One week before the first round of the legislative elections in France, Jordan Bardella feels “ready” to govern and considers himself “the only credible alternative” to Macronism in France. And if his party, the far-right National Regrouping (RN) party, achieves an absolute majority, he will do so with a heavy hand to restore “order”—a word he insistently repeats—“in the streets and in public accounts.” To achieve this, he proposes drastic immediate measures, such as the elimination of obtaining nationality through the historic right to land, and also takes up ideas from previous conservative governments.
“I will never resign myself to fear and violence having the last word in the streets,” he stressed this Monday during the formal presentation of his government program, at a press conference in Paris attended by the senior staff of the RN: from its leader, Marine Le Pen, to the new electoral ally, the still nominal president of the traditional right-wing party The Republicans, Éric Ciotti. “I will be the prime minister who puts authority at the heart of government action, who will act to rule out predators and protect all French people, especially women,” he assured when outlining his program, the main measures of which have already been announced by the last week in various interviews. Security, along with the “control” of immigration, is one of the pillars of the RN policy.
Faced with the “capitulation of Macron in all domains” and the “wilding” of the country (a term also frequently used by the Macronist Government), Bardella has set as one of his priorities – “emergencies”, he calls them – the “restoration of the republican order and the return of security everywhere and for all French people.” To this end, he promises a “big Bang of authority” wherever it is necessary, such as in schools, as well as zero tolerance for crime and measures from the moment he comes to power to contain immigration that he repeatedly identifies as one of the factors of insecurity in the country. In his program there is no trace of an economic calculation that estimates the cost of his measures.
Bardella reiterated this Monday that he will only govern if he achieves an absolute majority, but he has not made it clear what he will do if he falls short of just a handful of deputies from the 289 seats he has set as a goal, as some surveys indicate. In any case, he has indicated that, if he is prime minister, he will be “respectful of the institution” that President Macron embodies, but that he will never be a “collaborator” of the head of state. This, for his part, has assured in a “letter” published in the regional press that, whatever happens after the second round on July 7, he plans to finish his mandate and act as “protector” of the Republic. . “You can trust me to act until May 2027 as president,” says Macron, whose own camp has harshly criticized his decision to bring forward the elections and is doing everything possible to separate his campaign from his image.
The RN candidate wants to mark two moments of action: one of “emergencies”, with measures to be applied as soon as he assumes power, and another of “reforms”, to be undertaken starting in the fall with bills and even constitutional reforms if necessary. necessary. Among the emergencies he has established the elimination of the right to land, that is, the right of nationality for those born in French territory, despite requiring a law for this. According to the historian and political scientist Patrick Weil in a forum in Le Mondeof a law in force in the country since 1515 and that “not even the Vichy regime [la Francia colaboracionista con la Alemania de Hitler] “He wanted to question.” But for Bardella, it is an automatic right that “is not justified in a world of 8 billion people,” especially given the “inability to integrate” these people into France.
Other priority immigration measures are the replacement of medical aid to migrants with mere “emergency aid”; the “toughening” of the conditions for family reunification, the suspension of all regulations on irregular immigrants – “clandestine”, they are described in their program – by the prefects or extending the periods of administrative detention. Bardella also promises to facilitate the deportation of foreign criminals by reinstating the crime of “illegal residence.” “We cannot violate French laws and the hospitality of our fellow citizens with impunity,” she justified.
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Referendum to review the Constitution
As he explained, if he becomes prime minister, he will try to “convince the president,” Emmanuel Macron, to organize a referendum to review the Constitution and make the immigration restriction measures proposed by his party “untouchable by European or international jurisprudence.” , which promotes a national closure contrary to European principles, including that of migratory solidarity stipulated in the recently approved EU Migration Pact.
Always in terms of security, Bardella wants to reinstate, as a deterrent measure, the imposition of minimum sentences for “repeat offenders, attacks against public officials or for drug trafficking crimes” that were eliminated during the socialist government of François Hollande, by consider them ineffective, and that it was already proposed to be reimplemented a year ago, without success. The aim is to ensure that those who commit this type of crime or repeat offenses receive a minimum sentence, rather than leaving the matter to the discretion of the judge on duty. Similarly, Bardella suggests eliminating public aid to parents of minor repeat offenders.
But Bardella, 28 years old and who always claims as a lesson that he grew up in a conflictive neighborhood on the outskirts of Paris, believes, as he highlighted this Monday, that one of the keys to fighting against this “decivilization” and growing insecurity in the country is to combat it from very early on. Therefore, her plan proposes, as she has said, a “big Bang of authority” in schools, with the ban on mobile phones, the reimplementation of “minimum penalties in disciplinary councils” and the creation of specialized centers for “students who harass or cause disturbances” to order in class. He has also defended the reinstatement of the so-called “Ciotti Law” of 2010, which proposed the suspension of family aid and school scholarships for students who caused repeated incidents at school. Bardella has also mentioned the possibility of implementing uniforms in primary and secondary school.
They are not new ideas either. The restoration of “authority at all levels, in the family, in school, in the streets” is part of a plan announced by the now outgoing prime minister, Gabriel Attal, in April. Shortly before, in January, Macron had defended experimentation with the uniform in a hundred schools and the learning of the La Marseillaise anthem. In that speech, in January, the president now accused by the extreme right of not having shown enough heavy hand to restore order, that word, order, as well as authority, were repeated over and over again in Macron’s mouth, in what the left denounced as another example of the authoritarian and rightward turn of his government in recent years.
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