Jordan Bardella, the young president of the populist Rassemblement National (RN) and member of the European Parliament, has declared that he will lead his party in next year’s European Parliament elections, with some speculating he may try to unite the European Right.
Bardella, who will be 28 at the end of September, told the French newspaper Le Figaro that it was natural he would lead the party’s European Parliament election campaign saying, “The deadline of June 2024 is not only a European election, [but] the only opportunity for the French to sanction the government and prepare the post-Emmanuel Macron,” France24 reports.
Alexandre Loubet, Bardella’s campaign director, explained his strategy to the broadcaster saying, “Our desire is to translate European issues into people’s daily lives, for example inflation and energy prices.”
“Not only to focus the debate on the European Union, but to talk about both European and national issues as concretely as possible,” he added.
Bardella also appears to be much more sympathetic to a union of the Right, unlike Marine Le Pen who rejected proposals from other right-wing parties to form an alliance ahead of last year’s parliamentary elections.
Eric Zemmour, head of the Reconquete! (Reconquest!) party, made a plea to Le Pen in April of last year saying, “Marine Le Pen, by accepting the hand that I extend to you, you have the opportunity to put an end to the cordon sanitaire, which has sterilized the chances of the national camp for 40 years. Take it, not for us, for France. Let’s do it. Together.”
Le Pen’s rejection may have been fueled by the fact that several prominent RN politicians left her party to join Zemmour prior to the presidential campaign, including former RN vice president Nicolas Bay and her niece Marion Maréchal, once a prominent member of the French parliament for the party.
Bardella, however, remained loyal to Le Pen throughout the presidential campaign and took up the mantle of acting president of the party while Le Pen ran for France’s highest political office.
He later formally became president of the party in November of last year, the first person not called Le Pen to lead the party, as Marine Le Pen stated she wished to focus on leading the party’s 89 MPs in the French Parliament.
Elected in 2019, Bardella headed the European Parliament campaign for the RN but was always overshadowed by Marine Le Pen. However, according to broadcaster RadioFrance, next year’s election could be a breakout moment for Bardella, noting he declared himself the head of the campaign, rather than waiting for Marine Le Pen to do so.
The broadcaster also highlighted that President Emmanuel Macron had invited Bardella to a meeting as party leader of the RN, rather than inviting Le Pen, with a source telling the broadcaster the French president may have done so to create a rivalry between the two.
Both RadioFrance and France24 agree that the most important goal for Bardella is to win next year’s European Parliament elections and decisively come out ahead of Macron’s party, if possible.
Current opinion polls show that the RN and Macron’s group are relatively close, but an Ifop poll released in July put the RN in the lead with a projected 26 seats, an increase compared to the party’s last election result in 2019 in which it won 23 seats.
Wider polls show that the Identity and Democracy (ID) parliament grouping, of which the RN is a major part, is expected to win over 70 seats in next year’s election, but the right-wing parties are still divided.
The centrist to centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) is expected to win 160 seats, while the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), of which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) is a member, is projected to win over 80 seats.
