The RN stands wise for its first parliamentary niche

“The votes on our bills will say as much about us as about the sectarianism of our political adversaries”, predicted Marine Le Pen, Tuesday, January 10, on the sidelines of the wishes to the press of the president of the National Rally, Jordan Bardella. The far-right party and its 88 deputies will experience, this Thursday, the first day of parliamentary initiative (“parliamentary niche”) in their history. Failing to be able to hope to have a single one of the seven texts on the agenda adopted, the RN group intends to “establish its credibility”, faithful to its notabilisation strategy.

The other groups made it known in committee, as of December 14: they will not vote, in principle, the proposals of the Lepenists. At the Palais-Bourbon, the sanitary cordon remains rigorous. “If we had chosen to present very divisive texts with exclusively RN fads, on immigration and security, we could have understood this Pavlovian obstruction. But there, these are proposals which meet with a broad echo in the country”, protests the deputy president of the group, Jean-Philippe Tanguy. During this day provided for by the Constitution to allow the opposition to express their positions, the RN intends to carry out “common sense” measures, in connection with the daily concerns of the French.

Immigration and security, traditional markers of the RN, therefore give way to a series of predominantly social measures, all resulting from the presidential project of Marine Le Pen: incentive for companies to increase wages, suspension of low emission zones ( ZFE), extension of the right of visit of parliamentarians, wearing of uniform at school, or even proportional election of deputies. The only sovereign measure, the presumption of self-defense for the police is relegated to the end of the list.

“We must see this parliamentary niche as an opportunity to consolidate a work-study project by widening the range of themes on which we are able to speak to the French, explains the secretary general of the group, Renaud Labaye. No need to insist on our fundamentals, the text on immigration by Gérald Darmanin is coming. The “national preference”, a constituent notion of the identity of the party, should make its return on this occasion.

For now, priority has been given to purchasing power issues. The rapporteur of the bill, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, will plead for a salary increase of 10% up to three times the minimum wage in all companies in return for an equivalent reduction in employer contributions, deemed “balanced and consensual” .

However, none of the texts should succeed. That aiming to extend the right of visit of parliamentarians in social and medico-social establishments carried by the deputy Laure Lavalette, had however been the subject of a cross-party initiative during the previous legislature. “If the RN label is enough to disqualify a text that is in the interest of kids in child welfare and elderly people in nursing homes, then we have reached level zero in politics”, fulminates the elected from the Var.

Reduced to deploring the dogmatism of their opponents, the parliamentarians of the RN pride themselves on playing the game of a “constructive parliamentary democracy”. Those who voted for amendments from other benches pretend not to understand that the LFI deputies are rejecting their proposal for a moratorium on EPZs, when they are asking for exactly the same thing. “If this kind of text does not pass, it will complete the demonstration that our colleagues give priority to political logic over the general interest. In short, we win every time,” says Renaud Labaye. The isolation of the RN in the bays of the National Assembly would therefore not be a problem. Just the ransom of an institutionalization to be continued during the battle for pensions.

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