Globalist liberals in France have reacted with rage over the move by several National Rally mayors to remove the European Union flag from their town halls following victories at last month’s municipal elections.
Several town halls controlled by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party sparked controversy this week by ensuring that the French flag reigns supreme on French government buildings, rather than the European Union flag. This included the town halls of Carcassonne, Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Harnes this week, Europe 1 reported.
The recently elected mayor of Carcassonne, Christophe Barthès, told CNews this week that “the only flag that is valid in my eyes is the French flag”.
The simple gesture, which despite attempts from globalists to prohibit, remains lawful in France, sparked fierce backlash from establishment liberals, including Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot.
Barrot, a French-Swiss politician in the Macronist centrist camp, said that the move represented a “betrayal of who we are.”
“There is no dissolution of national identity in European identity, no more than our local identities fade behind our national identity. Our affiliations are multiple; they strengthen, complement, and enrich one another,” he claimed.
Rather than France being subsumed and losing its identity and sovereignty to the supranational EU bloc, Barrot attempted to assert that the battle between Communist China and the United States of America was the actual threat to French sovereignty.
“It risks dragging us into wars we did not choose. Europe embodies a possible third way to which many countries in the world aspire. This flag is that of a possible hope; it is the flag of freedom, justice, and democracy. Like an assertion of our fierce will to master our destiny. Like an act of resistance to the brutalization of the world,” he said.
The flag, which bears a striking resemblance to that of the brutal Belgian Congo Free States colony, symbolizes the “ideals of unity, solidarity, peace, and harmony among the peoples of Europe”, the European Commission claimed.
“Today, it is also the symbol of our shared aspirations. Of our values. Of our shared ambitions. And of what we have accomplished together,” the unelected federal EU branch added.
National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said that mayors in her party will have “freedom of choice” over whether they keep the EU flag on their pediments. She said that in the 2005 French European Constitution referendum, voters specifically rejected the idea that town halls should be forced to fly the EU flag.
“A certain number of mayors consider that respect for the vote and the will expressed democratically by the French requires decorating municipalities exclusively with the national flag,” she told Le Parisien.
Meanwhile, National Rally MP Jean-Philippe Tanguy accused Brussels of “stealing” from the French public, given that Paris is typically contributes more to the EU budget than it takes back, at around €9 billion per year.
However, some on the political right argued in favour of keeping the EU flag, including Le Pen family scion Marion Maréchal, who noted that it was originally designed by a Frenchman, Arsène Heitz, and therefore represented “one of the rare references” to French civilization within the European Union.
She also noted that Heitz later revealed that the twelve yellow stars on the flag were intended to symbolize the Virgin Mary’s halo, rather than a representation of member states of the bloc.
“Our task must be to restore an identitarian dimension to the European project: the European flag is therefore not a symbol to be eliminated, but one to be reclaimed in the face of the soullessness of the technocratic EU,” she said.
