“Michel Barnier must maintain his position at the RN and the budget is an illustration of this,” says Marine Tondelier

“Michel Barnier owes his retention as Prime Minister only to the fact of satisfying the National Rally”denounces Friday October 11 on France Inter Marine Tondelier, national secretary of Ecologists. The boss of environmentalists is convinced that the far-right party will “jump rope” the head of government and believes that “the 2025 budget [présenté jeudi] is an illustration of this.

Marine Tondelier mentions in particular the fact that this finance bill for next year provides for “reduce jobs in schools, but increase them in the army and justice”. She believes that this vision of society held by Michel Barnier was already perceptible during his general policy speech: “We felt that he had no vision for the school, but that when he started talking about security and immigration, he had very concrete and very precise things to say.”

The national secretary of the Ecologists also provides her analysis of the National Rally vote, based in particular on what she has observed for several years in Hénin-Beaumont (Pas-de-Calais) where she is fighting the far right. She assures that “racists and xenophobes do not represent the majority of the RN electorate”. On the contrary, she maintains that “most of these voters allowed themselves to be fooled by Marine Le Pen”. Marine Tondelier accuses the former RN candidate in the presidential election of having “duped” this electorate composed “French in trouble” by vetoing the possibility of a Prime Minister from the New Popular Front “who would have made the minimum wage at 1,600 euros, who would have repealed the pension reform, who would have made the first cubic meters of water free”. “She supported Michel Barnier who will make Macronism worse, in the service of the most powerful”she says.

Marine Tondelier is doubtful about the recent position of the RN on the repeal of the pension reform, while the far-right party has “refused to fight pension reform in the streets”. “The RN, which has never understood anything about pensions, has decided to take up our proposed law”, she points. The boss of the Ecologists is, that said, convinced that they “won’t be able to vote for it among themselves” due to divisions between “Marine Le Pen and Eric Ciotti”.