The first round of parliamentary elections will take place in France on Sunday. Rarely have the political stakes been so high, both at the French and European levels. Rarely has the political situation been so confusing. Rarely has the future of France been so uncertain.
This is because a far-right party is on the cusp of power in France for the first time since World War II: The Rassemblement National and its allies have reached 36% in the polls, ahead of the left-wing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (29%) and Emmanuel Macron’s party alliance Ensemble pour la République (19.5%). He is worried about the elections in France, said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the ARD summer interview.
The RN is aiming for an absolute majority, i.e. 289 seats. If it succeeds, a new government would be formed the day after the run-off election scheduled for July 7. France would then be governed by a “coalition” with President Emmanuel Macron on one side and Jordan Bardella from the RN as head of government on the other. This power-sharing arrangement would be anything but consensual.
Such an election victory for the RN is also likely to cause a stir at the European level. In an interview with the “Financial Times“, Bardella promised to use the political “weight” of his election victory to reduce France’s contributions to the EU budget by €2 billion. “I want to achieve a refund”, he said.
Macron actually wanted to throw “a live grenade into the RN’s legs” with the announcement of the new election, as “Le Monde” reports. Obviously, he made a serious mistake: He threw the pin and kept the grenade – sadly, it is a grenade that will hit the whole country.
Get the weekend off to a good start.
No, it wasn’t Giorgia Meloni or Viktor Orbán this time. It was Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron. They delayed the discussion at the dinner on the first day of the summit by requesting changes to the strategic agenda. The Franco-German wish list covered several chapters, from climate to defense, competitiveness and enlargement. The chapter on climate policy, for example, was to be supplemented with the sentence: “We will press ahead with the implementation of the Green Deal and expand it further.” In the defense chapter, the reference to flagship projects should be deleted.
The strategic agenda sets out the lines for the next Commission and has been negotiated for weeks between EU Council President Charles Michel and the ambassadors of the member states. The document was largely watered down in order to achieve the necessary unanimity. According to diplomats, the Strategic Agenda no longer has the significance of previous years. Against this backdrop, Scholz and Macron attempted to insert some teeth into the document and remove others, such as the reference to European financing of armaments projects. The Franco-German requests for changes caused irritation, but were unsuccessful.
Charles Michel then announced the agreement later in the evening. The discussion then moved on to the top jobs. Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas had left the room, according to Michel’s entourage. On arrival, the heads of state and government tried to dispel Giorgia Meloni’s displeasure with the procedure for the preliminary decision on the personnel package. No one respected Italy’s Prime Minister more than he did, said Donald Tusk. All 27 member states are equally important, added Olaf Scholz. The agreement between conservatives, social democrats and liberals was important in order to be able to reach an agreement quickly.
Giorgia Meloni could live with the personnel package, diplomats said. Informal talks are taking place about a weighty portfolio for Italy in the next EU Commission. However, more than ten states have left behind interests, some of which overlap. Emmanuel Macron announced at a Renew meeting in the run-up to the summit that he wanted to send Thierry Breton back to Brussels as Commissioner. Luxembourg’s Christian Democrat head of government Luc Frieden did not want to comment on media reports that Olaf Scholz had asked him to nominate the Social Democrat lead candidate Nicolas Schmit as Commissioner rather than his conservative party colleague Christoph Hansen.
White smoke around midnight: “Mission accomplished“, said Charles Michel and spoke of a sign of unity. It was a great success that an agreement had been reached quickly, said a delighted Olaf Scholz. Giorgia Meloni abstained from voting for Ursula von der Leyen as Commission President for the second term, but voted against the socialist António Costa as EU Council President and against Kaja Kallas as Foreign Affairs Commissioner, it was reported late in the evening. Orbán had voted against von der Leyen but in favor of Costa and abstained on Kallas.
The summit began in the early afternoon with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a guest. The most important point was the signing of a security agreement between the EU and Ukraine: with the agreement, the EU promises to “continue to provide Ukraine with all necessary political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support”. This applies “for as long and as intensively as necessary”. Among other things, the agreement specifically provides for a new crisis mechanism. Should Russia use nuclear weapons or attack again after a possible ceasefire, for example, consultations are to take place within 24 hours at the request of one of the two sides. Possible support, for example in the form of arms deliveries, would then be discussed jointly. The EU does not promise direct military assistance in the agreement.
The Ukrainian president expressed his relief. “With this agreement, all 27 member states are committing themselves for the first time to providing Ukraine with comprehensive support, regardless of internal institutional changes”, he emphasized on X. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the agreement was a “sign of solidarity in difficult times”. Berlin had already concluded a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine in February. Similar agreements exist with the USA, France and Belgium. The EU agreement supplements these commitments.
The situation in the Middle East and security and defense policy were also discussed in the afternoon. The EU states would have to invest €500 billion in defense over the next ten years, said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Financing would be possible through higher national contributions or new own resources. However, in order to make larger investments, joint borrowing is also possible. The decision lies with the member states. The Netherlands and Germany in particular are resisting a new discussion on euro or defense bonds. In a letter prior to the summit, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called for a joint security infrastructure along the border with Belarus and Russia: a joint defense initiative is needed to protect Europeans today and in the future. In view of the scale and costs, joint financing is necessary. A demand that Scholz flatly rejected at a late hour. Eurobonds are not an option, he said, as the EU treaties do not allow for European financing of arms procurement.
The hot phase of group formation for the next European Parliament is underway. AfD and BSW, who are not yet members of a parliamentary group, are running out of time. Thursday, July 4, is “cut-off day”. By then, the political groups in the European Parliament will have notified the parliamentary administration of the names of their members for the tenth parliamentary term.
Even after this “cut-off day”, it is still possible to switch to political groups at any time. However, the reported number of members is an important indicator. It determines how many posts for Vice-Presidents, Quaestors and committee chairs a political group receives.
The members of the AfD and BSW are currently 97 out of 720 newly elected MEPs who have not yet joined a parliamentary group one week before the cut-off. In the last parliamentary term, 63 MEPs were without a parliamentary group. These included 13 MEPs from Hungary’s Fidesz and eight from the AfD. The European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure stipulate that a new political group can only be approved if it has at least 23 members from at least six member states.
Most MEPs want to be a member of a parliamentary group. One exception is Martin Sonneborn from Die PARTEI. Already in his third parliamentary term, he is once again aiming for a non-attached status.
Group status is interesting for two reasons. It brings:
The parliamentary groups receive around €100,000 per member per year. The money is used to finance the parliamentary group’s work, maintain the group’s secretariat and pay for campaigns. The non-attached members also receive money. However, they receive significantly less per capita. In mathematical terms, members of the political groups are entitled to around twice as much money for their political work as non-attached Members of the European Parliament. The European Parliament’s budget article 400 regulates the details.
In 2024, the administration will make €67.5 million available to all MEPs (705 MEPs in the ninth parliamentary term; and 720 MEPs in the tenth parliamentary term). The allocation key for budget article 400 favors members of political groups. In a parliament with 705 MEPs, each of the 63 non-attached MEPs is therefore entitled to around €63,000 per year. Each of the 642 MEPs who were members of a political group was entitled to at least €97,000 in the first round of distribution.
This is supplemented by several thousand euros depending on the size of the parliamentary group. As the smallest parliamentary group, the Left Group is entitled to the most money in the second round with around €6,100 per MEP. In mathematical terms, each of the 37 MEPs in the Left Group is entitled to around €103,000 per year.
These funds are not at the MEPs’ free disposal. There are clear rules on what they can and cannot spend. According to the latest available annual accounts of the EPP Group, for example, it received around €16 million from the European Parliament in 2022. A large part of the money was used to finance the secretariat, which every political group is entitled to. The rest was used to pay for advertising material, place advertisements, organize conferences or issue invitations.
More important than the money, however, is the political influence that group status confers. The important posts in the European Parliament are allocated exclusively to the political groups, depending on their size:
The non-attached members are left out of this distribution. They are also left out when it comes to the organization of procedures and legislation in Parliament. This is the responsibility of the Conference of Presidents (COP), in which the heads of the parliamentary groups make all important decisions together with the President of Parliament. The non-attached members have no spokesperson. One of their representatives may attend the Conference of Presidents. However, the MEP only has observer status and is not allowed to vote.
Speaking time in plenary and in the committees is allocated to the parliamentary groups according to their size. Members of parliamentary groups receive significantly more speaking time. Members of non-attached groups make agreements among themselves on how to divide up their speaking time.
Non-attached members are effectively excluded from legislative work. They can become members of committees. However, the committee chairperson decides whether to grant non-attached members the right to speak. This is handled differently by the committee chairmen.
Non-attached members can receive a report, but this is very rare. They only actually receive a report if no one from the political groups is interested. Non-attached members cannot become shadow rapporteurs or coordinators.
This was certainly not French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan. The political bomb he detonated just one hour after the results of the European elections was intended to strengthen his camp in the showdown with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) – by seeking votes on the left.
Now, however, the opposite is the case. Contrary to all expectations, the various left-wing parties have managed to unite very quickly to form the new alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP). This formation includes the environmentalists Les Écologistes, the left-wing populist party La France insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French Communist Party, the Socialist Party (from which the two presidents François Mitterrand and François Hollande emerged) and the center-left party Place publique of MEP Raphaël Glucksmann.
The NFP has now become the second-strongest political force in the country. It is behind the Rassemblement National and far ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s party: polls put the RN on 36%, the NFP on 29% and Macron’s party Ensemble pour la République on 19%.
In a very short space of time, the NFP has become the alternative to the far right. It is the height of irony: Emmanuel Macron himself came to power in 2017 with the claim that he was the “bulwark” against the far right. Back then, he became president with the votes of left-wing voters who wanted to prevent Marine Le Pen. The pattern repeated itself in 2022, and now Macron is once again trying to play the “it’s either me or the far right” card. It is the reason why he dissolved the National Assembly and called new elections.
But this time something is different: left-wing voters no longer want Macron. They are worn down by the pension reform, the decline of public services and the draft immigration law, which incorporates ideas from the RN.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the ideas of the RN are being talked about increasingly freely in France. In other words, fear of the far right is no longer popular. And in a political environment characterized by polarization, a large majority of French people seem to be able to agree on only one thing: rejection of Macron. So much so that some candidates in the Macronist camp have refused to print his face on their election posters.
The left could achieve a very good result in the first round of voting this Sunday, according to an analysis by the Jean Jaures Foundation. The think tank is close to the Socialist Party. However, it is uncertain whether this will also apply to the second round of voting on July 7. This is because the left-wing alliance will have to win votes that are not left-wing in the run-off at the latest. And that could be difficult.
The problem: “the omnipresence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon“, according to the analysis. Surveys confirm this thesis: 51% of French people and 70% of left-wing voters believe that MEP Raphaël Glucksmann is an advantage for the NFP, while 81% of French people and 66% of left-wing voters believe that Mélenchon is a disadvantage for the alliance. This is because many French people are bothered by the fact that Mélenchon is present on all channels – as well as by his verbal gaffes and his polemics.
An example of Mélenchon’s rhetoric: in April, he insulted the president of the University of Lille, Régis Bordet. Bordet had decided to cancel a conference on Gaza organized by Mélenchon’s La France insoumise party because he was of the opinion that a calm debate was not possible in this setting. Mélenchon then compared Bordet to Adolf Eichmann.
There is also criticism within the left-wing alliance. Last Sunday, Macron’s predecessor, the socialist François Hollande, called on Mélenchon to back down in the face of the “rejection” he was provoking. “If I have a message to send, it is that Jean-Luc Mélenchon (…), if he wants to be of service to the Nouveau Front Populaire, must put himself aside and keep quiet”, said Hollande, who is fighting for a place in parliament.
Macron and Mélenchon have one thing in common: their unpopularity.
The first round of parliamentary elections will take place in France on Sunday. Rarely have the political stakes been so high, both at the French and European levels. Rarely has the political situation been so confusing. Rarely has the future of France been so uncertain.
This is because a far-right party is on the cusp of power in France for the first time since World War II: The Rassemblement National and its allies have reached 36% in the polls, ahead of the left-wing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (29%) and Emmanuel Macron’s party alliance Ensemble pour la République (19.5%). He is worried about the elections in France, said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the ARD summer interview.
The RN is aiming for an absolute majority, i.e. 289 seats. If it succeeds, a new government would be formed the day after the run-off election scheduled for July 7. France would then be governed by a “coalition” with President Emmanuel Macron on one side and Jordan Bardella from the RN as head of government on the other. This power-sharing arrangement would be anything but consensual.
Such an election victory for the RN is also likely to cause a stir at the European level. In an interview with the “Financial Times“, Bardella promised to use the political “weight” of his election victory to reduce France’s contributions to the EU budget by €2 billion. “I want to achieve a refund”, he said.
Macron actually wanted to throw “a live grenade into the RN’s legs” with the announcement of the new election, as “Le Monde” reports. Obviously, he made a serious mistake: He threw the pin and kept the grenade – sadly, it is a grenade that will hit the whole country.
Get the weekend off to a good start.
No, it wasn’t Giorgia Meloni or Viktor Orbán this time. It was Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron. They delayed the discussion at the dinner on the first day of the summit by requesting changes to the strategic agenda. The Franco-German wish list covered several chapters, from climate to defense, competitiveness and enlargement. The chapter on climate policy, for example, was to be supplemented with the sentence: “We will press ahead with the implementation of the Green Deal and expand it further.” In the defense chapter, the reference to flagship projects should be deleted.
The strategic agenda sets out the lines for the next Commission and has been negotiated for weeks between EU Council President Charles Michel and the ambassadors of the member states. The document was largely watered down in order to achieve the necessary unanimity. According to diplomats, the Strategic Agenda no longer has the significance of previous years. Against this backdrop, Scholz and Macron attempted to insert some teeth into the document and remove others, such as the reference to European financing of armaments projects. The Franco-German requests for changes caused irritation, but were unsuccessful.
Charles Michel then announced the agreement later in the evening. The discussion then moved on to the top jobs. Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas had left the room, according to Michel’s entourage. On arrival, the heads of state and government tried to dispel Giorgia Meloni’s displeasure with the procedure for the preliminary decision on the personnel package. No one respected Italy’s Prime Minister more than he did, said Donald Tusk. All 27 member states are equally important, added Olaf Scholz. The agreement between conservatives, social democrats and liberals was important in order to be able to reach an agreement quickly.
Giorgia Meloni could live with the personnel package, diplomats said. Informal talks are taking place about a weighty portfolio for Italy in the next EU Commission. However, more than ten states have left behind interests, some of which overlap. Emmanuel Macron announced at a Renew meeting in the run-up to the summit that he wanted to send Thierry Breton back to Brussels as Commissioner. Luxembourg’s Christian Democrat head of government Luc Frieden did not want to comment on media reports that Olaf Scholz had asked him to nominate the Social Democrat lead candidate Nicolas Schmit as Commissioner rather than his conservative party colleague Christoph Hansen.
White smoke around midnight: “Mission accomplished“, said Charles Michel and spoke of a sign of unity. It was a great success that an agreement had been reached quickly, said a delighted Olaf Scholz. Giorgia Meloni abstained from voting for Ursula von der Leyen as Commission President for the second term, but voted against the socialist António Costa as EU Council President and against Kaja Kallas as Foreign Affairs Commissioner, it was reported late in the evening. Orbán had voted against von der Leyen but in favor of Costa and abstained on Kallas.
The summit began in the early afternoon with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a guest. The most important point was the signing of a security agreement between the EU and Ukraine: with the agreement, the EU promises to “continue to provide Ukraine with all necessary political, financial, economic, humanitarian, military and diplomatic support”. This applies “for as long and as intensively as necessary”. Among other things, the agreement specifically provides for a new crisis mechanism. Should Russia use nuclear weapons or attack again after a possible ceasefire, for example, consultations are to take place within 24 hours at the request of one of the two sides. Possible support, for example in the form of arms deliveries, would then be discussed jointly. The EU does not promise direct military assistance in the agreement.
The Ukrainian president expressed his relief. “With this agreement, all 27 member states are committing themselves for the first time to providing Ukraine with comprehensive support, regardless of internal institutional changes”, he emphasized on X. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the agreement was a “sign of solidarity in difficult times”. Berlin had already concluded a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine in February. Similar agreements exist with the USA, France and Belgium. The EU agreement supplements these commitments.
The situation in the Middle East and security and defense policy were also discussed in the afternoon. The EU states would have to invest €500 billion in defense over the next ten years, said Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Financing would be possible through higher national contributions or new own resources. However, in order to make larger investments, joint borrowing is also possible. The decision lies with the member states. The Netherlands and Germany in particular are resisting a new discussion on euro or defense bonds. In a letter prior to the summit, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania called for a joint security infrastructure along the border with Belarus and Russia: a joint defense initiative is needed to protect Europeans today and in the future. In view of the scale and costs, joint financing is necessary. A demand that Scholz flatly rejected at a late hour. Eurobonds are not an option, he said, as the EU treaties do not allow for European financing of arms procurement.
The hot phase of group formation for the next European Parliament is underway. AfD and BSW, who are not yet members of a parliamentary group, are running out of time. Thursday, July 4, is “cut-off day”. By then, the political groups in the European Parliament will have notified the parliamentary administration of the names of their members for the tenth parliamentary term.
Even after this “cut-off day”, it is still possible to switch to political groups at any time. However, the reported number of members is an important indicator. It determines how many posts for Vice-Presidents, Quaestors and committee chairs a political group receives.
The members of the AfD and BSW are currently 97 out of 720 newly elected MEPs who have not yet joined a parliamentary group one week before the cut-off. In the last parliamentary term, 63 MEPs were without a parliamentary group. These included 13 MEPs from Hungary’s Fidesz and eight from the AfD. The European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure stipulate that a new political group can only be approved if it has at least 23 members from at least six member states.
Most MEPs want to be a member of a parliamentary group. One exception is Martin Sonneborn from Die PARTEI. Already in his third parliamentary term, he is once again aiming for a non-attached status.
Group status is interesting for two reasons. It brings:
The parliamentary groups receive around €100,000 per member per year. The money is used to finance the parliamentary group’s work, maintain the group’s secretariat and pay for campaigns. The non-attached members also receive money. However, they receive significantly less per capita. In mathematical terms, members of the political groups are entitled to around twice as much money for their political work as non-attached Members of the European Parliament. The European Parliament’s budget article 400 regulates the details.
In 2024, the administration will make €67.5 million available to all MEPs (705 MEPs in the ninth parliamentary term; and 720 MEPs in the tenth parliamentary term). The allocation key for budget article 400 favors members of political groups. In a parliament with 705 MEPs, each of the 63 non-attached MEPs is therefore entitled to around €63,000 per year. Each of the 642 MEPs who were members of a political group was entitled to at least €97,000 in the first round of distribution.
This is supplemented by several thousand euros depending on the size of the parliamentary group. As the smallest parliamentary group, the Left Group is entitled to the most money in the second round with around €6,100 per MEP. In mathematical terms, each of the 37 MEPs in the Left Group is entitled to around €103,000 per year.
These funds are not at the MEPs’ free disposal. There are clear rules on what they can and cannot spend. According to the latest available annual accounts of the EPP Group, for example, it received around €16 million from the European Parliament in 2022. A large part of the money was used to finance the secretariat, which every political group is entitled to. The rest was used to pay for advertising material, place advertisements, organize conferences or issue invitations.
More important than the money, however, is the political influence that group status confers. The important posts in the European Parliament are allocated exclusively to the political groups, depending on their size:
The non-attached members are left out of this distribution. They are also left out when it comes to the organization of procedures and legislation in Parliament. This is the responsibility of the Conference of Presidents (COP), in which the heads of the parliamentary groups make all important decisions together with the President of Parliament. The non-attached members have no spokesperson. One of their representatives may attend the Conference of Presidents. However, the MEP only has observer status and is not allowed to vote.
Speaking time in plenary and in the committees is allocated to the parliamentary groups according to their size. Members of parliamentary groups receive significantly more speaking time. Members of non-attached groups make agreements among themselves on how to divide up their speaking time.
Non-attached members are effectively excluded from legislative work. They can become members of committees. However, the committee chairperson decides whether to grant non-attached members the right to speak. This is handled differently by the committee chairmen.
Non-attached members can receive a report, but this is very rare. They only actually receive a report if no one from the political groups is interested. Non-attached members cannot become shadow rapporteurs or coordinators.
This was certainly not French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan. The political bomb he detonated just one hour after the results of the European elections was intended to strengthen his camp in the showdown with the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) – by seeking votes on the left.
Now, however, the opposite is the case. Contrary to all expectations, the various left-wing parties have managed to unite very quickly to form the new alliance Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP). This formation includes the environmentalists Les Écologistes, the left-wing populist party La France insoumise of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French Communist Party, the Socialist Party (from which the two presidents François Mitterrand and François Hollande emerged) and the center-left party Place publique of MEP Raphaël Glucksmann.
The NFP has now become the second-strongest political force in the country. It is behind the Rassemblement National and far ahead of Emmanuel Macron’s party: polls put the RN on 36%, the NFP on 29% and Macron’s party Ensemble pour la République on 19%.
In a very short space of time, the NFP has become the alternative to the far right. It is the height of irony: Emmanuel Macron himself came to power in 2017 with the claim that he was the “bulwark” against the far right. Back then, he became president with the votes of left-wing voters who wanted to prevent Marine Le Pen. The pattern repeated itself in 2022, and now Macron is once again trying to play the “it’s either me or the far right” card. It is the reason why he dissolved the National Assembly and called new elections.
But this time something is different: left-wing voters no longer want Macron. They are worn down by the pension reform, the decline of public services and the draft immigration law, which incorporates ideas from the RN.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the ideas of the RN are being talked about increasingly freely in France. In other words, fear of the far right is no longer popular. And in a political environment characterized by polarization, a large majority of French people seem to be able to agree on only one thing: rejection of Macron. So much so that some candidates in the Macronist camp have refused to print his face on their election posters.
The left could achieve a very good result in the first round of voting this Sunday, according to an analysis by the Jean Jaures Foundation. The think tank is close to the Socialist Party. However, it is uncertain whether this will also apply to the second round of voting on July 7. This is because the left-wing alliance will have to win votes that are not left-wing in the run-off at the latest. And that could be difficult.
The problem: “the omnipresence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon“, according to the analysis. Surveys confirm this thesis: 51% of French people and 70% of left-wing voters believe that MEP Raphaël Glucksmann is an advantage for the NFP, while 81% of French people and 66% of left-wing voters believe that Mélenchon is a disadvantage for the alliance. This is because many French people are bothered by the fact that Mélenchon is present on all channels – as well as by his verbal gaffes and his polemics.
An example of Mélenchon’s rhetoric: in April, he insulted the president of the University of Lille, Régis Bordet. Bordet had decided to cancel a conference on Gaza organized by Mélenchon’s La France insoumise party because he was of the opinion that a calm debate was not possible in this setting. Mélenchon then compared Bordet to Adolf Eichmann.
There is also criticism within the left-wing alliance. Last Sunday, Macron’s predecessor, the socialist François Hollande, called on Mélenchon to back down in the face of the “rejection” he was provoking. “If I have a message to send, it is that Jean-Luc Mélenchon (…), if he wants to be of service to the Nouveau Front Populaire, must put himself aside and keep quiet”, said Hollande, who is fighting for a place in parliament.
Macron and Mélenchon have one thing in common: their unpopularity.
