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PARIS — François-Xavier Bellamy, the lead candidate for the French conservative Les Républicains party in the EU election, won’t be backing Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second term as Commission president.
Bellamy called for a “new majority” to emerge in the European Parliament after the election in June, and criticized von der Leyen for “falling short” of expectations since taking office.
His comments came a day after von der Leyen — of the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) — announced her bid for a second term at the helm of the Commission.
Bellamy, however, said his Les Républicains (LR) party, which is affiliated with the EPP, won’t support her. “[Von der Leyen] was not our candidate in 2019 but Emmanuel Macron’s,” Bellamy said during an interview with radio station France Inter on Tuesday. “LR won’t support her because her record falls short of Europe’s expectations.”
Von der Leyen will have to be formally nominated as the EPP lead candidate, or Spitzenkandidat, during a vote at the party’s electoral congress in Bucharest, Romania on March 6-7. While the absence of LR support likely won’t upset von der Leyen’s nomination — she is currently the only candidate and has the support of the German CDU, the EPP’s largest delegation, as well as Greek and Polish EPP members — it highlights the complex nature of EU politics.
While in Brussels the EPP, the Socialists, and the centrist Renew are in a de facto coalition, LR sits with opposition parties in the French parliament and is at pains to distinguish itself from Macron’s policies at both domestic and EU level.
“On agriculture in particular, the EU has been controlled by a majority … which advocated for more constraints, hurdles and oversight, an agenda which we opposed,” Bellamy said. The 38-year-old conservative underlined the EPP’s opposition to the EU’s nature restoration bill which led to some of the law’s key points being diluted.
In 2019, the French president opposed EPP leader Manfred Weber’s candidacy to become Commission president. This led to accusations that France was putting an end to the lead candidate system, under which the leader of the main European political alliance is nominated by the European Council to lead the Commission.
POLITICO’s Poll of Polls currently shows the EPP leading the race at a European level. In France, however, Bellamy and Les Républicains are polling around 7 percent — slightly above the 5 percent threshold to obtain MEPs.
