With less than two months to go before the European elections, the French Right is once again running in a very scattered order, at the risk of spreading its votes too thinly, which would be detrimental to the defence of conservative interests. In 1957, the socialist Guy Mollet, later echoed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, described the French Right as “the silliest in the world.” Have things changed much since then?
For the upcoming European elections in France, there are at least four right-wing lists at the starting line. The Rassemblement National (RN), whose list is headed by the party’s current president, Jordan Bardella, is leading the polls. Behind it, Les Républicains (LR) and Reconquête are estimated at between 5% and 7%. The challenge for these two parties, one old and the other recently founded, is to break the 5% barrier required to send representatives to the European Parliament. Finally, a new list has entered the race, the result of an alliance between Christian Democrat Jean-Frédéric Poisson and Rassemblement National dissident Florian Philippot. Sovereigntist Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, for his part, has decided not to assemble a list, judging his chances to be too low and the expense excessive for his small party, which has been fighting for existence for many years.
This multiplicity of lists on the right of the French political spectrum is indicative of profound differences in strategy, as well as personal quarrels, some of which exacerbate the others. As things stand, the union of the Right that many voters, at grassroots level, are fervently calling for—and which Éric Zemmour, president of Reconquête, presents as an indispensable objective yet without helping make it possible—remains a castle in the air.
The seeds of division are everywhere, including within every party at the starting line.
The Les Républicains party chose by default to reappoint its previous head of list, MEP François-Xavier Bellamy. Defending a conservative stance, he is finding it difficult to exist within a party that still leans awkwardly towards Macronism.
At Reconquête, it is no longer a secret to anyone that things are going badly between Marion Maréchal and Éric Zemmour. Zemmour, the party’s presidential candidate, is omnipresent, to the point of drowning out his list leader Maréchal, whose personal charisma puts her in a better position to move towards a union of the Right than her superior—who is often quick to hand out good and bad points with his cutting tone.
Any television or radio appearance by Éric Zemmour is deducted from the total time allocated to the Reconquête party by the broadcasting authorities, thereby reducing Marion Maréchal’s speaking time. The president of the party is convinced that he needs to speak as often as possible to mobilise the pool of people who voted for him in the last French presidential election, while the head of his list is convinced of the opposite. Communication between the two personalities is difficult, sometimes non-existent, as unveiled by an investigation in the newspaper Le Point, which reveals the extent to which their respective teams struggle to coordinate and compete with each other.
Jean-Frédéric Poisson, head of the Christian Democrat party Via, an ally of Reconquête at the time of the 2022 presidential election, says he can’t get his head around this mess. Disappointed by the atmosphere at Reconquête, he explained his voice was not taken into consideration within the party. As a Christian Democrat, he was supposed to embody a ‘social’ tendency and to be the voice of the poor in the programme but he felt he was ignored and not respected. His frustration may have legitimate grounds, but he is adding to the general confusion by putting together an additional list, in an unlikely alliance with the Patriotes of Florian Philippot, a former RN executive who is now a supporter of Frexit.
Fortunately for Reconquête, every day, the news brings its share of good reasons for convinced right-wing voters to slip a Marion Maréchal ballot paper into the ballot box. In recent weeks, there has been a plethora of news stories highlighting the damaging effects of the islamisation of France, and these are just the thing to legitimise the party’s firm stance on the cultural and religious transformation of the land of Joan of Arc.
The internal tensions at Reconquête are compounded by strategic differences. Poisson’s departure reflects negatively on Zemmour’s ability to find allies, but that’s not the crux of the matter. At the heart of the quarrels remains the thorny question of the Rassemblement National: friend or foe? Give a hand or aim for the heart? In recent weeks, there have been an increasing number of bitter exchanges between the two formations of the national Right, which consequently presents voters with a less-than-stellar image: more or less veiled attacks, innuendo, and direct blows give the impression that the two parties are more concerned with fighting each other than with tackling their real political enemies head-on. And yet, as Marion Maréchal repeats, “My enemy is not the RN.”
But despite Maréchal’s symbolic protests, blows are raining down in both directions. There was a violent verbal duel between Jordan Bardella and Nicolas Bay, both MEPs, during the vote on the Migration Pact. Bardella accused Bay of having voted in favour of a provision in the Pact, known as ‘screening,’ which would make it easier for migrants to enter Europe in order to have their cases examined. Bay hit back, saying that Bardella was either a liar or incompetent: the provision in question would not prevent people from being turned back, and cases would be examined at the EU’s external borders. Bardella is frequently accused of amateurism, both by Bellamy and by Bay, on the grounds that he rarely turns up to Brussels or Strasbourg. The fact remains that the violent exchanges over an obscure point of detail have ended up undermining the credibility of both parties.
What need did Bardella have to attack Bay in this way? The Bardella-Bay duel ended up turning into a Bardella-Maréchal confrontation. In a video message, the latter asked the head of the RN list “not to make the wrong enemy.”
Reconquête and the Rassemblement National also engage in endless provocations on the question of the ‘useful vote’—a recurring theme in French elections. Ultimately, which vote would best serve the cause of the French Right and have the fewest negative side effects? A ‘useful vote,’ on the part of a voter is not necessarily a vote that is perfectly in line with his convictions, but a vote that most easily achieves the desired effect: destabilising the Left and shifting the balance in favour of the national Right. For the RN, it’s clear that the ‘useful vote’ is a Jordan Bardella vote. The candidate asserts that “votes cast for Marion Maréchal’s list will be lost votes”—especially if Reconquête fails to break the 5% barrier.
Reconquête adopts the exact opposite rhetoric: in the general economy of the European elections, having a Rassemblement National with 28 or 32% of the vote won’t make much difference. On the other hand, a Reconquête score of between 4% and 8% changes everything: the party sends representatives to the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which increases its influence and makes it better placed to influence debates.
As in the endless disputes between brothers and sisters, we end up forgetting who started it and who said what. There’s something of Lilliput’s war against Blefuscu about all this, and it’s not quite clear who’s defending the big end and who’s promoting the little end. A fine waste of time and energy.
The election is still a month and a half away. The battle is fierce and the figures remain uncertain, except for the Rassemblement National, which is almost certain to win more than 25% of the vote. But this will only ever be the 25% of the electorate who might take the trouble to vote—turnout for European elections is never very high. This will undoubtedly send out a very clear signal of rejection of Emmanuel Macron’s government, but the stakes in the European elections remain limited. The real power lies elsewhere than in Parliament, in Brussels or Strasbourg.
Looking beyond the June deadline, there is a good chance, unfortunately, that for the French Right, the same divisive scenario will play out again in 2027, with more serious consequences.
