Emmanuel Macron is giving a speech this Wednesday, January 19, at the European Parliament in Strasbourg to outline the priorities of the French presidency of the European Union. A question-and-answer session will follow in the hemicycle between the Head of State and the MEPs. Three months before the French presidential election, the exercise should turn into a Franco-French political confrontation. This unprecedented sequence offers a platform for both the head of state and his opponents.
It was Marine Le Pen who opened the festivities yesterday with a press conference in Paris. Five years after her defeat in the presidential election, the far-right candidate has corrected her speech to appeal to as many people as possible: no more leaving the euro, a proposal deemed too repulsive. Still a Eurosceptic, however, she now insists on the need to make the European Union a ” association of free nations », « not aligned ” on the ” dogmas ” from Brussels. Or, according to her, theantithesis of Emmanuel Macron’s vision, a way of reactivating the divide between Europeanists and nationalists which had structured the debate during the last European elections. His competitor on the far right, Éric Zemmour, goes to Calais where there are many migrants. He too wants to close the borders and opposes European sovereignty.
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” Disobey »
Like Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon has also watered down his wine. In 2017, he wanted get out of the European treaties “. In 2022, he prefers “ disobey to certain European rules. An adjustment that, however, is minimized by the rebellious deputy Éric Coquerel: “C It’s a way to be better understood, to be more in line with what we will actually do and what our program says. It was never the Frexit, it was rather the desire to transform the European Union all together or to take our responsibilities to do so from ruptures. There is no going back on this: we will assume to break with what does not allow us to apply our program. »
Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Yannick Jadot in a meeting
Jean-Luc Mélenchon detailed his European program yesterday in Strasbourg where he will hold a meeting this Wednesday evening, just like Yannick Jadot. Because he is a MEP, the ecologist is the only presidential candidate who will be able to directly challenge Emmanuel Macron in Parliament. Like the Head of State, he appears to be pro-European and federalist, while being very critical of free trade treaties or the European Commission’s climate policy. Delicate posture: it is a question of jostling to be heard in the binary debate that Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen want to impose. ” There is a place for a pro-European political ecology “, assures one of the spokespersons for Yannick Jadot, Hubert Julien-Laferrière.
“We don’t believe in European sovereignty»
Like Yannick Jadot, MEP François Xavier Bellamy, support of Valérie Pécresse, will speak in the hemicycle. Overhaul of the Schengen agreement, fight against global warming, implementation of a carbon tax at the borders: some of the proposals of the candidate from the right are similar to those of the president.
However, the right has a different political project, insists François-Xavier Bellamy: “It is a vision of Europe which does not suppress the democracies which compose it, but on the contrary, which strengthens them. We do not believe that to assert the European flag, the French flag should be removed [allusion à la polémique sur le drapeau européen que le chef de l’État avait fait flotter sous l’Arc de triomphe au début de l’année]. We do not believe in European sovereignty, because sovereignty must remain with all the democracies that make up the European space. We believe in a Europe that can strengthen us in globalization provided that it changes.“During the campaign for the primary of the right, Valérie Pécresse put herself in the wheel of her competitors by challenging the primacy of European law in certain cases. Today’s right is no longer as Euro-enthusiastic as it once was.
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“No instrumentalization»
Emmanuel Macron’s opponents will therefore monopolize the microphone. They want to make this exchange in the European Parliament the first debate of the presidential campaign by confronting the head of state, whom they believe is using Europe for his campaign. What MP Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, in charge of European issues at La République en Marche, contests: “We are in a logic of implementation of the European agenda defined by Emmanuel Macron four years ago at the Sorbonne and which has already been implemented to a large extent. We are also in a logic of projection of this agenda, but in no case of instrumentalization of this presidency for the purpose of national politics. If some MEPs want to do Franco-French politics, I think they are in the wrong hemicycle. For their part, the opposition criticizes Emmanuel Macron for not having rejected this French presidency of the EU which collides with the presidential campaign.
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