Freshly-elected Renew Europe president Valérie Hayer is looking to address farmers’ concerns ahead of the EU election campaign while ensuring a “balanced view” on agricultural policy and refusing to reopen Green Deal files as right-wing political forces urge, she told Euractiv in an exclusive interview.

Hayer, only the second woman to take over the Parliament’s liberal presidency and the group’s youngest leader to date at 37, was elected on Thursday (25 January) morning, unopposed.

Her top challenger, Renew’s first vice-president Malik Azmani, dropped out from the race after failing to garner enough support amidst widespread concerns about his party’s links to the far-right in the Netherlands.

In an exclusive interview with Euractiv just minutes after her election, she said she is “aware of the weight of [her] responsibility” while vouching to “continue” Stéphane Séjourné’s legacy, who left Parliament and Renew’s presidency following his surprise nomination as France’s foreign affairs minister.

While seeking to preserve continuity, she also plans to bring fresh air to the group’s leadership style, at least until the EU elections in six months, as the results and new balance of powers within the group will determine whether she stays on as president in the next term.

“I have my own personality, so I will have my own leadership,” she said.

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Rallying farmers

Following massive EU-wide farmers’ protests, Hayer’s first message as Renew’s brand new leader is dedicated to Europe’s farmers, reassuring them of the liberals’ commitment to protect the agricultural sector: “We must ensure farmers have higher revenues, and support them through the green transition.”

“I’m from a family of farmers,” she said, affirming she is attuned to the growing anger. “It is very important to accompany farmers, from both a financial and human point of view,” she added, also asserting that “we must not oppose agriculture and environmental issues”.

Farmers’ concerns rest on heavy pro-environment regulations that run counter to their working realities, so they claim, and blame the EU’s Green Deal, a set of green legislation that has been rolled out at a fast pace in the past few years, for their struggles.

This narrative feeds into the French’s far-right relentless efforts in the past few days to frame the farmers’ protests as a pro- and anti-EU battle and use the Green Deal as a scapegoat.

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Pausing and reopening Green Deal

Contrary to the European People’s Party (EPP), which is branding itself as the ‘farmer’s party’, Hayer categorically rejected the possibility of reopening any Green Deal files already passed after the EU elections in June.

“We made a lot of progress in this term (…) we must not undo what has already been done,” she said, saying no to reviewing the combustion engine ban, which the EPP has placed as one of the centrepieces of its electoral manifesto, still under discussion, alongside calls to slash Brussels’ ‘red tape’.

Asked about Renew’s position on a “regulatory pause” for green policy, called for French President Emmanuel Macron and echoed in EPP’s leaked draft manifesto, Hayer stressed the issue will be discussed among all liberal factions in the coming weeks to find a common position for the campaign.

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Farmers taking to the streets are making headlines all over Europe, and this is not their first season of discontent.

Don’t trust polls

Renew, currently the Parliament’s third-largest political group, is projected to see its number of seats shrink from 101 to 84. At the same time, the far-right Identity and Democracy group is expected to surge and become the third-biggest political force, with a right-wing bloc potentially gathering enough seats to form a blocking majority.

“I see those polls,” she said, but “I don’t trust them […]. I’m confident that we will have a pro-European majority” come June 2024.

Despite Renew’s alignment with the right-wing forces of the European Parliament in some instances, such as a key vote on a Commission proposal to exempt some gene-edited plants from the GMO legislation, Hayer stressed the group will keep its distance from the far-right.

Collaborating with the right-wing side of the hemicycle “is not a principle, not at all”, she said, ruling out a more thorough alliance after the EU elections.

“[Renew] is the most clearly identified political family that fights against extremes,” Hayer slammed.

Read more with Euractiv

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