The French political situation, as is often the case, is splashing Belgian politics (especially French-speaking) and is creating, this time, a certain unease among Les Engagés. Since Sunday evening and the victory of the extreme right (the National Rally – RN) in the first round of the legislative elections, French political leaders have been divided between two positions. The first is the “neither-nor”, neither the extreme right nor the extreme left. The second promotes the total and unconditional blockade of the extreme right, perceived as the main adversary of democracy, even if it means supporting the left-wing alliance (the New Popular Front – NFP) within which we find the radical left of LFI (La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s party).
For François Bayrou, the leader of the centrist Modem (allies of President Macron), there will clearly be no automatic rallying to the opponents of the far-right candidates in the second round if they carry the LFI label.We need to look at it constituency by constituency.”he said Sunday evening on TF1.
Belgian parties position themselves after the success of the extreme right in France
Benoît Lutgen’s (Les Engagés) blood boiled when he read this statement.Faced with the extremes and the possible arrival of the RN in power, our freshly new European partner, François Bayrou, in an absolutely unworthy and unacceptable ambiguity! Is this the European Democratic Party (EDP)?the former MEP for the Engagés, who became a federal MP again following the elections of June 9, got carried away on X (ex-Twitter).
Maxime Prévot sets the record straight
Benoît Lutgen is known to be a visceral opponent of the extreme right, as a family heritage requires. His reaction is not surprising. But that is not all. The Engagés recently announced that they were leaving the European People’s Party (EPP) to join the European Democratic Party (EDP), which is chaired by François Bayrou and is a phalanx of the Renew group where the MR also sits in the European Parliament. This transfer was the subject of a lively debate at the Engagés party office two weeks ago. Among the people who opposed it: Benoît Lutgen.
The Engagés leave the European People’s Party to join Renew, where the MR already sits. This decision is not unanimous internally
With this reaction, it is the first time that the Bastognard publicly criticizes a decision taken by its president Maxime Prévot since he handed over the leadership of the party to him five and a half years ago. Mr. Prévot, however, wanted to clear things up on Monday morning.
“In the face of the extreme right, there is no room for procrastination: we must block it by ensuring that the candidate ranked highest among the other parties is supported by all the others. Even if the extreme left’s project is not likely to excite us, that’s an understatement…”he said in a reaction communicated to Free.
“The extreme right is the enemy of democracy, it will never be the solutionsupported, on X, Yvan Verougstraete, the new European deputy of the Engagés who pushed for his party to join the PDE of Français Bayrou. We must do everything to oppose it! Certainly, LFI is a political adversary, dangerous, but the absolute priority: to block fascism, for living together, for our fundamental values.”
Off-mic, a Committed member also points out that the Belgian centrists, if they had remained in the EPP, would have been even more embarrassed by the position of one of its members, François-Xavier Bellamy: the leader of LR (the traditional French right) in Europe, had implied that he was even ready to vote in favour of the RN in the second round…
