Marine Le Pen’s far-right party “National rally” is one of the first to launch its European campaign . Its members already got a few facts completely wrong.
1-Yellow vest do not support anyone
The far-right party pretends to be close to the “yellow vests”. But if you ask the yellow vests, they do not believe in political representation and keep their distances from existing political forces. By the way, National Rally could have found someone from the yellow vest movement if they feel so close.
2-European election is not about France
The first person on the list, Jordan Bardella, is 23. He comes from Paris suburbs, and in his first interview in Le Parisien he said he wanted the European vote to be “a referendum against Macron”, just like Mélenchon said a few months ago.
Both of them miss the point of the vote, so let’s remind them what it is about: keeping 27 countries together in Europe.
3-Crimea is not part or Russia
If Bardella is here because RN wants a renewal of politicians, they also added in their list a catch from another party: Thierry Mariani. A former MP for the centre-right party Les Républicains, and former transport minister, he supported François Fillon in 2017 and was not re-elected. So he has currently no job except being member of the “ethical committee” (!) of the propaganda channel Russia Today in France. He needs to be reminded that the European election is not a Russian election, and that’s why he doesn’t need to repeat all the time that Crimea is part of Russia. It’s not. It belongs to Ukraine according to international law.
4-You can’t arrive to a place when you are already there
National rally chose a stunning tagline for they campaign: “On arrive” or “we are coming”. It’s not as if they were not already there.
The Front national won the European elections in France back in 2014 with 24 seats out of 74 (the ruling UMP of Nicolas Sarkozy got 20), and 25 % of the voices. Their group has melted ever since, with 5 people having left or having been ousted.
It’s true that they didn’t achieved much, except creating a political group, Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom, to get some more funding (around 1 million a year). Most Front National MEPs worked as little as they could. They came to compulsory EP sessions to get their allowances, but most of them did not follow the real parliamentary work, like activity in parliamentary committees. Maybe that’s why they don’t remember they actually already are part of the European Parliament?
5-The only plan is milk the EU cow
But the main achievement of their mandate is being under investigation by the French justice.
Nicolas Bay, Marine Le Pen, Wallerand de Saint Just or Louis Aliot are all under the scrutiny of judges for having used European money to fund national activities. They might have siphoned a few millions according to the EP services.
So the sentence “we are coming” rather means “we are coming back to take the money”. We can only hope that voters open their eyes this time .
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Excellent commentary! Indeed, let’s hope French voters will go to the ballot box with a clear view of what is at stake, their future as a Europeans, rather than the nonsense, and deliberately nerve wracking propaganda from le Rassemblement national.