France’s Continuing Rightward Journey: The Aftermath of the European Parliament Elections June 2024
France’s Continuing Rightward Journey: The Aftermath of European Parliament Elections June 2024
Rassemblement National (National Rally) claimed an unassailable victory in the European Parliament elections on 9 June 2024, topping the polls in 93 per cent of France’s 35,000 communes and thus accounting for 80 per cent of all parliamentary constituencies. RN campaigned against the “forced march towards a centralised European super-state”, in favour of a “Europe of nations that defends both the lifestyles and the standard of living of peoples.” RN’s appeal extended far beyond its traditional heartlands along the Mediterranean coast in the south and in the deindustrialised rust belt of the northeast, taking in large swathes of rural France and many smaller towns, with populations of 100,000 or under, while the big cities and their suburbs mostly opted for centrist and leftist politicians. In response, Emanuel Macron, who will remain President of France until 2027, dissolved the Assemblée nationale (National Assembly) and announced snap legislative elections. The first round of voting will take place on 30 June, followed by a second on 7 July.
The electoral success of RN can be attributed to Marine Le Pen’s pragmatic rebranding of the party and to the undeniable appeal of Jordan Bardella, its young and charismatic leader. The RN is the successor to the Front National, which was founded as the Front National pour l’ Unité Francaise by Alain Robert and Jean-Marie Le Pen at a private rally in Paris on 5 October 1972. Le Pen’s toxic brand of racism, anti-Semitism, and Holocaust denial required detoxification by his daughter Marine, who softened his extremist rhetoric and made it more inclusive. She replaced him as party leader in 2011, eventually expelling him in 2015. The FN was meanwhile rebranded as the NR in 2018. Even then, Marine Le Pen had limited success in France’s presidential elections. Things have changed since she took Bardella under her wings.
Le Pen’s protégé Jordan Bardella was born on 13 September 1995 in the northeast Parisian suburb of Drancy, in Seine-Saint-Denis- considered the poorest of France’s 96 metropolitan départements. Despite his ardently nationalist views, Bardella has supranational origins, being the only child of an Italian mother from Turin and a French father of Italian and Algerian-Kabyle descent. His parents separated before he was two years old, and he was raised by his mother in an eighth-floor tower-block flat on the Gabriel-Péri social housing project. Although he grew up in a poor working-class district with a high immigrant population, making him a product of the left-behind banlieues, his father, who ran a drinks distribution business in the nearby town of Montmorency, funded his private education at the Catholic lycée-Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle in Saint-Denis.
Bardella’s political inclinations, shaped by his immediate environment, drew him towards the FN in 2012 and later induced him to drop out midway through a geography degree course at the publicly-funded Paris Sorbonne University. He rose rapidly through the ranks of his chosen political party, becoming FN secretary in Seine-Saint-Denis in the run-up to his election as regional councillor for the Ile-de-France in the Greater Paris elections of 2015. Things speeded up after he was introduced to his political role model, Marine Le Pen, in 2017, when he became a party spokesman and joined the national office. Within six months, he was elected president of the FN youth wing, Génération Nation, in 2018. Le Pen soon made him head of the NR candidate list for the 2020 European election. The NR led with 23.34 per cent of the vote, and Bardella became the second-youngest person ever to be elected Member of the European Parliament.
As part of the continued redefinition of the NR, Bardella became the public face of the rejuvenated political party. He was elected first vice-president at the party congress in Perpignan in July 2021, as preparation for his selection president at the November 2022 congress, when he secured nearly 85 per cent of the votes against 15 per cent for Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan and former partner of Marine Le Pen. Just five months earlier, the rapidly rising NR had secured 89 seats in the Assemble Nationale, up by 81 seats from 2017.
The sanitised public image of the NR owes much to Bardella’s persona. The photogenic, clean-shaven, smartly dressed, articulate, and mild-mannered politician is fast acquiring a cult following, with around 1.6 million followers on TikTok, and another 747,000 on Instagram. He is reportedly dating Marine Le Pen’s niece, Nolwenn Olivier, even as Marine has publicly declared herself as his groupie. Bardella has acted as a magnet for younger voters, as shown by figures from the recent European Parliament elections.
Bardella and Le Pen have tapped into the many concerns of the French public. Their opposition to continued immigration, commitment to the preservation of French identity in the face of perceived challenges from Islam, and proposals to give French citizens preference for social housing, public sector jobs, and welfare benefits are widely popular among those alienated by Macron’s policies. Although Eurosceptics, they will keep France within a reformed and deregulated EU, while slashing France’s contribution to the EU budget. Supportive of Ukraine, and committed to the NATO alliance, they also oppose the continued supply of arms to be used against Russia. Their stated concern over the issues that matter the most to French people, such as high inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, has substantially widened the NR’s voter base. Although France’s public debt stands at around 110 per cent of GDP, the NR favours increased public spending and opposes Macron’s unpopular proposals to raise the pension age.
At the time of writing, it seems possible that the NR will soon form a new government, with Bardella at the helm, thereby creating an adversarial climate in the upper reaches of French politics. The NR will have a greater say on economic policy, immigration, and domestic security, while Macron retains control of defence and foreign policy. As usual, subsequent events will speak for themselves, as predicting the future in politics remains a hopeless task.
Ashis Banerjee