In the National Assembly, it is not uncommon for Marine Le Pen’s teams to struggle to hide a smile as they give observers the wrong idea. The RN group likes to go where one can least expect, overstating respect for institutions and concern for the interests of the country. Or they demonstrate that it has become an open party at the social level, as in November 2022, when the head of the RN announced, to everyone’s surprise, that she would introduce an amendment to constitutionalize abortion. The Palais Bourbon, like one Demonization showcase.
However, the situation is completely different in the European Parliament. Within this institution, whose often technical debates often remain under the radar of the media, the 18 RN deputies show themselves loyal to a populist line and contradict the “constructive” strategy pursued in Paris.
The rejection of a “punitive ecology”
To verify this, we need to look at the issues individually, starting with the climate crisis. While Jordan Bardella now claims to put ecology at the top of his pile, the RN delegation in Strasbourg abstains or votes against most environmental texts under the pretext of rejecting “punitive ecology”.
It’s a shame that at the last European elections in 2019, Marine Le Pen defended what she called “fair exchange”, that is, the consideration of social and environmental requirements in commercial exchange: in June 2022, the RN abstained from voting for a CO2 tax at Europe’s borders.
“Of course, I support a CO2 adjustment mechanism at our borders, which is a way to protect European companies from unfair competition from third countries. However, the proposed mechanism is unrealistic and puts our companies at significant risk of loss of competition, which is unacceptable in the current economic context,” explains RN MEP Gilles Lebreton.
A resolution on rising energy prices
In Paris, the RN calls for a tax on super profits linked to inflation? It is good that on October 5, 2022, a resolution on the rise in energy prices in Europe calls on the Commission to introduce a “tax on extraordinary profits of energy companies” to “help vulnerable households and SMEs, including through price caps”. . However, unlike their other colleagues in the “Identity and Democracy” (ID) group, the RN MPs are the only ones who vote against it.
Evidence that the RN is aware of these weaknesses is the repeated mention of the “aspects” where the party could “run into difficulties” in an internal strategic document we consulted, which takes stock of the mandate .
“On our opposition to the financing of the economic stimulus plan: we continue to denounce the federalist leap and the financing of the plan with new own resources, while we voted for the principle of massive aid and called for the possibility of further aid.” State (…), while For example, the document denounces France’s unbearable debt, which seems to be a contradiction.
He also recognizes certain deficits: “On competition policy and in particular on concentration control (…): We have not yet formalized our doctrine.” “The question is whether we want to protect comprehensive competition as before at the expense of the emergence of European champions (e.g . Ban on the Siemens-Alstom merger in 2019) or vice versa,” considers the RN.
“Our positioning will be delicate”
Another example: While Marine Le Pen often mentions the situation of women in Paris, in February 2023 the RN delegation abstained from ratifying the Istanbul Convention, a legally binding international instrument to prevent and combat violence against women. towards women. “The EU does not have the legitimacy to ratify this type of agreement, the legitimacy lies with the states,” Jordan Bardella had defended in the past.
On March 30, the RN also abstained from voting on the directive on equal pay for men and women for equal work. In its report, the RN mentions its opposition to the next directive “to combat violence against women and domestic violence”. “Once again our positioning will be delicate because this text does not respect the capabilities of the Member States,” he fears.
There are very few votes for Ukraine
Perhaps even more spectacular are the positions on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. In France, the RN wants to distance itself from accusations of complacency towards Moscow. Hence, Jordan Bardella is eager to pay off his party’s bank debts to a Russian establishment, or calls for a parliamentary investigation into foreign interference in the National Assembly that was aimed at clearing the party’s name.
Despite their strong representativeness, elected RN officials do not have much influence on the decisions made in the Strasbourg parliament. Europa Press/ABACA via Portal
In Brussels the tone is different. Although the RN has indeed condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it rarely votes on the numerous pro-Ukrainian resolutions of the European Parliament in February 2022. The most recent example was on October 17, when aid worth 50 billion euros was approved for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
“If we are in favor of providing financial assistance to Ukraine, I abstained from this proposal, which was criticized by the European Court of Auditors for the opacity of its spending, reimbursement and monitoring mechanisms and which openly promotes Ukraine’s accession to the EU,” reasoned he is the head of the RN delegation Jean-Paul Garraud.
Instructions from Marine Le Pen
“Diplomacy and the search for compromises with other states must always take precedence over military solutions when solving geopolitical problems.” In this logic, we are attacked for inaction in creating a defense Europe and are consequently accused of playing into the hands of Russia and China “ says the RN assessment document.
Eyes are particularly on RN MEP Thierry Mariani, who is still co-president of the Franco-Russian Dialogue, an openly pro-Kremlin lobby. He and two other RN MPs are also on a European Parliament “black list” because they accepted trips offered by Moscow and are no longer eligible to take part in official delegations.
“Sometimes we vote because of our convictions, but sometimes we simply vote because we think that the question being asked should not fall within the competence of the EU,” defends a senior RN. Furthermore, the RN parliamentarians in Brussels still suffer from the existence of a Cordon Santé that prevents them from being as influential as their position as the largest contingent of French MEPs (on par with Renaissance) would allow them.
The RN will certainly not be able to get its legislative proposals pushed through by the other parliamentary groups in the National Assembly. But Marine Le Pen gave a clear instruction: to work and behave. Instructions that Thalys apparently overlooked.
“They’re just in attitude.”
“The RN does not exist in the European Parliament. It’s ectoplasm,” attacks Renaissance MEP Pascal Canfin head-on. “They are not trying to change anything at all, it is just their attitude,” continues the one who notes that “most of their amendments are motions to reject”.
Despite the behavioral instructions from Marine Le Pen (here in 2019 with members of the Identity and Democracy group) to her MEPs, they do not always behave in an exemplary manner. AFP/ARIS OIKONOMOU
The thousands of votes in the RN plenary session would rather give the impression that the party is asserting itself against its French colleagues. However, this data has the effect of deception, as financial sanctions are imposed in its absence. Presence is not an option here. But everything is at stake elsewhere: in committee work, in the negotiation of texts and in the preparation of reports.
“I have never seen an RN MP in a negotiation phase,” says rebel MEP Manon Aubry. “They’re not here, it’s amazing. “You haven’t moved a single comma on an amendment for five years,” slips LR boss François-Xavier Bellamy. For his part, Pascal Canfin swears that, unlike other right-wing extremist parties such as the AfD (Germany) or the Lega (Italy), he has never seen an RN negotiator on any of the forty texts of the European “Green Deal”. “They work,” a French elected official admits.
No real victory for them
The affair surrounding the jobs of supposedly fictitious parliamentary assistants (which also affects the MoDem and LFI), which the RN is pursuing, brings grist to the mill of those who accuse the frontists of not being very involved in Brussels. At the end of September, the Paris public prosecutor’s office requested proceedings against 27 people linked to the Flame party in this case between 2012 and 2017. Marine Le Pen is one of them, but not Jordan Bardella.
“Our opponents have excluded us from all positions of responsibility, including trusting reports. You apply the plumbing lock! » defends Jean-Paul Garraud. “Every representative works in their committee. With the help of our partners, we sometimes manage to block things. We are working to resist,” the elected official vows.
No real victory for them in the mandate… apart from the adoption of a report on artificial intelligence written by MEP Gilles Lebreton. What should not be renewed on the next European list.
Jordan Bardella doesn’t shine with his statistics in Brussels
Jordan Bardella, who topped the list in both 2019 and 2024, is a sharp speaker but doesn’t shine with his stats in Brussels. Furthermore, he is only a member of one committee in the European Parliament: the Petitions Committee (renamed the “Hidden Committee” due to its lack of activity).
“I don’t have much in common politically with François-Xavier Bellamy (LR),” comments Manon Aubry. But he works, he is known in Brussels, unlike Jordan Bardella. » “Jordan has a lot of activities elsewhere (interim president, then president of the RN since September 2021), we are trying to defend him on the RN side.” Out of a sense of responsibility, he chose the least busy commission. » The meaning of sacrifice.