Before his meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the RN discreet about his strategy

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella are due to meet the President of the Republic on Monday, but are keeping their intentions a secret.

Stunned by their relative failure in the second round of the legislative elections on July 7, the troops of the National Rally (RN) have been discreet during the summer. The third force in the National Assembly with 126 deputies – 142 with its close allies of Eric Ciotti – compared to 89 in the previous legislature, the RN maintains the vagueness around its intentions. Its leaders, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, will be received on Monday, August 26 by Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée. A meeting that is part of the “consultations” of the head of state, still looking for a prime minister, six weeks after the legislative elections.

The strategy that the leader of the far-right deputies will adopt remains vague for the moment. Registered in the opposition in the National Assembly in July and with no desire to participate in the future government, she n / A “not much” to expect, according to Philippe Ballard, deputy of Oise and spokesperson for the RN interviewed on franceinfo Thursday. The party line on this meeting with the president can be summed up by the formula: RN MP Franck Allisio from“communication artifice” macronist, heard on France Inter.

One thing remains certain: the desire not to let the New Popular Front (NFP) govern. Marine Le Pen had been very clear at the beginning of July. “There is one thing that is certain: the RN group will censor any government where LFI and environmentalists have ministerial responsibilities.”she had said to X. The group is “quite numerous”, Indeed, “to submit motions of censure”also warned the vice-president of the RN Edwige Diaz on franceinfo Tuesday. On the rest, the far-right party wants to appear open. “We will ask ourselves the question. We are responsible and as in the previous legislature, we will not oppose everything.”Thomas Ménagé, MP for Loiret, told AFP.

Does that mean not censoring a centre-right Prime Minister? “Censorship has a meaning in politics. Using it as one would use a reminder of the rules to “prank” the Assembly is not our method, it is that of LFI”replied MP Franck Allisio. Uborn “grand coalition which could go from the PS to the Republicans (…) will not hold not because they have different goals”predicted Edwige Diaz.

If the party, as in the previous legislature, seeks to give off an impression of seriousness, it finds itself isolated for the moment. The RN was not the recipient of the “action pact” from the presidential camp, a working basis concocted in mid-August to bring about a broader government agreement.

Will the RN group return to the Palais-Bourbon with a sense of revenge, after having been excluded from all positions of responsibility in the Assembly? “We will probably be a little less conciliatory in the face of this contempt from our voters. But we are not in a spirit of revenge.”reported Thomas Ménagé, who believes that “The important thing will be to tip the bills in the right direction”. If the left comes to propose the repeal of the pension reform, Philippe Ballard assures that the RN parliamentarians will vote for it, because “It’s in the interest of the French”.

The party’s executives are counting on a first meeting to make their action visible: October 31, the date of the group’s parliamentary niche. The RN promises to put a hot topic on the table, the repeal of the pension reform. Before that, another news item will put Marine Le Pen in the spotlight. She and 26 others will be tried from September 30 for embezzlement of public funds, suspected of having misappropriated funds from the European Union. to pay assistants to MEPs who actually work for the party.

Beyond the work in the Assembly, Marine Le Pen’s troops are looking further ahead and are betting above all on a new dissolution of the Lower House next summer. This is “the only possible political outcome” to get France out of the “paralysis”insisted Edwige Diaz. It is even, for Philippe Ballard, “the only way forward (…) to get France out of this quagmire”. In the meantime, the party intends to refine its casting to avoid new controversies over its candidates for deputy. A mission to make “the point federation by federation” was entrusted to RN MEP Aleksandar Nikolic, reports The Parisian.