Convinced that a far-right wave will soon sweep across the continent, Jordan Bardella has stopped dreaming of leaving the European Union (EU). "You don't leave the game table when you're winning the game," said the president of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). Yet it would seem that the member of the European Parliament doesn't consider all tables are worthy of hosting him: He has brushed aside an invitation from France's parliamentary channel Public Sénat to take part in the first debate of the European elections campaign on Thursday, March 14. "Let's be serious," he said, mocking the channel's standing.

The RN's lead candidate for the June 9 election has delegated the mission to his European Parliament colleague Thierry Mariani, who will face their seven main rivals during the debate being held in the Parliament in Strasbourg. Mariani, who was once the junior transport minister under right-wing former president Nicolas Sarkozy, is no stranger to this venue, where he has held a seat as an MEP since 2019. However, his ties to Vladimir Putin's regime – notably through his travels to regions annexed by Russia as an election observer – had made him an outcast for over two years, even within his own party. A senior RN official even announced last year that Mariani, who is still not officially a candidate for a new term as an MEP, was "in retirement."

"The choice of Mariani is an insult to the campaign and a symbol of the RN's arrogance," said Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade, the president of the Assemblée Nationale's European affairs committee and campaign director for President Emmanuel Macron's coalition in the European elections. "They think they're so far above it all that they can even dare to send the Kremlin's intern."

Just two days after the parliamentary debate on the France-Ukraine bilateral security agreement, Mariani described himself as the first to be "surprised" by being nominated by the RN for this first electoral contest. "Jordan [Bardella] felt that this debate would come too early in the campaign for him. He asked me to go, and I'm rather honored," he explained.

Ignoring a June 2023 report by the parliamentary inquiry committee on foreign interference in French politics that confirmed his "great ideological and political closeness [with] Russian power," Mariani has set out to "stand by all [his] positions" on set. "History will be the judge," said the 65-year-old MEP, who has remained convinced that responsibility for the outbreak of war in the Ukraine "is more shared than what is said."

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