The French left-wing electoral coalition’s plan to disobey EU rules is “irresponsible” and could lead to Frexit, France’s Europe Minister Clément Beaune said Friday.
“If we choose our rules à la carte … the destruction of the European Union is inevitable,” Beaune wrote in an op-ed published in Le Monde.
Earlier this week, the far-left France Unbowed, the Greens, the Communists and the Socialist Party struck a deal ahead of the first round of parliamentary election on June 12, which splits constituencies between the four parties and allows their candidates to run unopposed by other left-wingers across France.
Under the agreement, the parties said they are “ready to disobey” EU rules, notably budgetary ones, to push their green and social agenda, and try to deprive French President Emmanuel Macron of a majority in the National Assembly, the country’s lower chamber.
Beaune said the concept of European disobedience is “misleading and dangerous,” arguing “it maintains the infantilizing myth of a punitive Europe, of a rebellious France chastized by a stern teacher from Brussels or Berlin.”
Beaune added that it is a “terrible confession of weakness” because it means that, “France would not be able to change the course of Europe, when all our partners know that the Union has never been so marked by our ideas.”
He warned that disobedience from EU rules means that a Frexit — France’s exit from the EU — “will happen” as the “logical consequence.”