Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right and candidate to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the Elysee Palace, wants the European elections in June to be a referendum on immigration. She believes that she has the wind in her favor, with parties more or less similar to hers, the National Regrouping (RN), advancing throughout the continent. She also considers that at a time of global crises and a feeling of insecurity among some citizens, the elections to the European Parliament are an opportunity for those who defend closed borders and for nationalist and Eurosceptic parties.
“There are periods in politics in which you see great convulsions arrive, which announce the end of an era, of a system,” Le Pen said this Sunday at a massive rally in Marseille to launch the electoral campaign of Jordan Bardella, his right hand and number one on the RN list. At 28 years old, the candidate and president of the RN is one of the prodigy children of French politics – the other is Gabriel Attal who, at 34 years old, is the youngest prime minister of the Fifth Republic, after his appointment in January by President Emmanuel Macron. “It is evident,” Bardella added in his speech, “that [estas elecciones] “They constitute a referendum against migratory submergence.”
The European elections, convened between June 6 and 9, are, for Le Pen, a prelude to the French presidential elections of 2027. She trusts that a good result will represent another step in the long process of normalization of the RN and will consolidate it as only alternative to whoever succeeds Macron in the government field, who, after two five-year terms, cannot run again.
Among the thousands of attendees at the rally – 8,000, according to Bardella; The pavilion was full – there were many young people, many national flags. “Marine, Marine!” they shouted. “Jordan, Jordan!” They danced, drank beer, sang The marsellesa. “This is the only party close to the people,” said Marjorie Davidaud, 23 years old and a member since she was 15. “What unites us is the love for France and the conservation of our traditions. France is 1,000 years of history, not just 60 like Europe,” added Théo Marquez, 18.
The extreme right feels strong, more than ever. Euphoric. What caught the most attention this Sunday in Marseille—a left-wing city in a region with strong Lepenist roots—was the joy. No trace of the anger that is associated with the extreme right or the bad mood. As if, after so many years, so many defeats, so many times feeling stigmatized, so much hearing that they are extreme right and a threat to democracy, they were finally a normal party. For millions of French people they already are.
The RN is the undisputed favorite for the European Championships in June. If they were held today, Bardella’s list would obtain 29% of votes, according to the latest survey by the Ifop institute. The Macronist list, headed by MEP Valérie Hayer, would add 19%. The strategy of the Macronists to avert catastrophe at the polls is to denounce the RN as incompetent and incoherent, and remember its links with Russia.
“After the European elections, there will be no need to make projections for the presidential elections,” says Jean-Yves Camus, co-director of the Observatory of Political Radicalities at the Jean Jaurès Foundation, by telephone. Camus recalls that, historically, the European elections are a favorable form of scrutiny for the RN, as they were for the National Front (FN), founded by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie. In France they have a function comparable to the midterm elections in the United States: they allow those who govern to be sanctioned. Le Pen Sr.’s first electoral success was precisely the European elections, those of 1984, in which the FN obtained 11%. The daughter’s RN has been the party with the most votes in France in the European elections since 2014.
The 2024 European elections could culminate for the RN a stage that began in 2022, when Marine Le Pen qualified for the second round of the presidential elections for the second time and obtained more than 13 million votes, 42%. In the legislative elections, 88 Lepenist deputies were elected, forming the first opposition group to Macron. In addition, they have followed strict discipline to avoid outbursts and give an image of seriousness.
With each crisis, they move forward. The movement against pension reform? Like the left, they were against it, but they avoided joining the parliamentary noise and taking to the streets. The riots in the suburb? They served to affirm that they confirmed their predictions about the fracture of France and the dangers of immigration, although those who participated in the riots were not immigrants. The war in the Middle East? Le Pen joined the great march on November 12 against anti-Semitism, which, in the eyes of many French, served to wash away the anti-Semitic past of a party founded by Nazi collaborators. The agricultural protests? An opportunity to charge against the EU’s environmental policies, which supposedly harm the countryside, and to establish themselves as defenders of the peasants, a symbol, in the words of Bardella, of “a modest and dignified France, a France that does not decide to disappear.” .
There are polls that predict Le Pen’s victory in the presidential elections, but Camus warns: “It is a mistake to foresee it in advance.” And he points out that between the 42% that Le Pen achieved in the 2022 presidential elections and the 50% plus 1 vote necessary to be president, there is “a chasm.” And perhaps the most difficult to overcome: the one that consists of turning the RN into an interclass and catch-all party, like the great social democratic and Christian democratic formations of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. “Her victory is not a fatality,” adds the political scientist, “but if Marine Le Pen’s opponents want to win, they must come down to earth a little and look at the problems that cause popular discontent.” The expert believes that describing the RN as “Russia’s party” is not enough.
In Marseille, Le Pen and Bardella attacked what the candidate has baptized as the “vonderlayismo”, alluding to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. In her view, this form of macronism at the EU level is a doctrine that erodes the sovereignty of States. Given this, they no longer advocate, as they did until 2019, the Frexit (France’s departure from the EU). The goal now is to transform the EU from within. For the RN, the enemy is European environmental policies, as well as immigration policies that, according to his argument, lead to an opening of borders and flooding Europe with foreigners.
“It is up to the French, and only them, to decide who can enter our soil, who can stay, and who cannot,” defended Bardella. Her speech was interrupted several times by thousands of activists and sympathizers chanting “We are at home!” (we are in our house); a song from the old National Front. Some traditions never die.
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