The EU Commission president has won a comfortable majority from MEPs for a second term, but the Left bloc remains resolutely opposed to Ursula von der Leyen. We speak to Manon Aubry, the co-president of the Left group, about why she voted against von der Leyen, while also discussing international issues such as Ukraine and Gaza. Aubry, a prominent member of the France Unbowed party, also tells FRANCE 24 that President Macron must “admit that he lost the (parliamentary) election” and appoint a prime minister from the left-wing alliance – the New Popular Front.
Asked about the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen, Aubry says that the President of the European Commission “is not questioning herself in the politics she's been driving for the last five years. And what is the result? An unprecedented rise of the far right. That is the result of her policy”.
“Certainly I voted against the re-election of Ursula von der Leyen. And I will certainly be the first opponent to Ursula von der Leyen for the next five years,” Aubry affirms.
Manon Aubry is more positive about von der Leyen’s commitment to tackle housing issues, saying that “it’s good if the Commission wants to tackle this; we really have a housing crisis across the European Union. But you can't do that while having a big austerity wave with drastic reductions of public spending, including on social housing. So, there's a big contradiction there,” she says.
Aubry’s group voted in favour of the EU parliament’s resolution to continue supporting Ukraine, on July 17. But she cautions against any “military escalation”, which she says “will not lead to an end of the war.” While being clear that she does not support Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban’s recent self-styled peace mission, she says that “we need some leadership from the European Union to put the different stakeholders around the table and to start negotiating. There's no other way out,” she argues.
Aubry turns to the ongoing war in Gaza. She insists that “there is really an unbearable double standard when it comes to the application of international law” by the European Union. She asks: “how dare we search for a resolution on Ukraine, but stay completely blind towards what's going on in Gaza?”
“Israel is literally doing a massacre in the Gaza Strip and the European Union is refusing to have a resolution, even a debate” proposed by her parliamentary group. For Aubry, this double standard is “an attack on the credibility of the European Union when it comes to international law”.
Aubry has been outspoken about the “Pfizergate” scandal that has rocked Ursula von der Leyen since late 2021. And now, the EU's General Court has ruled that the European Commission had not been sufficiently transparent in securing Covid vaccines. This does not surprise Aubry. “Everything is decided, negotiated behind closed doors,” she says. “This means that we, as well as journalists and the people watching us – citizens and voters – they have no clue of what's going on.”
She elaborates; “I've always been fighting to say what's going on in these rooms. I'm proud of what I'm doing. People should be held accountable. Accountability is only possible if you have transparency.”
France’s left-wing alliance, the New Popular Front (NFP), won the largest number of seats in the snap parliamentary elections on the 7th of July, but fell short of the majority that would have made an NFP prime minister inevitable.
The NFP suffered a further blow when its candidate for speaker of the French National Assembly was rejected in a vote by members of parliament. “This is not respecting the votes of what French people wanted,” Aubry states.
“French people wanted to get rid of Macron. And at the end of the day, we have the same government, and we have a president of the National Assembly from Macron’s party,” she says, adding that this is “sort of a coup” by Macron.
“He needs to get back to reason and admit he lost the election and nominate a prime minister from the New Popular Front. This is a democracy,” she says.
Programme prepared by Sophie Samaille, Isabelle Romero, Perrine Desplats and Elitsa Gadeva
