Marion Maréchal announced the entry of the Reconquest MEP into Giorgia Melonia’s ECR group in the European Parliament. An official alliance must still be sealed with the group which could soon overtake that of the presidential camp.
This is a new step taken for the Reconquest party. Marion Maréchal, vice-president of the Zemmourist party, hastened to announce the entry of her only MEP into the group of European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) led by Giorgia Meloni, the president of the Italian Council, this Wednesday February 7 in the columns of Point. This rallying is a source of satisfaction for the French far-right party since the ECR group is “already very influential within European bodies and [a] vocation to become the pivotal and central group of the right in the Parliament of Strasbourg” at the end of the European elections in June according to Marion Maréchal.
Reconquest in a group more powerful than the presidential party?
The group of European deputies led by Giorgia Meloni has been on the rise for several years and it could become the third most powerful group in the European Parliament behind the right and the socialists, but ahead of the centrist Renew Europe group in which the elected representatives of the Emmanuel Macron’s camp. An outcome in which the vice-president of Eric Zemmour’s party and MEP Nicolas Bay firmly believe. “My objective is obviously to beat Emmanuel Macron and his group in the European Parliament. And, in fact, today, only ECR is able to do that: shift the center of gravity and therefore weigh significantly in order to be able to change the political line of the European Parliament” declared Marine Le Pen’s niece from Strasbourg.
Marion Maréchal’s joining the ECR group is also a snub to Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally party sits in the second populist and eurosceptic group in the European Parliament, Identity and Democracy (ID). However, between the two groups of the hard, even extreme, right, it is the ECR which leads to Strasbourg and Brussels. It should also be strengthened with the arrival of the elected representatives of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, expected after the European elections.
The rallying of the Reconquest party not yet formalized
But there is one detail that Marion Maréchal was careful not to say. If Giorgia Meloni’s group agreed to include the only Reconquest MEP in its ranks, it did not sign the official membership of the Reconquest party to the ECR reports Politico who inquired with the group. This decision must be taken after the European elections. Note that Nicolas Bay was able to join the ECR after having given guarantees on his position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The decision of the ECR to accept the presence of a first elected representative from Reconquest is, however, a good sign. Especially since it is surprising since Eric Zemmour’s party is considered more extreme than that of Marine Le Pen. But the vice-president of the ECR Parliament, Roberts Zīle, estimated with Politico that having “a French party in the group from the point of view of power is an important question.”