PARIS — Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally won two key positions in the French parliament on Wednesday with help from French President Emmanuel Macron’s troops.
National Rally MPs Sébastien Chenu and Hélène Laporte will serve as vice presidents of the National Assembly, France’s more powerful lower house of parliament. The duo previously held those leadership positions — which involve setting the National Assembly’s agenda, updating its internal rulebook and sanctioning members — from 2022 to 2024.
Their nomination three years ago marked the end of the cordon sanitaire, a policy in which France’s various political parties banded together to keep the far right from power or refused to vote alongside its lawmakers.
Traditionally, leadership positions in the National Assembly are meant to reflect the body’s political composition.
But after centrist and left-wing parties worked together during last year’s snap legislative elections to block the far right from victory, the two sides once again teamed up to deny the National Rally top positions in the National Assembly.
Over the summer, Together for the Republic, the largest parliamentary group supporting Macron, reversed its previous stance on the far right’s exclusion, arguing that the firewall had led to the disproportionate representation of left-wing groups.
Yaël Braun-Pivet, the Macron-allied president of the National Assembly, endorsed the far right’s return in a clip posted on social media.
“In the temple of democracy, every voice represented in parliament should also be in its governing bodies,” she said.
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