The Prime Minister spoke for two hours on Monday with the main contenders for the Elysee Palace for a meeting to follow up on the conflict “and the decisions taken by France and the European Union to respond to it”.
After the solemn image of the deputies and senators listening standing, in their respective hemicycles, to the reading of a letter from Emmanuel Macron, that of the candidates for the presidential election seated at the table of the Prime Minister. The executive tried again on Monday to show his “spirit of democratic, republican management of the crisis” Russian-Ukrainian, debriefed government spokesman Gabriel Attal, present at the conflict monitoring meeting held in Matignon. While the President of the Republic was talking again with Vladimir Poutine to call for an end to the strikes against civilians in Ukraine, it was Jean Castex who was in charge of receiving the suitors in the race for the Elysée, a few hours after a Defense Council. Aligned against the head of government, Fabien Roussel (PCF), Anne Hidalgo (PS), Yannick Jadot (EE-LV), Valérie Pécresse (LR), Eric Zemmour (Reconquest), Marine Le Pen (RN) and Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (Stand up France). The nearly two-hour meeting, organized “at the request of the President of the Republic”, according to Gabriel Attal, aimed at their “give all the keys to reading the strategy” French, on the fifth day of the conflict.
Jean Castex had already brought together the presidents of groups in the National Assembly and the Senate on Friday, and the presidents of the defense and foreign affairs committees, roughly reactivating the framework of the “parliamentary liaison committees” put in place during the health crisis. Accused during the Covid-19 epidemic of making its decisions alone, behind closed doors of the Defense Councils, the executive is trying, during this new crisis, if not to associate, at least to inform the political forces. However, for the candidates, it was necessary to have collected more than 300 sponsorships from elected officials to receive their invitation card. Threshold too high for Christiane Taubira who still caps at 128 signatures at the last count established by the Constitutional Council and has “discovered this rule”a bit arbitrary, Sunday evening.
The campaign in the background
Already on the starting line, Nathalie Arthaud (Lutte Ouvrière) and Jean Lassalle had declined. Jean-Luc Mélenchon (LFI), who is due to return from his trip to Reunion on Tuesday, should be received on Wednesday. “It would have been fashionable for the President of the Republic to receive the candidates for the presidential election, the role of the Prime Minister is rather to work with the National Assembly, the Senate”, nevertheless argued, Monday morning on France Info, a Yannick Jadot decided to ask the Prime Minister “the type of defense weapons that we are sending to Ukraine”. Valérie Pécresse was, for her part, to meet Monday evening at her HQ “a strategic defense council”shadow cabinet style, with former defense ministers (Michèle Alliot-Marie, Hervé Morin and Gérard Longuet), the former Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, and MEP Arnaud Danjean.
The war in Ukraine logically relegates the French presidential campaign to the background, upsetting the programs of the candidates and leading everyone to take a position on the conflict, the sanctions imposed on Moscow or the reception of Ukrainian refugees. Absorbed by his diplomatic agenda, the outgoing president is still looking for the right window to declare his candidacy, a priori this week, but his team has already let it be known that Emmanuel Macron would not hold the meeting initially planned. this weekend in Marseilles. A debate without a vote on the Ukrainian situation must however take place on Tuesday afternoon in Parliament.