Next spring, Europeans will be required to renew their parliament in Strasbourg. In France, the election will take place on June 9. A list vote, in a single round. But behind each national campaign, behind the scenes, negotiations have begun to recompose the political groups that the European deputies will join, once elected or re-elected. And the battle is particularly tough on the far right.
How do political groups work in Strasbourg?
It’s a bit like the political groups in the national assembly or the senate. But in Strasbourg, the rules are a little more complex. To form a group in the European Parliament, at least 23 MEPs must join forces, which is quite easy. Where it gets complicated is that these MEPs must represent a quarter of the member states, or seven different countries, to be able to create a group. So of course, if certain deputies fail to form a group, they can always sit alone, among what we call “non-registered” but they will weigh much less.
Why is the National Rally in a delicate position?
The RN deputies are today part of the group Identity and Democracy represented in only eight countries of the Union, with allies who could fall below the 5% mark next June and therefore simply disappear from Parliament. In the event of bad results for the far-right forces in our neighbors, Jordan Bardella could actually find himself with fewer than six allies and therefore without a group in Strasbourg. Reason why Marine Le Pen was in Portugal at the end of Novemberto convince Chega !, the local ultra-right party, in very good shape in the polls, to join the RN group next June. This is why the party with the flame does not want to cut ties with its German allies of the AfD, despite the presence of neo-Nazis in its ranks. And this is finally why the elected representatives of the National Rally had a rather bad experience at the beginning of February with the joining of the only elected Reconquête (Nicolas Bay) to another group, the ECR group.
ECR, another far-right group?
ECR is the other, much more powerful, radical right group in Strasbourg. ECR like CEuropean conservatives and reformists. It is in this group that the Italian MEPs from Giorgia Meloni’s party sit and those from the Hungarian Victor Orban will sit, from June. ECR could become the third group in Parliament at the end of the vote. It is therefore not surprising that the National Rally views this rallying with a certain jealousy. Because being part of the ECR group means more visibility, more weight for Eric Zemmour’s MEPs who could enter the hemicycle. When Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella will have to fight to save a group with sometimes very embarrassing allies. The battle has only begun.