Europeans: Le Pen makes an appointment, Maréchal extends his hand to LR

Marine Le Pen set on Sunday the date of her “next meeting with history”: the European elections of June 9, 2024, the subject of a game of billiards on the right, as illustrated by the outstretched hand of Marion Maréchal, head of the Reconquest list, to LR voters.

From her stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais), where she made her political comeback on the occasion of the clearance sale, after a silent summer, the leader of the deputies of the National Rally shone the spotlight on the European election, described as a “fundamental democratic meeting for the French”.

Because the RN, which came first in 2019 (23.34%) and is still a favorite in the polls, sees it as a “mid-term election” intended to sanction the policy of Emmanuel Macron, including Ms Le Pen lambasted again on Sunday the “subtle mixture of marketing and dishonesty.

The stakes are “extraordinarily important”, insisted Ms Le Pen from the podium, “as the European Union is an accelerator of our ills and our long slide”.

If Ms. Le Pen once again entrusted control of the list to Jordan Bardella, she announced that she herself would present, next weekend from Beaucaire (Gard), a “proposal which should bring together all those who are attached to their nation and who are aware that without it, there is no longer any freedom, prosperity, identity, security or progress.

The RN is in fact threatened by the danger of fragmentation, while the Reconquest list led by Marion Maréchal, Ms. Le Pen’s niece, was formally launched on Sunday in Gréoux-les-Bains (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence).

“I think this candidacy is likely to divide the votes in a period where everyone agrees that we can win the next presidential election,” Mr. Bardella lamented Sunday on France 3

“If France is in mortal danger, as Marion Maréchal and Éric Zemmour say (…) then at that moment we don’t show up in our corner to make 5 or 6% in an election and to participate in a form of division of voices at the very moment when we should unite them to send a very clear message to Emmanuel Macron,” he insisted.

While conceding that this will undoubtedly remain only “a vain effort”, Mr. Bardella therefore pleaded for union: “I do not despair of seeing Marion Maréchal one day join the camp of those who can win”, he slipped.

A call heard? Marion Maréchal did not say a word about it on Sunday during her quarter of an hour speech under a blazing sun.

The former deputy for Vaucluse preferred to send smoke signals again to LR, whose elected officials she scourged – accused of “inconsistencies” and “treason” – while pampering supporters.

In the background, recent polls which give Les Républicains below 10% voting intentions, closely followed by Reconquête at around 7%.

“I appeal to all LR voters, to all right-wing voters: join us,” she urged in front of some 2,000 people. Adding an outstretched hand to MEP François-Xavier Bellamy, head of the LR list in 2019, to explicitly tell him that he “should be at (his) side” during this campaign.

“These are the voters who can unite the rights,” greets Mireille Mouren, 66, a Reconquest of Lozère activist who “voted a little bit for everyone, from the RN to LR.”

It takes “a work of conviction, of opening eyelids that are still closed”, continues Calixte Joüon, 70, from Loire-Atlantique, for whom also “unity will come from the base”.

Unity whose time does not yet seem to have come, as sovereignist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan underlined on Sunday on Radio J, ironically about the “absurd, fratricidal fight” between Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour.

“It is clear that a Philippot list, a Dupont-Aignan list, a Marion Maréchal list, a Bardella list, a Bellamy list, that’s too many lists which will disappoint our fellow citizens,” he also warned.

10/09/2023 17:17:32 – Hénin-Beaumont (France) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP