European elections ULTIMATUM:Macron ally admits vote between ‘destroying EU and loving it’

The parliamentary vote is being framed as a contest between far-right populists who want to stop immigration and globalisation and pro-EU liberals who want to reboot the EU project.  “On May 26, the French will have to choose between those who want to destroy the European project and those who love Europe and want to change it and make it stronger,” Mrs Loiseau told France’s Le Figaro newspaper. “Our project for Europe is a project that promotes progress and protection. What we want is a Europe that protects,” she added. 

The parliamentary vote is being framed as a contest between far-right populists who want to stop immigration and globalisation and pro-EU liberals who want to reboot the EU project. 

“On May 26, the French will have to choose between those who want to destroy the European project and those who love Europe and want to change it and make it stronger,” Mrs Loiseau told France’s Le Figaro newspaper.  

“Our project for Europe is a project that promotes progress and protection. What we want is a Europe that protects,” she added. 

Mrs Loiseau also called on voters to shun the far-right in Sunday’s vote, saying the track record of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement national (RN) party in the European parliament in the last five years was “disastrous”. 

The RN, formerly known as the Front National, is currently the biggest French party in the EU chamber. 

“Everything in the RN’s European programme – namely the restoration of national borders and monetary sovereignty – paves the way for a French exit from the EU. They should stop denying this and tell the French [they back a Frexit],” Mrs Loiseau continued.

Mrs Le Pen was forced to abandon her pitch to leave the European Union and restore the French franc after running an unsuccessful bid for president against Mr Macron in 2017, but remains fiercely eurosceptic. 

Most opinion polls, however, show Mrs Le Pen’s RN ahead of Mr Macron’s République en Marche (REM) party in the EU election race. 

But if the French leader comes second to Mrs Le Pen’s party, as polls suggest, it will hurt his ambitions both at home and on the European stage and strip him of all authority.  

A fervent europhile, Mr Macron has spent months trying to convince the French he can transform the EU into a bloc that better protects its citizens, its borders and the environment, although he has had to scale down his ambitions on matters such as eurozone reform.

But general dissatisfaction over slow economic growth, security threats posed by Islamist militants and a backlash against illegal immigration across open EU borders have hobbled Mr Macron’s EU efforts and boosted support for eurosceptic nationalists.

Migration in particular has been singled out as one of the key issues likely to sway the vote, and Mrs Loiseau has stressed that the REM would address the problems in the bloc’s border-free Schengen zone and suggest an “overhaul” of the Schengen area. Mrs Le Pen, for her part, has long called for the bloc to scrap its passport-free travel rules. 

The May 23-26 election is shaping up to be a showdown between centrist, pro-Europe parties like the REM and more radical right-wing and far-right groups such as the RN that want to shake up European politics after more than a decade of financial and immigration crises. 

The vote is important both as a bellwether of sentiment among the EU’s 500 million people and because it can determine who leads the major EU institutions, including the European Commission, the bloc’s powerful civil service.

source: express.co.uk