French President Emmanuel Macron picked Valérie Hayer to be his party’s lead candidate in June’s European elections, party operatives told POLITICO, vying for a candidate to help Renaissance connect with angry farmers who have been protesting across France.
The official announcement is expected on Thursday.
Hayer, 37, is relatively unknown to the French public, but an aide to the president emphasized that her policy expertise and personal background made her the right person to lead the campaign.
“As the daughter and granddaughter of farmers, Hayer has things to say on current events,” the aide said, referring to the ongoing farmers’ protests.
Hayer was elected the head of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament earlier this year, replacing Stéphane Séjourné after his appointment as France’s foreign minister. A lawyer by trade, she joined the European Parliament in 2019 after previously serving only in local politics.
Hayer’s upcoming appointment, which has been reported in multiple media outlets over the past week, is set to be confirmed by Renaissance’s executive committee. Campaign posters ready for use and seen by POLITICO feature the lead candidate’s image and bear the slogan Besoin d’Europe (A Need For Europe).
According to two party operatives who spoke to POLITICO, outgoing European Parliament member Bernard Guetta, a former journalist with a focus on foreign affairs, could rank second on the pro-Macron camp’s EU election list this time around, which was not expected.
“With two wars on our borders and the United States taking a step back, the European elections in June will, for the first time, focus on immediate issues of common security,” Guetta wrote last month in a Libération opinion piece. Macron has put the war in Ukraine back at the forefront of French politics with his statements opening the door to sending Western troops. That strategy clearly targets the National Rally and its ambiguous position on Russia and support for Ukraine.
The list will also include the party’s 2019 lead candidate, Nathalie Loiseau. Séjourné, who had been expected to be picked as lead candidate prior to joining the government, will also be included, but lower down the list.
In the run-up to the EU election, Macron has increasingly shifted his policies to appeal to right-wing voters. He has also backtracked on environmental targets since the start of the farmers’ movement. This has led to uncertainty around what role Pascal Canfin, who chairs the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety in the European Parliament, will play in the EU campaign.
Canfin, the former head of the French branch of the World Wildlife Fund, ran in second position on the pro-Macron list in 2019 — but has since become one of the farmers’ unions main target for his push to implement green policies.
Hayer faces a challenging road ahead. In a poll released on Wednesday, her list is projected to receive 18 percent of the vote, trailing the far-right National Rally, led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, by 12 percentage points.
During a TV interview on Tuesday, National Rally Vice President Sébastien Chenu described Hayer as a “candidate by default,” while Bardella, speaking at the Paris International Agricultural Show, declared Macron as his “only adversary.”
Clea Caulcutt and Sarah Paillou contributed to this report.