In Brussels over the last two days EU heads of state and government have been carving up the ‘top jobs’. France is represented by President Emmanuel Macron, whose party took a lashing in the European elections, diminishing further his international standing. By contrast, Marine Le Pen’s victorious Rassemblement National, now on track to win the 7 July general elections, was not present. When RN forms a government it will have to live with the consequences of the President’s decisions for at least five years. It is no coincidence, therefore, that on Wednesday night Marine Le Pen gave an interview opening the way to a constitutional struggle with the head of state on one of his most important roles: the so-called presidential ‘reserved domain’ of defence and foreign affairs. This has serious implications for France, but also for the EU.
The once-powerful Europhile Macron will soon have little domain either at home or in the EU
As 7 July approaches so too does the prospect of a hostile ‘cohabitation’ between a centrist and internationalist president and a right-wing nationalist prime minister, Jordan Bardella. There have been three largely pragmatic cohabitations under the Fifth Republic. In none of them did the incoming prime minister’s party set out in advance, to use Marine Le Pen’s terminology, its ‘red lines’ on how the relationship should work.
Marine Le Pen did just that on the prime constitutional issue of the Fifth Republic: the President’s role as ‘head of the armed forces’. In an interview with Le Télégramme regional newspaper, she put the cat among the pigeons by declaring that the president’s role in that domain was merely ‘honorary’, because according to the constitution the prime minister controls the defence purse strings. Thus, continued Le Pen, President Macron would not be able to send troops to Ukraine without premier Bardella’s permission because the credits would not be allocated. Senior Macron supporters, including the Armed Forces Minister, rushed to defend the presidential ‘reserved domain’. Constitutional lawyers agree that the domain remains intact when the president commands a majority in the chamber. However, it is nuanced under ‘cohabitation’, when collusion not confrontation must be the order of the day. The Fifth Republic is, after all, a dyarchy.
Le Pen’s provocation is a prelude to the RN also defining how the president-prime minister relationship will function in foreign affairs, which of course includes the EU. Its Euroscepticism was a strong plank in the European elections. Nor is it naïve about how a hostile EU is likely to treat an incoming RN government.
Marine Le Pen’s intervention also came at the end of a day in which the nationalist Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, voiced her anger in the Italian parliament at the way her right wing EU grouping had been excluded from the EU selection of president of the European Council, EU foreign affairs chief and president of the Commission. She likened the EU’s centrist and left leaning leaders to ‘oligarchs’ who had snubbed her by doing back room deals that took no account of the nationalist-right’s vote in the incoming EU parliament. Macron was a focus of her ire. But she extracted her revenge yesterday, when the EU set its five-year ‘strategic agenda’ and appointed EU commissioners. Meloni, whose international stature increased considerably after the European elections, is seen as the natural leader of the nationalist-right heads of government in the new EU Council of Ministers, soon to include Jordan Bardella. She will be their voice for their agenda: a tough migration policy that processes asylum seekers outside the EU; toning down green policies.
Meloni’s troubled relationship with a patronising Macron in and out of the EU chimes with Le Pen’s own experience. Albeit in different right-wing groupings in the European parliament, their teams have been talking for some time. So when last night Macron announced his choice for the powerful post of vice president in charge of trade, competition and industrial policy – the Macronist Thierry Breton – Le Pen protested. She claimed that such a nomination was not the president’s prerogative, but that of the future prime minister in a ‘cohabitation’.
Le Pen, like Meloni, is not amenable to stitched-up deals, particularly when Macron is the instigator. Doubtless she can count on Meloni to block that appointment. This will not be the last time that the duo come together to imprint their views on how the EU should be run.
There is much to bet on the EU increasingly resembling a brittle and divided France. The once-powerful Europhile Macron will have little domain in either. His nemesis at home, and in Europe, will be two powerful women whose rise is about to cross his descent.