In this year of European elections, major European groups and national parties are looking for top candidates to face this election in June. Depending on political affinities, the campaign will focus more on Europe’s place in the world, the purchasing power of Europeans, the ecological transition or questions of migration and sovereignty. With the ministerial reshuffle in France, the Renew Europe group, that of the presidential majority, lost its leader, Stéphane Séjourné, who became Minister of Foreign Affairs. He is replaced by Valérie Hayer, until now little known to the general public: 37 years old, daughter of a farmer, she was elected to the presidency of this very large central group in the European Parliament on January 25, and will have to carry the priorities: “the famous Green Deal and the protection of the rule of law, fundamental freedoms, competitiveness and European sovereignty issues”.
“It is an honor, a pride and a great responsibility to represent the 101 deputies of this pivotal group without which no majority is possible in the European Parliament, and which therefore has a real force of influence”, confides Valérie Hayer to us . As the European elections draw closer, the presidential party in France has not yet designated its head of list: “We are not late. (…) The reality is that we are talking of Europe since the first day of Emmanuel Macron’s first mandate. And obviously, the presidential majority is active on European issues (…) and we will enter the campaign in the coming weeks.”
And, even if her name is circulating among the potential heads of the list, she does not confirm that she is a candidate: “Obviously I will be very active in the national campaign, but my priority is the political group from which I come take the reins. (…) The challenge is to maintain the unity and cohesion of the group on the next legislative files that arrive, because we still have work before the launch of the campaign, ( …) in particular on the Asylum and Migration Pact and the Stability and Growth Pact.”
The European Parliament has just voted for a directive on violence against women, but rape is absent, due to the strong opposition of around ten countries, including France, Germany, Poland and Hungary, which refuse to integrate the notion of consent into the definition of rape, a position widely criticized by the left and difficult to understand for citizens. If France opposed it, “it was for legal reasons”, underlines Valérie Hayer. “With my Renew Europe group, and even the French MPs who are members of the group, we are in favor of the inclusion of the definition of rape in this directive, (…) and we have a different reading of these legal arguments”, she tells us, “but it is still a very large text, with major advances for the protection of women throughout Europe, with the recognition as a European crime of online crimes, and in particular revenge porn , the question of forced marriage, or even that of genital mutilation. (…) The question of rape is addressed within the framework of prevention, it is a first step, (…) and we will have another at another time to continue moving forward on this question of the definition of rape.”
European farmers are showing their anger. Just like others before them, it is in Spain and Portugal that they express their opposition to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), too complex according to them, but also to the overly restrictive standards of the Green Deal. Valérie Hayer, herself the daughter and granddaughter of farmers, would like to point out that “in the CAP as it was negotiated at the start of the mandate, and which was adopted with the approval of France, the The idea is to have this triptych of farmers’ income, environmental transition and food sovereignty. (…) These mobilizations feed on discontent both with national systems and with European systems, and I protest against those who say that this is anti-Europe discontent. This is false: there is dissatisfaction with the European Union, but there are also very strong expectations at the national level.”
The national measures taken in France were brought to the European level by Emmanuel Macron, and it is thanks to this, she tells us, that “the European Commission accepted a one-year derogation on the question of fallowing and implement the safeguard clause on eggs, chicken and Ukrainian sugar”, whose low-cost imports since the start of the war have threatened European production.
Developments which, in a desire to ease this agricultural crisis, have provoked the indignation of certain European parliamentarians and environmental defense associations, worried that Brussels will back down on environmental ambitions in the face of agricultural pressure. Valérie Hayer insists: “We must not oppose – and indeed we do not oppose – agriculture and the environment. Farmers are the first victims of global warming and they themselves are one of the major players in the fight against global warming.”
Ursula von der Leyen also questioned the law on the reduction of pesticides, which had been rejected by the European Parliament but in favor of which Valérie Hayer had voted: “I wanted an ambitious text and I voted in favor of this text. However, we arrived in a situation where the alliance of the extreme right and the right in the European Parliament generated a text completely empty of its substance. So this text did not succeed and Ursula von der Leyen announced that she was withdrawing it. (…) We are waiting for her to make a new proposal for the next mandate. We must move forward on this issue and we all have an interest, collectively, in moving towards a reduction of the use of pesticides. (…) Farmers are not the first to be happy to use pesticides for health and economic reasons, but we must support them towards alternatives.”
The president of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament also wishes to recall that “if this law on pesticides fell, it is because of the alliance between the extreme right and the right, even though the fact of Europeanizing the reduction in the use of pesticides made it possible to better support farmers, particularly French ones. She denounces more particularly “the hypocrisy of the extreme right, with Jordan Bardella who says he is the first supporter of farmers in France. The reality is that the National Rally voted in favor of the CAP, that is- that is to say the regulatory constraints of the CAP, but he voted against its budget, that is to say the 9 billion euros allocated each year to French farmers. He also said, a few months ago, that “he was the first environmentalist in France, and today he says that we must scrap the Green Deal. There is an electoral opportunism which is quite unbearable, I find.”
Other parts of the Green Deal are blocked by this alliance of the right and the far right in the European Parliament, such as the law on the restoration of nature. Around twenty texts must still be voted on by the end of the mandate and risk not seeing the light of day because they would have been blocked. Valérie Hayer has noted an offensive against the Green Deal in the European Parliament “for about a year. An anti-Green deal groundswell for purely electoral reasons. There are texts that we voted for at the start of the mandate that we would no longer be able to vote today. This is the reality and it is extremely worrying.”
She concedes that even within the Renew Europe group, which she heads, there are differences on these subjects. But she assures that “the line of our group is very clear, in the majority and I would even say as a whole, we support the Green Deal, we also support the farmers”. A “at the same time” that’s hard to hold? She agrees, “but we must take responsibility for it! (…) We must see the Green Deal through to the end, but above all – and this will be the great responsibility of the next European Commission – it is now time to ensure that all the texts are implemented, that we have support measures for farmers but also other stakeholders in this area. This has also been greatly missed, and it will be one of our responsibilities, one of our main tasks.”
Program prepared by Agnès Le Cossec, Sophie Samaille and Perrine Desplats
