Éric Zemmour and Marion Maréchal officially launched their campaign for the European elections with a major rally in Paris on Sunday, March 10th, designed to recapture the heyday of its presidential campaign when the Reconquête party managed to gather thousands of enthusiastic activists. The pair intend to publicise their determined fight against the Islamisation of France and Europe.
For the activists who made the trip to Paris, the division of roles was clear: the chant “Marion in Brussels, Zemmour in Paris,” could be heard in the aisles of the Paris Dôme, where around 5,000 Reconquête supporters were gathered.
In line with the 2022 presidential election, Reconquête’s message for the European elections was geared towards countering the Islamist threat to France and Europe. During the conference, this theme was systematically taken up by all the party’s speakers. Marion Maréchal denounced “the Islamic civilisation that is flourishing in France and Europe,” and called for the mobilisation of all those who refuse to “live in the time of Islamic sharia law.”
The head of the list announced her intention to use the European election campaign as an opportunity for a major “unveiling” of the ravages of Islamisation in Europe today, with figures to back it up:
We need to show today that nearly a million women in France wear the Islamic veil. That’s 55% more than ten years ago. There are 80,000 radicalised Muslim secondary school students, according to a survey by Le Figaro. Nearly 200,000 women are forced into marriage in France today. 60,000 women are victims of excision or mutilation. 1,000 new halal shops opened in France last year. Our country now has 2,500 mosques, compared to just two two centuries ago.
The theme of Islamisation as a threat to Western civilisation was taken up again by Zemmour during his speech, in vehement terms: “Never! Not even in a dream, not even in a nightmare! We can’t be Muslims, we don’t want to be,” he hammered. “Europe is a civilisation of the soul,” he added, drawing applause from the audience as Mozart’s music was played.
In addition, Zemmour’s speech targeted the woke movement and the self-hatred rife in Europe and France today. In the style that has made him a successful columnist, he said,
No other civilisation has been as brilliant, as decisive, as creative, as useful, or as admirable as ours. I say this in the strongest possible terms to the wokes who hate the history of Europe, I say it to all those dog punks who see the West as the absolute evil, I say to them: ‘grow up, read some books and stop covering the Mona Lisa with tomato sauce and thank God you were born here and not elsewhere.’
During the meeting, the support of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) parliamentary group was explicitly displayed, with Nicolas Procaccini, an Italian MEP and member of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party and vice chairman of the group, present alongside Zemmour and Maréchal.
Throughout the day, there were explicit appeals to right-wing voters who may be tempted by the Les Républicains (LR) candidate François-Xavier Bellamy. For Reconquête, this is strategically the most easily accessible pool of votes, as Marion Maréchal explained in her speech from the podium: “LR is 50% Macronists who don’t take responsibility for themselves and 50% Zemmourists who don’t take responsibility for themselves. That’s 100% broken promises,” she quipped. The LR candidate is currently credited with a score of 7%, while the Rassemblement National is soaring above 30% of voting intentions.
One cloud on the horizon is the distancing of a former ally of Reconquête for the presidential election, the Christian Democrat party Via—La voie du peuple, led by Jean-Frédéric Poisson. Poisson sees Via’s collaboration with Reconquête as unsatisfactory and believes that his party’s specific demands were not listened to, compromising his party’s official support. While he shares most of Zemmour’s convictions, Poisson feels that the social dimension and attention to the most vulnerable are too far sidelined by Reconquête’s official line, as is the defence of freedoms. The Mouvement Conservateur, led by Laurence Trochu, is maintaining its support for Reconquête. Trochu appeared alongside Marion Maréchal during the latter’s visit to the Salon de l’Agriculture. Lastly, Nicolas Battini, head of a small Corsican identity party, has expressed new support, saying he sees Marion Maréchal as “a friend of Corsica and its people.”
Zemmour’s and Maréchal’s party is currently polling at around 5%. Uncertainty reigns in the ranks because to send deputies to Brussels, the national-conservative party must pass the 5% mark, which is not yet a given.
