Jordan Bardella by the Elysée after the first.
The script is written. The actors can enter the stage. MEP Valérie Hayer was inducted this Thursday evening as head of the Renaissance list during a party executive meeting. “Dynamic”, “hardworking”, “appreciated by activists”… The majority are full of praise for the president of the Renew group, who comes from a family of farmers and worked for the UDI. Her low notoriety echoes that of her predecessor Nathalie Loiseau. However, she will have to find a political space between Gabriel Attal – presented as “the anti-Bardella weapon during his appointment to Matignon – and Emmanuel Macron. A minister smiles: “Who can doubt that the real heads of the list will be these two ?”
Macron, one last “electoral fight”
The President of the Republic went to the front during the last European elections to come to the aid of Nathalie Loiseau. Nothing has changed. Didn’t he target the RN’s “degrowth and stupidity” project at the Agricultural Show? Or criticized the party for “collective impoverishment” during its press conference on January 16? “This is his last electoral fight. I think he will take a central place in the campaign. And more than we can imagine,” anticipates a Renaissance pillar.
Five years have passed. The young head of state became a president at the end of his reign. The hyperactive president, weighed down by heavy unpopularity, never recovered from his defeat in the legislative elections. Its force of attraction decreases as its twilight approaches. “It’s more of a mobilization campaign on a project than of confrontation like during a presidential election,” says the deputy for Ardèche and former minister Olivier Dussopt. “Who better than him to carry the image of the European project in France? ” Macron the European or Macron president: Renaissance has an interest in the first image winning.
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