Mathilde Androuët was taken by surprise. The European MP for the National Rally (RN), close to Jordan Bardella, did not expect to have to represent her party in Matignon on Monday September 18. Two days before, she managed the RN’s big political comeback in Beaucaire. And the day before, she took care of… putting everything away. It was through a simple phone call on Sunday that she was warned that she was going to have to talk about ecological planning with the Prime Minister, Élisabeth Borne, and all the other political parties, instead of the president of the RN or Marine Le Pen. On the table, she found herself seated next to Laurent Hénart, head of the Radical Party.
It is not that the RN considers ecology or the environment as a second-rate subject, it is above all because the party with the flame intends above all to let the government deploy its roadmap to plan the transition . Because, according to frontist strategists, each time Emmanuel Macron and Élisabeth Borne bring up these themes, Marine Le Pen and the RN gain points among the “losers of globalization”. “All of this is experienced as a whim of an elite by a people who must bear the entire burden,” asserts Mathilde Androuët, who adds: for rural and peripheral France, “it’s a political humiliation.”
Those close to Marine Le Pen also see similarities between the current situation and what happened just five years ago, just before the European elections: the “yellow vest” movement. “We must not forget that it was a tax on fuel which ignited the situation,” recalls a frontist MP. “And what is Macron basically proposing? To tax fuel to finance the transition,” points out Jean-Philippe Tanguy, deputy president of the RN group in the National Assembly. And the elected frontists are rolling out all the “anti-working class” measures: low-emission zones (ZFE), 80 km/h, the “end of the thermal engine”, “ultra-polluting electric cars”…
Mathilde Androuët did not remember much from her meeting at Matignon. “We cannot talk about ecology without a break with free trade,” she points out, which the government is obviously not doing. “There are several absent in what was presented to me: international contextualization, because we import half of our pollution, or even the French people, because they do not plan to consult the French with a referendum,” considers the MEP.
The ecological transition, frontist electoral fuel? Nothing is that simple. “In 2019, we certainly won the European elections, but our score could have been higher if we had captured all the anger of the “yellow vests”, analyzes a frontist strategist. We cannot not have proposals on the ecological transition. Otherwise, we risk missing the train.” Mathilde Androuët sees clearly that in the Frontist electorate, “the environment is a real subject, and particularly on health issues. Farmers, affected by the worst cancers, are the first to be affected.
For the RN, the roadmap is clear: become audible on ecology, and have coherent proposals. Several people are working on this subject: Mathilde Androuët, from the European Parliament, Andréa Kotarac, ex-Insoumis, parliamentary assistant to Marine Le Pen. Jordan Bardella, a great technophile, intends to make it a major focus of his European campaign. It’s about not being taken by surprise.
