“I’m still in the race,” Jean Lassalle warned last November in our columns.
The former Pyrénées-Atlantiques MP, 68, twice presidential candidate, will lead the “Rural Alliance” list in the European elections, alongside the boss of the hunters' federation Willy Schraen, they announced this Wednesday in a daily interview in Ouest-France.
“Jean Lassalle will lead the list (…) I will be in third position,” declares Willy Schraen, who therefore gives up first place to the former Béarnais elected official.
According to him, it “embodies French cultural identity”.
“We look alike,” underlines Jean Lassalle, praising the qualities of a patron of hunters “highly esteemed in the rural world,” who “loves France, its traditions, and wants them to be perpetuated,” a “fight that I share”.
This rallying of the 68-year-old former deputy, who was close to François Bayrou before moving away, gives new impetus to the campaign of the Rural Alliance, which has stagnated since its launch at the beginning of December and remains credited with very high scores. low in the polls.
With his 3.13% in the 2022 presidential election, Jean Lassalle also calls for “being wary of opinion studies” which did not give him this high two years ago.
“We are not anti-Europeans”
Three months before the European election, the two headliners are rolling out their main proposals, with a strong national coloring: "zero interest loans for any installation of new or young farmers", price of electricity fixed "on the cost cost of the French productive mix” or even “reduction of VAT on hydrocarbons from 20% to 10%”.
However, “we are not anti-Europeans”, affirms Jean Lassalle, supporter of a “Europe which truly protects us and which stops destroying our professions, our cultures and our ways of life”.
On this credo, several other candidates from the Rural Alliance had already been presented in December, including the former rugby player Louis Picamoles, the mayor of Saint-Brès (Hérault) Laurent Jaoul and the “queen of Arles”, ambassador of traditions local, Camille Hoteman.
Concerning the rest of the list, which will have to include 81 names, “we will have no problem composing it”, assures Willy Schraen, slipping into counting “already around twenty farmers in its ranks”.
Jean Lassalle is the target of an investigation for rape and sexual assault, for facts dating back to 2010, during the regional election campaign.
He was heard in a free hearing in November.