Due to the lack of union of the Nupes for the Europeans, Manon Aubry returns there. As in 2019, she will be the head of the list of rebellious France in the 2024 European elections. Obvious? In recent months, the rebels have tested the Ségolène Royal hypothesis and even a candidacy from Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself. Manon Aubry cuts it short: she formalizes her candidacy in 20 minutes.
For the second time, will you be the head of the list of rebellious France in the European elections?
I am proposing my candidacy to lead the list of the Popular Union. I appeal to all the orphans of Nupes, all those for whom its creation represented hope. I want to tell them: “Join us, come help us!” »
You are the only candidate…
The rebels have already made me leader. We are now working on developing the list and activists will have the opportunity to vote on the list in its entirety in early March.
Can we say that you lead a Eurosceptic list?
The Europhile/Eurosceptic divide is a false debate. When the European Union imposes free trade agreements or budget cuts in our public services, do you think that we should say in principle, long live Europe when we are on the left? At the same time, when I fight in the European Parliament for the duty of vigilance of multinationals or for the definition of rape in a text to combat violence against women, I fight against Emmanuel Macron who claims to be a Europhile but is the first to block progress. What is needed is a clear break with liberal Europe, that is what I will continue to support.
You have just finished five years in the European Parliament, has that not changed your vision of European construction?
First, I was able to see from the inside the weight of the lobbies, who take advantage of the opacity of all negotiations at European level. We played the role of whistleblowers, for example on the great QatarGate corruption scandal which I denounced from the inside. The second thing is that I was able to see in practice how the balance of power plays out and how sometimes we can win them, as with the duty of vigilance. It is a pioneering text for multinationals to stop destroying human rights and the planet and a victory that I won after 5 years of fierce combat. In the European Parliament, we are also those who are holding out against the liberal liner which continues to move forward.
Hasn’t this ship started to move a little more in your direction in the health crisis with the Green Deal? Isn’t this proof that the European Union is not, by nature, ultraliberal?
The succession of crises (covid, energy, inflation) has brought to light the danger of the dogmas on which the European Union was built. Sometimes European leaders have echoed our words. But the reality is that the European Union remains addicted to free trade, austerity and the commodification of everything. We have to wean her. The energy market has caused our electricity bills to explode. Budgetary austerity has suffocated our public hospital. But no lessons were learned.
I also want to sound the alarm: after being suspended, new budgetary rules have just been voted on and will impose the worst austerity crisis ever known. Gabriel Attal will present his general policy speech on Tuesday, but he actually has a hidden agenda. It will have to impose on France 25 billion euros in savings per year, the equivalent of the elimination of more than 700,000 teaching positions. He is not Prime Minister, he is implementing the austerity obsession of the European Commission!
Overall, the project of the rebels for Europe is always to renegotiate the treaties?
First of all, it is a project that is anchored in concrete matters, to live better. Some examples: regulating the margins of multinational companies, particularly in the agri-food industry. Take energy and all common goods out of market logic. Tax multinational companies and billionaires, protect our public services from austerity. And so yes, to apply some of these measures, of course we will have to change the treaties and disobey them in the meantime.
Let’s take a concrete case which is current: the agricultural question. In your 2022 program, you say that the common agricultural policy (CAP) “promotes a model contrary to peasant agriculture, organic and respectful of animal welfare”. You are calling for a profound change in model, but can you make this revolution in the face of farmers who want more freedoms and fewer constraints?
The central question is the demand for dignity. Farmers want to make a living from their work. Simply that. The huge problem is that prices for consumers have increased by 10% when farmers’ remuneration has fallen by 10%. In the middle, there are some who gorge themselves. Farmers can no longer be the cash cows of agro-industry! We therefore need floor prices for their production and block the margins of agro-industries. About this, Gabriel Attal hasn’t said a word and continues to leave farmers in the lurch, it’s irresponsible!
On the CAP, the challenge is its rebalancing: 80% of CAP aid goes to 20% of the largest agricultural holdings, on the contrary we must help the small ones.
Ecological standards are not the problem, it is rather that they are not the same for everyone. We cannot ask a French farmer to be competitive with factory farms from Brazil, Kenya, New Zealand or Ukraine who produce their beef, beans, milk or chicken with even lower wages and pesticides. which are prohibited in our country. Faced with this unfair competition, we must embrace protectionism. I chair the only group in the European Parliament that has systematically opposed all free trade agreements. I’m fed up with the hypocrisy of all those who, like the Macronists, claim to be on the side of farmers in France but vote for all free trade agreements in Brussels.
You have already said that you are against Ukraine’s entry into the European Union. Is this not failing in our duty of minimum solidarity with Ukraine which is at war with Russia?
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, at no time have we failed in our solidarity with Ukraine. Our compass is international law, everywhere, here as in Gaza, and besides, double standards are untenable. Where is the European Union to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and apply sanctions against Israel as it rightly did against Russia?
On Ukraine, we have systematically supported financial and humanitarian aid, and I think we must continue to do so as long as the war lasts. But this is not the same thing as joining the European Union: bringing Ukraine in today means opening a new wave of massive industrial and agricultural relocation. The minimum wage there is around 200 euros. This is the land of huge factory farms. We cannot accept this unfair competition or else we will repeat the mistakes already made at the time of the previous enlargement.
Recently the LFI deputy François Ruffin and the probable head of the socialist list Raphaël Glucksmann began an “epistolary debate”, particularly on the question of Ukraine’s membership. Can this question become the next inseparable subject of the if not irreconcilable at least irreconcilable lefts?
No. We had this debate at the time of the Nupes program, on enlargement in general. We had set as a precondition the prior social, fiscal and environmental harmonization from above. And today, this condition is not met. What is being left-wing if not fighting dumping and unfair competition? We should all agree on this position and I regret from this point of view that some are moving away from the Nupes program.
There are four lists of ancient Nupes for Europeans. For the moment, we are far from the non-aggression pact. Is it going to be like this throughout the campaign?
The best non-aggression pact is a Nupes list. I’m always ready for it!
It almost sounds like a threat…
No ! It’s not a threat! You know, my subject is how we can tackle the Bardella-Attal duo. We see it, a fortiori on migration issues, we have Attal who rows, but behind, the one who holds the rudder is Bardella and the extreme right. This is the real threat and that is why we must remain united behind the Nupes program.
At the leadership of France Insoumise, you are somewhat the last to hold this position… Insoumise leaders almost describe the socialists and ecologists as ultraliberals. Are we credible when we have been clamoring for months for a single list with these same people?
There will be a list of the popular union on June 9 which will defend the program, the spirit, the strategy of Nupes and it is the one that all of rebellious France will support. Because it is the shortest way to build an alternative to the Bardella – Attal duo. And because there is urgency in the face of the extreme right which is at the gates of power throughout Europe.
We are talking about an Attal-Bardella duel for the Europeans. Gabriel Attal, you know him well: you are the same age as him, you were in his class at Sciences Po. What does his appointment to Matignon mean to you?
It’s not a duel but a duo, twins more than rivals. Already at the time Gabriel Attal claimed to be left-wing, but he must have confused the 6th and 7th arrondissements of Paris with the left bank, which he never left. This is not the world I grew up in.
Gabriel Attal became the first communicator in France. But what does he do in the face of the explosion of inequalities when we have the 42 French billionaires who have increased their fortune by more than 240 billion euros (the equivalent of a check for 3,400 euros per French person) and in the at the same time nearly 10 million French people living below the poverty line, including many students? Gabriel Attal is the Prime Minister of privileges of a world in which he evolved and whose interests he still defends today.