French President Emmanuel Macron’s liberal political group in the European Parliament could soon find itself embroiled in a battle for control – if, of course, the challengers have the courage to take over the group’s leadership.
On Tuesday, right-wing MEPs from the Renew Europe group held a meeting at which they announced in a press release that they would propose a new candidate to head the group. The seat is now held by Valérie Hayer, who was the main candidate during Macron’s failed EU election campaign.
In a direct challenge to the Renewal MEPs who support Hayer and Macron, the ALDE party, one of the main factions in the wider Renewal group, said:
“We are prepared to propose a candidate to lead the group and offer a strong leadership for the next mandate.”
Later in the afternoon, however, ALDE backtracked on its challenge to Hayer and quietly deleted that line. The updated press release gave no sign it had been changed, nor were journalists informed.
The press release still stated that ALDE “is ready to assume the leadership responsibilities within the parliamentary group.” One Renew group staffer said:
“They are very disunited.”
Hayer said on Monday that she intends to stay on as Renew’s president, even after the group suffered a heavy defeat in France in the recent Parliament European elections and lost about 20 MEPs across the EU. French lawmakers from Macron’s Renew party and allied forces have dominated the group since 2019.
Before the Parliament Elections, Macron manoeuvred his MEPs into a club called the New Europeans to strengthen his influence in Renew. In addition to Macron himself losing 10 French MEPs, his Romanian allies in the Reper party were also decimated. The decision on who will lead the group will be decided by all MEPs in a vote.
An internal split in the Renew group
The Renew group suffered an internal split during the EU election campaign when Hayer criticised the Dutch liberal VVD party’s decision to enter the Dutch government with far-right election winner Geert Wilders. Haier said a wider group of Renew MEPs would discuss the issue at a meeting on Tuesday.
Dan Barna, an MEP from the Save Romania Union party, said he believed tensions had eased after the campaign and noted that the issue of the VVD’s possible exclusion was not raised at Tuesday’s ALDE meeting. He added:
“I don’t think it will happen.”
Germany’s reaction to the potential merger of Les Républicains (LR) with Marine Le Pen’s far-right party
Meanwhile, a potential merger between French conservative party Les Républicains (LR) and far-right Marine Le Pen’s party has caused an uproar in Germany, with the conservative CDU/CSU parties threatening to exclude them from the EU’s common party, the EPP.
French right-wing party Les Républicains is currently in disarray after its president Éric Ciotti announced on Tuesday that the party would join forces with Marin Le Pen’s populist far-right Rassemblement Nationale (RN) to contest the upcoming snap legislative elections.
The German CDU/CSU party is also involved and has threatened to kick LR out of their common political family in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party (EPP), if they agree to Ciotti’s plan. German MP Jürgen Hardt and spokesperson of the CDU/CSU on foreign policy, told Euractiv on Tuesday:
“If the French Les Républicains, really do take this path to the right, there will no longer be a place in the EPP for this once proud party, which is marginalising itself through such ingratiation.”
The CDU/CSU has long held the principle of not co-operating with any far-right parties.
And while the CDU/CSU parties have somewhat softened their stance towards the far right in recent months, openly flirting with the idea of teaming up with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right Fratelli d’Italia, co-operation with Le Pen is still considered unacceptable.
Potential EPP partners must be pro-European, pro-NATO, pro-right and pro-Ukrainian, as the CDU/CSU repeatedly stated during the European elections, in line with the position of the EPP’s leading candidate Ursula von der Leyen. Le Pen’s party does not currently fulfil these criteria.
Calls for resignation
Ciotti’s statement provoked a serious reaction within his own party, with several senior LR members calling on him to resign.
Their German colleagues are also confident that the LR will refrain from co-operating with the far right, as some of its members have already suggested.
“I believe it is possible that the declaration by the chairman of the LR has no validity among the members and means the end of his political career,” said Hardt, adding that “those I know in the LR think differently from Ciotti.”
Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, leader of the party Debout la France (France Arise), addressed Ciotti on X:
“Thank you @ECiotti for calling for a rally for France. I’ve been waiting for this since the second round of the 2017 presidential election when I led it.”
