While Jordan Bardella is officially head of the RN list for the European elections on June 9, and Marion Maréchal for Reconquest, the Republicans will not nominate their candidate until the end of the year or even the beginning of the year 2024, c This is the information from the brief.
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For the right, it is urgent to wait. LR has already organized a meeting on the European elections last July, there will be a new one on Monday September 18, but if on the agenda it is a question of strategy, and of project, there is no question of mentioning the head of the list . According to an LR manager: “Éric Ciotti approaches this election with leaden feet because the last European elections were fatal to Laurent Wauquiez”. He had in fact had to leave the head of the party after the disastrous score of 8.48%.
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In 2019, the head of the list was François-Xavier Bellamy. For the 2024 election, “He’s our natural candidate.”, supports Bruno Retailleau, boss of LR senators. But some on the right are afraid that François-Xavier Bellamy is a “black cat”. He is considered too conservative … and too close to the ideas of Marion Maréchal who on Sunday September 10 asked LR voters to join her. “François-Xavier Bellamy is a double-edged sword, explains an elected official : either it slows down the bleeding of our electorate at Marion Maréchal, or it proves that we are targeting the same voters, and we end up at 4.8% each “. But there is a good chance that he is the leader of the right because apart from François-Xavier Bellamy, no one seems really motivated for this perilous mission. The head of the LR list will be officially designated at the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024.
The fear of making less than 5%
The right is not calm as this election approaches. “We will have to have the wind at our backs to exceed 5%”, blurted out an LR tenor, stunned by a “Bardella mania on the field” and worried about the Reconquest list. Even if the LRs are generally relieved that it is Marion Maréchal who sticks to it rather than Éric Zemmour because “it’s still a Le Pen”. LR is surrounded on its right, and in the center with pro-European voters who risk going towards the Macronist list. Since the presidential election, with Valérie Pécresse, LR knows that being below 5% is possible. A score below 5% would be synonymous with the disappearance of LR from the European Parliament because only the lists that exceed this threshold have MEPs.
To avoid this disaster scenario, the right is working on the campaign strategy. Some argue for playing the institutional card with a simple argument : “we sit in the powerful group of the European People’s Party, we carry weight in Strasbourg even if LR is weakened in France”. Others are looking for the right campaign theme: “we must find a fight which proves that voting LR is useful, confides a deputy, like the RN has immigration and the Greens have ecology”.