In a year, the European elections will be held, an uncertain vote for the French right. LR MEPs risk being swept out of parliament in Brussels. Jean-Rémi Baudot’s political brief
There is a figure that gives nightmares on the right: 5%. This is the minimum threshold that a list must meet to obtain seats in the European elections. A threshold that the future Les Républicains list is not sure to achieve in 2024. As a reminder, the LRs are in the midst of an electoral descent into hell: 8.4% in the 2019 European election, 4.8% in the 2022 presidential election. .. And internal tensions do not bode well for future Republican results.
>> The Republicans: “If some have a deep desire to join the dying macronie, let them do it”, says Aurélien Pradié
“The risk of being below 5%, Eric Ciotti is quite aware of it“, confides one of the vice-presidents of the party who adds: “The real question is the list, it must make people dream”. Behind the scenes, the outgoing, François-Xavier Bellamy, seems to want to remain at the top of the list, but who would he have at his side?
Nadine Morano, courted by the National Rally
Historic faces of LR in Brussels are preparing to leave the ship. Arnaud Danjean says he will not run again. Agnès Evren talks about the senatorial elections in Paris, which are less risky. And among those who are still there, some are hit on by the National Rally: this is particularly the case of Nadine Morano. “I don’t know if she’s going to take action.” explains a relative of Marine Le Pen, but Nadine Morano is one of those whom Jordan Bardella calls “the sincere patriots of LR”.
“She dreams of being number 2 on a list“, believes to know the MEP RN Thierry Mariani who tells how, for months, the discussions are going well. You should know that at the restaurant of the MEPs, the table of the EPP group (where the right sits) is not far of the ID table (where the extreme right sits).
A “moment of truth” according to Pradié
For Les Républicains, of “pro-European right”, a disappearance from the European scene would be a cataclysm. And if this hypothesis seems more and more credible, it is because the political space of the Republicans is less and less visible. Internally, many believe that a crash at the Europeans would drive the final nails into the party’s coffin. LR Aurélien Pradié speaks of a “moment of truth“. “It takes a brutal electroshock for us to reinvent ourselves”, pleads the troublemaker deputy of the Lot. This electric shock could be this famous threshold of 5%.
In the meantime, from Macronie to the RN, we are rubbing our hands. “It gives us space“, we even say to the National Rally which imagines, as in 2019, to finish at the top, in front of the Renaissance list.