Failing to become PM, France’s Bardella seeks international stature in EU Parliament

The chairman of the new far-right group Patriots for Europe (PfE), Frenchman Jordan Bardella, will take a seat on the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET), which, according to his entourage, is an opportunity for him to gain a firmer foothold on international issues.

Bardella returned to the benches of the European Parliament, after the disappointment of French the legislative elections, where his far-right Rassemblement national (RN) came third, behind the leftist coalition of the Nouveau Front populaire (NFP) and President Emmanuel Macron’s camp.

The RN president took the opportunity to join the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“It’s a deliberate choice”, RN MEP Mathilde Androuet, who is very close to Bardella, explained to Euractiv. “Dealing with international affairs shows that you’ve reached maturity. It’s a subject that gives you stature.”

At AFET, Bardella will be joined by several of the most influential French MEPs, including Raphaël Glucksmann, who heads the Socialist Party (PS) list, Renew members Nathalie Loiseau and Bernard Guetta, and Marion Maréchal, who has joined the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (CRE) group.

He will also be able to count on the presence of Pierre-Romain Thionnet, the RN’s youth chairman and Bardella’s former parliamentary assistant, who now became an MEP.

In Thionnet’s view, “the Gaullist conception of the French Fifth Republic requires international/defence issues to be at the heart of the ‘leader’s’ concerns. As Jordan Bardella is the chairman of our parliamentary group and our party, it is natural that he should be in AFET”, he told Euractiv.

RN MEP Thierry Mariani, who sat on the AFET committee in the previous mandate, has not been re-appointed.

“Everyone knows that we don’t have the same assessment of the situation regarding the war in Ukraine,” he explained to Euractiv, referring to his opposition to delivering missiles to Kyiv likely to strike inside the Russian territory, or to sending French troops on the ground.

Alliance between Orban and Bardella

Renew’s Guetta also told Euractiv that “international issues are going to play a major role in the next term of office”, particularly in the context of the American presidential election in November.

In this sense, some of Bardella’s positions are worrying his political opponents.

“He was elected president of a political group that is entirely pro-Russian, anti-EU and anti-NATO,” Nathalie Loiseau told Euractiv.

On 17 July, the RN president came to the rescue of his new allies from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz by condemning the new European Parliament’s first resolution, which denounced Orban’s trip to Moscow as Hungary started its six-month presidency of the Council of the EU.

In addition to his role in Strasbourg, Bardella will also have to continue to control the RN’s internal organisation in the run-up to the 2027 presidential election.

However, his political opponents in EP are starting to ask questions, given that Bardella has been regularly mocked for his absenteeism during the previous mandate, particularly on the Petitions Committee.

“If he wants to build up his stature, he should start by working in the Parliament,” Chloé Ridel, S&D deputy MEP for AFET told Euractiv.

*Laurent Geslin contributed to this article. 

[Edited by Laurent Geslin/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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