Marine Le Pen’s protégé pitched the right-wing forces on forming an ‘alternative majority … against the left.’
PARIS — French far-right leader Jordan Bardella urgently appealed to EU conservatives in a letter sent Tuesday and obtained by POLITICO: The time has come to kill Europe’s Green Deal — together.
The letter went to a spectrum of the EU’s conservative political forces: center-right European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber, as well as leaders for the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists and far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations.
In the letter, Bardella — Marine Le Pen’s protégé — asks for the groups’ support in organizing a European Parliament debate on a « temporary suspension of the Green Deal » followed by a vote.
The Green Deal « will lock Europe into a consumer economy and relegate us to the margins of the world, » Bardella writes.
Bardella’s letter notes that if the four right-wing groups join up, they’d have a majority of seats in Parliament, calling it an « alternative majority » that is « possible and necessary against the left which, through ideology, threatens growth. »
The European far-right has long opposed the Green Deal, a set of ambitious policies meant to fight climate change, arguing the rules will crater the EU’s economy. But their green vitriol always butted up against the EU’s broad consensus on the continent’s climate targets.
Bardella’s overtures show the far-right senses it may be gaining ideological allies in its anti-creen crusade. Just this month, EPP leaders and France’s own centrist government urged Brussels to walk back on core pieces of the EU’s green rules.
« A temporary suspension of the Green Deal would allow us to reevaluate its objectives, without destroying our continent’s prospects for prosperity, » Bardella writes.
But the EPP, the EU’s largest conservative political force, was quick to shut down any alliance with Bardella. The group’s Green Deal critiques are nowhere close to what Bardella is proposing, a senior EPP European Parliament member said Tuesday.
“It’s an easy question, » said German MEP Peter Liese, the EPP group’s spokesperson on environmental and climate issues, when asked about Bardella’s outreach. « To Bardella, I would just say, ‘No.' »
