This Thursday morning, on “On the other hand, to go and debate with the big bosses of Medef, Jordan Bardella is there! », she squeaks. For the first time in the campaign, the seven main leaders met in the employers' union auditorium in front of more than 200 members for more than two and a half hours of dense exchanges. A first confrontation - there will be others - which aimed more at sending messages of love to entrepreneurial decision-makers than at winning votes among the general public.
“I am told that I must reassure economic circles, two minutes seem a little short to me,” attacks directly in his introductory remarks Jordan Bardella, for whom this is already the fifth campaign performance in front of business circles, reputed to be hostile to the RN . His project ? “Growth, growth and growth!” », insists the one who claims to have “the ambition to unlock the constraints which weigh on production”.
Touching the heartstrings of bosses
The socialist Raphaël Glucksmann also wants Europe to once again become “a continent of producers and not just consumers”. Marion Maréchal Le Pen (Reconquête), while assuming “Eurocritic”, warns that she will not fall “into the caricature” of blaming the EU for “economic degradation”. Even the Insoumise Manon Aubry has the luxury of mischievously quoting in the introduction… the former boss of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, when he said in 2022 of Jean-Luc Mélenchon that he was “ready to govern”. Only the ecologist Marie Toussaint warns: “The economy cannot free itself from the limits of the planet. (…) Some at Medef are playing with global warming (…). Their time is running out. »
The quasi-unanimity on the surface on the need for Europe quickly fades when François-Xavier Bellamy, more offensive than usual, blurts out about his rivals: “It amuses me to hear them all say that they are for simplification. » An objective incompatible, according to him, with the defense of the Green Deal supported by the three left-wing candidates as well as Valérie Hayer. One way for the LR candidate, keen to revive a left-right divide, to place the Renaissance candidate on the left side. And to appeal to right-wing Macronist voters.
To strike a chord with the bosses, Marie Toussaint also mentions economic interests. A three-degree warming of the global climate is “260 billion euros per year”, a “cost for your businesses”, she warns. “We're not here to annoy the world, but why are these standards there? Because we have no choice,” she said later, to explain her reluctance to simplify standards.
Free trade treaties under debate
“There will be no business on a planet that is dead,” says Manon Aubry. “It's still strange to be in front of business leaders and wonder whether we should produce more or less,” pretends to be surprised by Jordan Bardella who describes, in tune with Bellamy or Maréchal, the Green Pact as an “industrial and energy decline pact”.
Next comes the sensitive question of free trade treaties to which the business world is attached. On the platform, only Valérie Hayer defends them. She prefers to speak of “fair exchange” and separates “bad agreements”, as with Mercosur, from “good agreements”, as with Chile. And to attack the right which voted in the Senate against the free trade treaty with Canada.
On the defensive, François-Xavier Bellamy recalls that even François Fillon, hardly suspected of anti-liberalism, was against. “If you are for the Buy European Act [which would be a response to the American Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and which would condition the granting of aid or access to public markets to an obligation to produce on European soil], you cannot be for free trade treaties,” points out Raphaël Glucksmann.
“I am not in favor of saying that free trade or protectionism would be good by nature”, cautiously advances Marion Maréchal who proposes a moratorium on existing treaties “with a view to renegotiation or denunciation”. “No one here is proposing autarky, it is not desirable, it is not possible,” Jordan Bardella tries to clear the air, who also develops the concept of “fair exchange” and defends “the idea of reciprocity” in the treaties. .
The RN targeted by its adversaries
In the second part of the debate, the darling of the polls sees himself more targeted by his opponents. “I hear some people here, around this table, saying that we must leave the European energy market, then no, that we must reform it, then leave it, then no, that we must leave it without get out of it,” Valérie Hayer implicitly tackles it.
When the RN candidate mentions “green, orange and red files” in which he wants the professional branches to classify the standards (the orange ones being doomed to be rewritten and the red ones to disappear), Raphaël Glucksmann takes it up: “The climate collapse, what color is it? » When Jordan Bardella says he is in favor of the union of capital markets [whose objective would be to circulate investments and savings between all member states] in the face of the fragmentation of Europe, it is the turn of François-Xavier Bellamy to go to the net: “I admire the agility, the flexibility, it’s quite impressive! Five years ago, you were for leaving Europe and the euro. Now you are defending the Capital Markets Union! » Smiles heard in the room.
“Little bashing and a very good debate. They all tend to agree on the need for European protection. Jordan Bardella said fairly consensual things and seems very European with Marion Maréchal who plays a bit the role of the old extreme right, observes a Medef executive at the exit. But maybe he didn't say everything..."