Former minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced on Sunday West France take the head of the support committee for Valérie Hayer’s Macronist list in the European elections in order to “mobilize, explain and convince” while the polls show the RN largely winning. Jean-Yves Le Drian, who was Emmanuel Macron’s Minister of Foreign Affairs for five years (2017-2022), after having been Minister of Defense under François Hollande (2012-2017), said he wanted to put his “name”, his “history” and his “convictions” in the service of this list.
This support committee, which will meet for the first time “in a fortnight”, “is intended to bring together very diverse political, academic and associative personalities”, explained Jean-Yves Le Drian. “The goal is simple: to mobilize, explain and convince. The national support committee will then give birth to fourteen regional committees,” he further detailed.
Valérie Hayer’s list stagnates around 16-19%
Less than 50 days before the election, Valérie Hayer’s list is stagnating between 16 and 19% according to the polls, very far from that of Jordan Bardella’s RN, around 30%. She also faces competition from Raphaël Glucksmann (PS-Place publique), located between 11 and 13%.
For Jean-Yves Le Drian, a former socialist, “the Glucksmann list is still a prisoner of the Nupes”, that is to say the left-wing alliance with the Insoumis, the PCF and EELV. “And this left leads to an impasse,” considers the Breton, who defines himself as a “social democrat of action”, “not of incantation and ambiguity”.
“If the Europe of the 21st century does not assert itself, it will fall apart”
For the former minister, the issue of the June 9 vote “is to know whether Europe will leave history or not.” “If the Europe of the 21st century does not assert itself, it will fall apart,” he believes. He thus warns “in the face of the National Rally which, for its part, proposes an à la carte Europe, with the sole program of unraveling the European Union and, in reality, a dismantling of the treaties. The result would be a Europe without collective force , nor sovereignty, with States delivered to the game of hostile powers.
In this same interview, Jean-Yves Le Drian confirms having been approached by Emmanuel Macron, of whom he is the special envoy for the Lebanese crisis, to take the head of the European list, which he declined: at 76 years old , “there is an age for everything,” he argues.