One Thursday a month, the first-class seats in the 2:49 pm Strasbourg-Paris train bring together the French members of the European Parliament, the influential and the marginal, the lazy and the model pupils, the federalists and the europhobes. On the train scheduled for April 25, after the last plenary session of the term, some of them were likely traveling on the 2:49 pm for the last time.
On the far right, some were snoozing. There was Jean-Lin Lacapelle, sunglasses on, and André Rougé, in charge of overseas affairs and the party's unofficial think-tank "Les Horaces," a strong character whose usefulness was disputed internally. Both are among the two-thirds of the party's 23 MPs who are not in the top 30 spots of the party's list of candidates unveiled on May 1. This despite them following their instructions to perfection: Don't do too much.
Since 2019, the RN has not deviated from the rules set by Jean-Marie Le Pen in his day, and more recently his daughter Marine Le Men. There are three ways of looking at the party's inaction in Brussels and Strasbourg. The first argues that the "cordon sanitaire" imposed by the rest of the parliamentary groups deprives the RN's group (Identity and Democracy, ID) of holding any responsibility. The second is that it's a strategic choice, a refusal to take part in the mechanism described as "Europeanist" and to be involved in decisions taken in Brussels. The third is whispered by some of the party's staff: a mixture of "laziness" and "stupidity." The truth lies at the crossroads of all three, said the sources interviewed by Le Monde, including European Parliament officials, members of the major groups, and past and present members of the RN delegation.
"Are you kidding?" Philippe Olivier, Le Pen's special adviser and soon-to-be re-elected MEP, doesn't buy the voluntary inaction argument. "We're banned from everything, we're not allowed a report, a committee, and on the rare occasions we're involved, we're told we're tolerated. You can't organize the whole system so that we don't participate and then blame us for it," said Le Pen's brother-in-law, who considers himself a "dissident." He then recognized there was some strategy to it. "We do politics, we don't play their game. These guys who act so important, they're just shadows. Whatever they do, it's the Commission that decides."
The RN uses its presence in the European Parliament not to modify legislation, but to influence opinions, he said: "We have a tribunician function, a warning function, and after four years, it permeates the European Parliament and electoral pressure." In fact, for the past 18 months, majorities have become tighter, on every vote. Pressure from the radical right led to an initial unraveling of the Green Deal and a tightening of certain measures in the Pact on Migration and Asylum. Although it describes itself as "a prod," the RN has done nothing to apply political pressure, leaving the job to its Italian partners from Lega.
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