EDITORIAL. The European contradictions of the RN

Less than three months before the European elections in June, the RN is leading the voting intentions, but its program is sometimes difficult to understand.

The European RN program, let’s say it’s “at the same time”! Yes, at the same time very against the European Union… and a little bit for it. No more question of leaving the euro, this frightened the voters, Marine Le Pen changed her mind. Too bad if she repeated that 80% of her program was inapplicable if France kept the euro. For the far-right party, Europe remains a straitjacket, a “prison”, but there is no longer any question of escaping from it. Officially no more Frexit therefore, even if the logic of the program, starting with the reestablishment of the primacy of French law over Community law, would lead to France’s exit from the European Union.

Jordan Bardella, guest of Tomorrow Europe, Friday March 22, on franceinfo, head of the National Rally list says he wants to build a “European Alliance of Nations”. An à la carte Europe where everyone only picks what they like, a bit like a joint ownership, without regulations. With whom to tie this “alliance” ? Mystery. The RN MEPs do not sit in the same group as those of the only two nationalist governments, out of 27, Giorgia Meloni’s Italy and Viktor Orban’s Hungary. In the European Parliament, the RN’s allies are rare and cumbersome: the Italian League, whose leader Matteo Salvini has just approved the Russian election rigged by Vladimir Putin. And the AfD, the German far-right party, which met with neo-Nazi leaders a few months ago to prepare a plan to expel hundreds of thousands of foreigners and Germans of immigrant origin. The initiative offended Marine Le Pen, but the RN did not break with the AfD.

Everything and its opposite

In any case, for the moment, the polls put Jordan Bardella at the top of the poll. To win, he is banking on anti-macronism, more than on the RN’s European project or the results of its leavers. It must be said that their votes are often more confused than their campaign slogans. They, for example, opposed any strengthening of the resources of Frontex, the border surveillance system, before getting the former boss back on their list. They are fighting the Asylum and Migration pact supported by Giorgia Meloni to more closely control migrant arrivals. And on agriculture, Jordan Bardella, who is in charge of Europe today, approved the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. There is, however, one subject on which RN elected officials are consistent: they refuse to approve economic and military support measures for Ukraine. As if they were afraid of offending the Kremlin.