They had dreamed of it so much. After choosing Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen for the second time in the presidential election, the voters endowed the National Rally, as a consolation, with the largest opposition group to the National Assembly in the legislative elections. A year later, the nationalist movement was able to use its 88 deputies as an unprecedented vector of institutionalization.
Their participation in the various debates, commissions and study groups made it less easy to prosecute them for anti-parliamentarianism which had hitherto been brought against them. In the constituency, the elected officials seized the slightest ceremony or tribute to wear the tricolor scarf and thus work on their notabilisation.
Not enough, however, to lift the sanitary cordon to which all their proposals are subject within the hemicycle. Nor to succeed in granting Marine Le Pen, who hoped to discover, among them, a number of potential “ministers”. The deputy of the North and RN vice-president of the National Assembly, Sébastien Chenu, returns, for Le Point, to the results of this first year of the legislature: the successes, the failures, and the ambitions of the RN group for the coming years .
Le Point: The National Rally (RN) group in the National Assembly is about to blow out its first candle on June 19. What did he really bring to your movement?
Sébastien Chenu: We can say, at the end of this year, that we have fulfilled our objectives. We have been an uncompromising opposition force to Emmanuel Macron. We voted on no confidence motions, including those tabled by others. We have used all the tools at our disposal to oppose the pension reform. We have never played the empty chair game and have overcome political divisions by voting for all the proposals that went in the right direction.
We have also been a source of proposals by putting on the table the commitments we made during the legislative elections: proportional representation, a 10% salary increase, in particular. We sought to bring into the debate a number of subjects that did not exist or that the government did not want to address, such as the deconjugalization of the allowance for disabled adults which was voted… We also resumed, in our parliamentary niche, a law that the government had decided not to put on the agenda on domestic violence. With the creation of aid for female victims, led by Emmanuel Taché de La Pagerie and voted unanimously.
Many speak of a so-called sanitary cordon towards us. The reality is that he no longer exists in the hemicycle. Without the elected National Rally, no text can be adopted. We have seen this, for example, with the reintegration of unvaccinated caregivers. Likewise, no government text can be rejected without us. The same people who talk about the cordon sanitaire are those who come morning, noon and evening to ask us about our voting positions or if we will be mobilized for or against such and such a text.
It is the result of a political posture which is only a facade. Officially, the speech of the other opposition forces is that they do not want to work with us. This sectarianism means that we don’t pass our texts, it’s true. But when it comes to getting their texts across through us, other MPs don’t shout as loudly and are happy to find our voices. Like again Les Républicains, last week, on their text relating to State Medical Aid.
In the daily life of the Assembly, we co-chair, with the other political forces, parliamentary committees, study groups, friendship groups. We audition personalities who go far beyond our political family. The study group on the territories in recomposition, which I chair, will, for example, audition Jean-Louis Borloo. The elect do not shun us. There is the talk and then there is the practice. We have room for improvement. Things are far from set.
Our respectful, dignified behavior, the fact that we were the hardest workers, according to the statistics of the Assembly, allowed to kill many arguments commonly used against us. That of our alleged lack of credibility in particular. We can be opposed, of course, but no one can say that our legislative proposals, our amendments, do not hold water.
Isn’t there a risk, in the long run, that your constituents will hold you to account for this lack of parliamentary efficiency in terms of their daily lives?
We are not in the majority but we aim to be. Our voters are very political. They are fully aware of it. Eighty-eight deputies is too few to impose our views, change things or the course of parliamentary life. Our number is enough on the other hand to send messages, to notch things for the future. We are a force of influence and opposition that has a real purpose: to pass the texts of some and block those of others.
This is why we say to the French: give us even more weight and deputies. I remind you that the motion of censure of March 20 was only nine votes short of passing. Nine more RN deputies would have been enough to overcome the cowardice of the elected Les Républicains. The French have understood that they can count on us, unlike the LRs, who betray them half the time.
Aside from Marine Le Pen, the National Assembly has few national stars. Who do you see in the majority besides Aurore Bergé? Who at Nupes apart from Mathilde Panot? The hemicycle has become impoverished. Of our 88 deputies, 82 are first-time deputies. It took a first year of adaptation, spent going into the field and taking the measure of their function. The time to take the media light has come. Some have already done so, I am of course thinking of Jean-Philippe Tanguy, Laure Lavalette, Laurent Jacobelli, Julien Odoul, or even our referent on pension reform, Thomas Ménagé.
All our rapporteurs have been up to the task. Each of them has strengthened our credibility. It’s only a beginning. Many deputies, today in reserve, are in the starting blocks. I can quote Kévin Mauvieux, little known to the general public but very solid. Or Frédéric Falcon, who has just set up a study group on housing and who has a real backbone. Many, like them, must advance more in the light and will be able to assume, without any problem, responsibilities tomorrow. It takes a bit of time and that’s nothing out of the ordinary. Believe me, we have it under our feet.
The party is completely complementary to the work we do in the Assembly. Jordan Bardella is present every Tuesday at our group meeting, which helps to harmonize things. The party is used to clear subjects such as ecology, health, education, housing, on which our word is not strong or visible enough. Jordan does it with his personality, the markers that are those of his generation.
The RN is also used to train our executives. This is essential, given the number of quality people who join us, from both the left and the right, and even from Horizons, the party of Édouard Philippe. We will soon hear about these people who are destined to become electively involved in the National Rally. Whether within the party or the group in the Assembly, the same spirit of conquest unites us. We are aware of walking towards power. We want to win and we are already preparing to take responsibility.
You have to take things one by one. The first is to demonstrate our ability to address all the issues facing the French and win the battle for credibility. Our solutions make sense. So much so that the other political forces are no longer shy about picking it up cheerfully. Whether it’s the LRs on Immigration, Gabriel Attal against social fraud or even the Head of State on the birth rate policy.
All of this validates our discourse in the public debate. Too many people hesitated, in good faith, to vote for us for fear that it would be a mess if we got to the responsibilities. We must therefore lead the battle of reinsurance, that is to say, explain to people our methods of government: respect for institutions, proportional representation and recourse to referendums. Of course, we also have to win the interim elections. The Europeans next June will be a kind of “midterms”, for or against government policy.
From the perch you occupy as Vice-President of the Assembly, how do you judge this hemicycle? What differences do you identify from the previous term?
It moves a lot more. There is now suspense with every vote. For the majority, nothing is ever won. For us, everything is up for grabs. This is something you can see very well from the perch. That we even feel physically. Up there, I feel like I’m at the bow of a ship, in the middle of a sea that sometimes gets rough. With waves, movements on his right, on his left, in the center. The sea is rough, rising. We detect political balances, complicity, mistrust too.
I quickly perceived that the MoDem and Horizons would not be easy partners for the majority. Thanks to the applause, the support and the reflections, since, from the perch, you hear everything. Until the tussles within the government. It is clear that, if it works well between Olivier Dussopt and Élisabeth Borne, such is not the case between Dussopt and Gabriel Attal. It is not the great love either between Gérald Darmanin, Sébastien Lecornu and the Prime Minister.
Above all, I see a very lost majority. Since the legislative elections, the president has failed to give him a course. There is no vision for the country. The majority is like a cork in the water, whose indigence and total lack of political sense never ceases to amaze me. Look at the surprise that gripped them when they discovered, in the parliamentary niche of the Liot group, a proposal to repeal the pension reform… It hadn’t crossed their minds. However, it is the government that sets the calendar for the parliamentary niches of opposition groups. It’s amateurism.
What lessons do you learn from the sequence of retreats?
She says several things. First of all, that in macronie, we do not seek to convince, but to impose. She says that the President of the Republic does not respect Parliament, that elected officials are, for him, nothing but pains. He has his ideas, his fads, his fads. The political world only has to adapt… Emmanuel Macron had demonstrated this, as soon as he was elected, with this law for the transparency of political life, implying that there had been, before him, only lazy people or thieves.
The best proof of his hatred of politicians was, subsequently, his refusal to appoint one to Matignon. He installed only technocrats, chiefs of staff there. Édouard Philippe was originally Alain Juppé’s chief of staff in addition to being a local elected official. Jean Castex was more “techno” and less local elected official. With Elisabeth Borne, the Head of State no longer even pretended to name a pure “techno” who passes the dishes. Emmanuel Macron has, I believe, a contempt for political reflection, coupled with a conflicting relationship with democracy, as demonstrated by the pension reform. This explains the deeply rooted resentment he arouses in the country.
She took a while to find her feet. She found herself in a hemicycle hemicycle where it was necessary to understand the strategies of each. She groped a lot in terms of the management of the Assembly or the sanctions before becoming famous in the protection of the institution. To demonstrate independence from power. Unfortunately, I believe that she then submitted to outrageous pressure from the executive, by agreeing, during this last debate on pension reform, to make amendments and articles from the opposition inadmissible.
She missed a turn. Until then, I found her respectful of opposition. We can dialogue and exchange. She knows how to make a collective work. Still, her choice to become more of an elected Renaissance than a president above the fray weakens her. Would a Philippe Séguin, President of the Assembly, have submitted?
Would you pass LR’s immigration bills as they stand?
They will never be discussed. It is a joke to imagine that these legislative proposals, copied from the work of the RN, can be included on the agenda of the National Assembly, since the government has control over it. It is a communication effect. The question therefore does not arise. We have always indicated that we will vote for anything that goes the right way. However, we will probably not vote for the government’s text on the subject, if it persists in wanting to open a new immigration channel by regularizing illegal workers. That would nip any firmness in the bud. We cannot do “at the same time” in terms of migration policy.
