She is being thrown into the deep end, without a life jacket. Valérie Hayer, the lead candidate for France's ruling coalition in the upcoming European elections, is making her public debut in that role at a rally on Saturday, March 9, at the Grand Palais in Lille. As the daughter and granddaughter of farmers from eastern France, she said she's more "used to putting up posters than seeing her face on them." But she has rehearsed her performance many times ahead of the big day that will kick off a campaign running until June 9. In front of some 4,000 to 5,000 party activists, officials, ministers and supporters, the member of the European Parliament, unknown to the general public, needs to show that there is hope for Macron and his allies, who have no majority in France's Parliament.
In the polls, more than 10 points separate the presidential camp from the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) list led by Jordan Bardella. But Hayer, who according to advisers to the prime minister turned down a ministerial role in the summer of 2023 to stay focused on European issues, is not pessimistic.
Is she doomed to lose? "That's not knowing me very well. That's not knowing the president very well," she said in an interview with broadcaster TF1. The president's coalition would like to see a replay of 2019, when the minister in charge of European affairs, Nathalie Loiseau, made up much of her lost ground during a lightning campaign, in which Macron had played a major part.
Once again, the president promises to take on a leading role. "You have to fight," he demanded of his ministers on Wednesday, March 6, as first reported by Le Parisien and confirmed by sources at the Elysée Palace. "Things, in this election, are simple: those who believe in Europe and those who don't. We believe in it so that we can continue to change it," he continued, quoting Louis Aragon's poem "La Rose et le Réséda" ("The Rose and the Reseda").
"The one who believed in heaven / The one who didn't / Both loved the beauty," wrote the communist poet, in a metaphor calling for the unity of the Resistance, during the Second World War, across the political divide. Today, Macron wants to set up a face-off between the pro-European camp, which he wants to unite behind him, and the eurosceptic far-right camp.
Hayer will be espousing this line on Saturday, pointing to Bardella and the RN as her only real enemies. She will talk about the war in Ukraine, the main angle of attack against Le Pen's party, which is accused of complacency toward Russia. The more seats the RN wins in the European Parliament, the more threatened European values will be, argue Macron's advisers.
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