Anguish grips even Manfred Weber. A few months ago, the president of the EPP – a right-wing group in the European Parliament – spoke with a Les Républicains MP. And let his worry shine through. “What do we do if LR disappears from Brussels?” The German wonders aloud about the consequences of such an electoral shock, a prelude to a political recomposition. He is not the only one.
“Survival ballot”, “existential vote”… LR executives compete with solemn formulas to summarize what is at stake in the European elections. The right, credited with 7% to 8% of voting intentions, will have to exceed the 5% mark to retain its delegation of elected officials. So much for the arithmetic. But the heir of the RPR must preserve much more than a handful of seats: his rank. His big party appearance. In politics, death takes the form of downgrading.
Nothing works. Nor the successive defeats in the legislative elections. Nor the rout of Valérie Pécresse in the presidential election. The Republicans still hope to reconnect with their glorious past and regain power in 2027. This is in any case the official speech. Their president, Éric Ciotti, keeps alive the flame of a “government party” ready to embody the change to Emmanuel Macron. The elected official formed a counter-government, writes regular letters to the head of state and pushes the Elysian candidacy of Laurent Wauquiez.
Isn’t the country on the right? Don’t the French want to turn the page on Macronism? We pile up arguments – sometimes correct – to reassure ourselves. The disgruntled spirits rather detect an illusion. That of a party incapable of accepting its demotion. Like the mother of the film Good bye Lenin!convinced of living in the GDR despite the fall of the wall, LR would refuse to take note of a political tripartite in which he occupies a minor place.
Theory…and practice
François-Xavier Bellamy must cross the hurdle on June 9 to maintain this dream of grandeur. The Republican head of the list has no shortage of assets. The MEP enjoys a respected record in Brussels and outlines a rather consensual “Eurorealist” line. The man learned from his failure in 2019 and now prefers the media to meetings where we address an audience of convinced people. The Macronian star has finally faded since 2019. The hunter could become prey. “On paper, we have a boulevard,” notes a close friend of Éric Ciotti. “We are right-wing, firm on the regal, pro-business without being brutal.”
The problem with theory is that it precedes practice. LR fails to loosen the Renaissance-RN vice. The two blocs target each other and make their competitors invisible, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. The right is subject to this strategy of ignorance, already tested in 2019. “They are doing the remake, and it is rather well done. Poor Bellamy is stuck between the two,” notes an LR hierarch. Locked, too, in a vicious circle. The right lacks oxygen, but its electoral stunting deprives it of significant speaking time in the audiovisual media. And what does the recruitment of the farmer Céline Imart or General Christophe Gomart matter, nice political moves with planned obsolescence.
Anchor the macronie to the left
But you have to force destiny. François-Xavier Bellamy is trying to reconstruct a left-right divide around his candidacy. It portrays the macronie as a left-wing force to attract into its fold right-wing voters disappointed by Emmanuel Macron or tempted by Jordan Bardella. When the head of the Renaissance list praises his joint votes with Raphaël Glucksmann, the LR MEP smiles. He will debate with the founder of Place publique on April 14 on BFMTV. “We must show our opposition to Macronism and remove all suspicion,” confides François-Xavier Bellamy privately. The RN, for its part, is referred to its lack of results in Brussels. Marion Maréchal, leader of Reconquest, to his inexperience. The ideological confrontation with the extreme right is not a priority.
LR put this strategy to music this Saturday March 23, during a campaign launch meeting in Aubervilliers. In front of nearly 3,000 activists, François-Xavier Bellamy portrays the Macronist MEPs as a “backup force” for the socialists and targets their votes for “agricultural decline” or their hostility to nuclear power. “We are the only ones on the right in this campaign,” echoed Eric Ciotti. In Brussels as in Paris, LR arrogates to itself the monopoly of the right. LR and right: the two terms have no longer been confused since 2017. This political movement is scattered to the four winds, the ex-UMP is too weak to embody it on its own. And risks losing its reason for being. “A useless political family is condemned to die,” Brice Hortefeux likes to repeat.
Eric Ciotti’s training is ready for many ruptures to recover this singularity. LR MEPs do not support Ursula von der Leyen, a member of the EPP like them, for the presidency of the Commission. His fault? Its proximity to the presidential camp – as evidenced by its presence at the Renaissance back-to-school campus in October 2023, in Bordeaux – and its attitude on agricultural and environmental issues. The maneuver is political, LR will not leave the EPP. But the party just wants to protect itself from any lawsuit in collusion with the macronie, an unexpected gift to the far right.
“If we do less than 5%, curtain”
Break with Macronism, to what extent? Going against their liberal DNA, LR senators rejected Thursday March 21 the ratification of Ceta, the free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada. In the midst of an agricultural crisis, the boss of LR senators, Bruno Retailleau, invokes a defense of French breeders in the face of “unfair competition”. The executive only sees it as a political move at the dawn of the European elections. Break with Macronism, even if it means overturning the table? Éric Ciotti threatens the executive with a motion of censure on the occasion of the government’s next budgetary text. A regular visitor to Emmanuel Macron expressed concern to the Head of State about LR’s very modest voting intentions in the European elections. From a weak right, ready to take all the risks. “If I am an LR MP with polls at 7%, I will derail the train and censure the government before the vote,” he confided to the president.
The relative majority offered LR a role of arbiter in the National Assembly. The party took advantage of this status – a gift from heaven and a poisoned gift – to influence the legislative agenda. Sunday June 9 will sound like a return to reality. LR will know its weight in public opinion. The vultures are lurking, already ready to carve up the corpse in the event of a collapse. We find them in macronie, but also within the Republicans, among the adversaries of Eric Ciotti. A manager sums up: “8.5, we limit the damage; 10 is a good score; 12, very good. And if we do less than 5, curtains.” The start, the reprieve, or the fall.
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