The National Rally (RN) is at the gates of power. It is not up to me to analyze the causes. But we can easily assess the consequences of what his accession to government would cause, whether in terms of health policy, education, scientific research or even taking into account global warming. They would be particularly heavy, even disastrous.
Let us remember the positions taken by the leaders of this party during the Covid crisis, regarding the necessary containment measures or the vaccination policy. There was no room for reason in their speeches, replaced by a populist attitude based on the exploitation of fears. What would have been the results of the pandemic if the RN had then governed France? The disastrous examples in Brazil of the government of Jair Bolsonaro or of Vladimir Putin in Russia, who made similar remarks and transformed them into actions are enlightening.
The National Gathering program plans to restrict the presence of non-European people on our soil by encouraging their departure and restricting their arrival. This measure would cause the departure for more favorable places of a number of caregivers whose presence is nevertheless essential to ensure the functioning of our hospitals and in particular emergency rooms.
Weaken our search
Restricting access to higher education for foreign students would divert from our country students eager for knowledge and future cooperation with our country, an inestimable wealth of which we would thus deprive ourselves. This measure would also have the consequence of weakening the attraction and therefore the performance of our scientific research, which we know to what extent it depends for its success on the cultural diversity of the teams who carry it out, far from a sterilizing withdrawal into oneself. wanted by the RN.
The desire of Marine Le Pen’s party to abolish state medical aid (AME) and the threats to complementary solidarity health care (formerly universal health coverage) would lead to blocking access to care for the immigrant population and the most vulnerable. deprived. This vision is as ethically unacceptable as it is dangerous. Indeed, it would increase the risk of transmission of infectious diseases such as pulmonary infections (flu, covid, etc.) or tuberculosis within the entire population from people left without care. Let’s imagine for a moment what would happen to a new pandemic during which foreigners without resources would be abandoned!
The Netherlands, experimental model
These risks and many others are not just theoretical, simple elements of language and promises that would be forgotten once in a position to govern. Far-right parties are implementing their political programs! Thus, in the Netherlands, a coalition made up of a dominant far-right party and right-wing parties has just come to power. This is therefore an experimental situation which allows us to observe the decisions taken by a government whose political contours strongly resemble what could happen in France.
As soon as it was formed, this new executive announced massive cuts in public funding for scientific research, restrictions on the reception of non-EU foreign students (as well as the replacement of the use of English with Dutch). in classes at the University, so that it is clear that they are not welcome). Finally, several programs intended to combat the consequences of global warming are planned to be called into question. Here we find all the obsessions of far-right populist movements, of course shared by the RN.
Is this what French citizens really want? I can’t believe it. Let us ensure that these intentions, as dangerous as they are shocking – and contrary to a rational approach to questions of health, research and the place of science in a modern society – are better known to our fellow citizens, that their ineptitude is combatted, in order to let our country pull itself together.
.