Treaties be damned – according to Jordan Bardella, favorable opinion polls are worth decades of common European construction: "When you have public opinion and the peoples [of Europe] on your side, then I think anything is possible," he boasted on Thursday, February 29. That night, he was speaking as the head of the Rassemblement National's (RN, far-right) list for the June 9 European elections, and he presented the first draft of his party's electoral platform. Such optimism was indeed necessary to envision a complete revamp of the European Union's (EU) mode of operation, but, without unanimous agreement by the union's 27 member states to amend the EU's treaties, this ambition could lead to France being threatened with harsh economic and political consequences.

Bardella, the RN's president, presented his vision of the European Union as one reduced to opportunistic cooperation, with no common strategy or driving force. His "tricolor strategy," based on the color code of traffic lights – green, yellow and red – would aim to distinguish between three categories: Those sectors in which cooperation between European countries would be, according to the RN, acceptable (e.g. Erasmus, civil security and "major projects for the future"); those that could be acceptable, on the condition of new restrictions (e.g. free movement within the Schengen area would be "exclusively reserved" for European-country nationals, access to the single market would be conditional on the ability to "favor our businesses at national level" and measures concerning the European border guard agency Frontex); and those that would be strictly unthinkable (e.g. in matters of defense, diplomacy, and control of energy as well as of EU internal borders). "This strategy is intended to clarify our relationship with the European institutions," reiterated Bardella. "Our intention is to settle everything without destroying anything."

Essentially, the RN president has simply added a color palette to the "model" that his party has been promoting since it abandoned the idea of a "Frexit": A project for a "European alliance of free and sovereign nations." A sort of buffet-style Europe in which states would be free to pick and choose whether to participate – or not – in "industrial, economic and scientific cooperation" and other "projects for the future." A model so loose and non-binding that the British could rejoin it, according to the party's president, who had celebrated Brexit in 2020. Contrary to the RN's 2019 European election program, the European Commission would not be abolished but would lose its prerogative to initiate legislation, and would be reduced to a mere general secretariat.

You have 61.68% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.