(Paris) 11 days before the legislative elections, the president of the RN Jordan Bardella wanted to reassure on Wednesday about his foreign policy, affirming that he did not want to “call into question the commitments” of France internationally in terms of defense, while the Élysée defended Emmanuel Macron’s controversial position on “sex change in town hall”.
The favourite plays it safe. “I do not intend to call into question the commitments made by France on the international scene,” said Mr Bardella, visiting the Eurosatory defence exhibition near Paris.
“There is a credibility issue with regard to our European partners and our NATO allies,” added the leader of the RN, credited with 33% in the latest Ifop poll on Monday.
There is therefore no longer any question of “leaving the integrated command” of the Atlantic Alliance, as Marine Le Pen proposed two years ago. In any case not as long as the war in Ukraine “is still ongoing”, as Mr. Bardella had already explained in an attempt to erase the pro-Kremlin image that his party drags around like a ball and chain.
The young president of the RN has also confirmed his intention to maintain military support for Kyiv, with however a “red line” on “long-range missiles” and other weapons which would make it possible to “strike Russian territory”, to “avoid any risk of escalation.”
Promised to Matignon at only 28 years old in the event of victory, Jordan Bardella has been working for several days to dispel doubts about his program.
In particular on the pension reform raising the legal age to 64, which he pledged to repeal “from the fall” by favoring long careers. Or even on his economic program, promising a reduction in VAT on energy and fuel from this summer, but only in a “second phase” on “essential products”.
In the same way, he pledged to dissolve “all ultra-left and ultra-right organizations”, including the GUD student union, former members of which gravitate around the RN. “We have never been lenient towards militias […] who disrupt and threaten civil peace in our society,” he said.
A way to defuse criticism for someone who “refuses to be appointed” as head of a government if he does not obtain an absolute majority in the Assembly.
Which does not prevent Emmanuel Macron from finding the far-right program “unreasonable” both “financially and in its relationship to politics”.
But the head of state, although asked by some of his troops not to appear in the campaign, was especially distinguished by a heavy charge on Tuesday against the left united under the banner of the New Popular Front. He lambasted his program, calling it “totally immigrationist.”
They propose “to abolish all laws which make it possible to control immigration”, he insisted during a trip to the island of Sein (Finistère) to celebrate the 84th anniversary of the Appeal of June 18 .
The President of the Republic also denounced “completely absurd things like going to change sex at the town hall” in the left’s programme, which proposes to “authorise the free and open change of civil status before a civil registrar”.
“The President of the Republic is losing his nerve,” Communist Party boss Fabien Roussel replied on Franceinfo.
“We were waiting for Jupiter, we got Nero,” the Socialists’ first secretary Olivier Faure told RTL. “This man elected and re-elected to confront the extreme right continues to repeat the discourse of the extreme right,” he accused.
The Élysée defended the position of the head of state. “Free sex change in town hall is not a social project that he defends given the complexity of all the questions that it raises,” argued those around him, while praising the “record of progress on societal issues” by Emmanuel Macron, from “PMA for all” to abortion in the constitution.
But for the rebellious François Ruffin, the president “has chosen his camp, for him the authoritarian national is better than the Popular Front.”
The left, which received the support of the CGT on Tuesday, continues to campaign on the ground, like the social democrat Raphaël Glucksmann in Marseille where a candidate from his Place publique party faces Minister Sabrina Agresti-Roubache.
On the side of the outgoing majority, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who will be on 8 p.m. on TF1, brings together the candidates from his camp on Wednesday evening at the Renaissance campaign headquarters to “regroup” and “mobilize” his troops
