This time, the National Rally (RN) wants to be one step ahead. They were frustrated during the last European campaign, since the party was unable to analyze the record of President Macron’s LREM heading for their first term in Brussels.
Therefore the party of Marine Le Pen will set up a monitoring desk to study their political opponents, according to information from FranceInter . “We will monitor closely” the 21 elected Macronistas who now crowd the European hemicycle, warned Nicolas Bay, vice president of the group Identity and Democracy in Parliament.
For this new term, the RN will set up a sort of observatory of ballots cast. This particular mission will be entrusted to the accredited parliamentary assistants in Brussels and Strasbourg, and will be headed by Philippe Olivier, Marine Le Pen’s adviser and brother-in-law.
The role is to meticulously scrutinize all the minutes of the European Parliament, to identify possible contradictions between the campaign promises and the votes cast in the hemicycle.
“It is also necessary that our presence in committee is more useful” , said another RN MEP. “Too bad if our projects do not pass, we must take the opportunity to raise all the compromises of the elected French” within the 22 standing committees, he continued.
The RN also intends to locate all the texts on which socialists, ecologists, Macronistas and right-wing elected parties agree. “We will succeed in proving that this band of four had, in fact, a common programme”, said Philippe Olivier.
“During the campaign, I kept saying that voting [Republican François-Xavier] Bellamy was like voting [LREM Nathalie] Loiseau or [Environmentalist Yannick] Jadot” explained the former LR Thierry Mariani.
This “UMPS” version 2019 has become almost indispensable to the functioning of the EU, noted FranceInter. The Union for a Popular Movement [Union pour un mouvement populaire] or UMP was a centre political party in France that was one of the two major contemporary political parties in France along with the Socialist Party (PS). “UMPS” is an ironic merger of the UMP and PS. In May 2015, the UMP was renamed and succeeded by The Republicans [Les Républicains].
Previously, the majority in the European Parliament was in the hands of the Socialists and the EPP. Today, both groups will need the votes of the either the Liberals or the Greens – or both – to get projects going.
Such alliances are inherent and indispensible in the European Parliament, and French voters are not always aware of how it functions. “In our Fifth Republic, we are for or against the President, and the one who negotiates is the one who moves,” explained a cadre of the RN.