The time has officially come for political clarification. Two weeks after the Paris conference in support of Ukraine, French lawmakers will discuss France's aid strategy toward this country under attack from Russia. The debate will be followed by a vote on Tuesday, March 12. Although the vote is purely symbolic, the session promises to be heated. Opposition parties are particularly up in arms over the recent statements by President Emmanuel Macron, who has not ruled out sending ground troops to Ukraine and expressed "no limits" on support for Kyiv. A stance that has been deemed "irresponsible" by the entire Assemblée, except for the presidential bloc.
With three months to go before the June European elections, all the elements are in place for this debate to turn into a confrontation between the presidential coalition and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which has been accused of being close to Vladimir Putin, and which is polling ahead of Macron's camp list (18%) by 13 points (31%) according to a poll published on Monday.
"For the RN, when facing Russia, any softness, any weakness is good," attacked French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal on Saturday in Lille, at the launch of his party's European election campaign. The prime minister is set to defend the February 16 French-Ukrainian bilateral security agreement before MPs. "The RN says it supports Ukraine, but adopts the Kremlin's language," accused Stéphane Séjourné, the foreign affairs minister in the economic newspaper La Tribune on Sunday.
Wavering between abstaining or voting against the motion right up until the eve of the debate, the RN MPs would make up their minds "depending on Gabriel Attal's speech," explained the far-right party's vice-president, Sébastien Chenu, on French television on Sunday, adding that "we have some red lines that would probably prevent us from voting." Red lines such as "Ukraine's membership of the European Union," and "troops on the ground," he said. The party's president, Jordan Bardella, invoked these same red lines on another channel on Tuesday, announcing that "the RN will abstain."
On the left, La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left) party coordinator Manuel Bompard used similar terms on Sunday to set out his position. "When we are called upon to give our opinion on a text, and this text contains questions as important as Ukraine's accession to the European Union, or Ukraine's accession to NATO, these are red lines for us, and it is out of the question for us to vote in favor of this text," he said on the RTL private radio station.
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