Only half of the current RN MEPs are in an eligible position on the list unveiled by the party for the June 9 election.
The National Rally unveiled on Wednesday May 1 the first 35 names on its list for the 2024 European elections. Behind Jordan Bardella, a few names already familiar from Brussels rub shoulders with many others hitherto unpublished for a European election. For these elections where the party is given the arch-favorite, the management has decided to make room for the new one. Result: of the 18 RN MEPs currently sitting in the European Parliament, only 10 appear on this first list, two of whom are not certain of being re-elected.
Former Occitanie regional councilor France Jamet, elected to the European Parliament in 2019, is in 30th position, just ahead of her colleague André Rougé. The remaining eight RN MEPs are not reinvested. News that does not seem to have surprised them too much: “Jordan had said that there would be a third of new hires, a third of promotions and a third of renewals”, assures Jean-Pin Lacapelle, who is one of those who will leave the European Parliament, Public Senate. The former regional councilor of Île-de-France refuses to see it as a punishment, on the contrary: “I am leaving Europe to return to the national level. I am taking up a management position in the apparatus, and helping to prepare the movement on upcoming deadlines.”
An MEP on trial
Other absences on this list seem more motivated. Gilles Lebreton, for example, although more diligent than most of his colleagues in the European Parliament, perhaps pays for his vote on certain compromise texts with other groups.
The former vice-president of the National Front Jean-François Jalkh, for his part, elected MEP in 2014, will not be a candidate for re-election on June 9 either. A decision which will perhaps avoid controversy at the RN: involved in the affair of the Jeanne micro-party, then in that of the European parliamentary assistants, Jean-François Jalkh will also be the subject of a trial in June for “incitement to discrimination”, alongside other party executives, in the affair of the “Little guide for the municipal elected official of the National Front”.