2024-01-22 18:43:37
Somewhere in her head, Marine Le Pen keeps up to date a list of subjects which she believes were inspired by the President of the Republic by the National Rally (RN). It is a Prévert-style inventory which extends over time, and to which she will now add the question of the birth rate. Abandoned by the left for several decades, the pronatalist question has remained a priority for the right which, in opposition to François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, has tabled several legislative proposals aimed at relaunching family policy. In Europe, the subject has been preempted by the radical rights and embodied by Viktor Orban in Hungary and, more recently, by Giorgia Meloni in Italy.
In France, natalism has been a pillar of Lepénist programs since his first presidential campaign, in 1974. He is at the junction of two currents of the far-right party, the traditionalist Catholics and the identitarians, worried about the ethnic substrate of France . In the far right’s software, boosting the French birth rate is a way of saving European identity and avoiding recourse to immigration.
In recent years, however, only economic and societal motivations have been put forward by the RN staff. The rest of the far right assumes ethnic motivations more frankly, waving Nigeria’s demographic vitality like a red rag (it could become in 2050, according to projections, the third or fourth most populous country in the world) or the fertility of African or North African women in France.
“A service rendered to the nation”
Caroline Parmentier, MP for Pas-de-Calais and friend of Marine Le Pen, took up the subject with enthusiasm in the National Assembly: she was a long-time journalist for the national-Catholic daily Here and disciple of the Pétainist and Maurrassian Jean Madiran. If she is not won over by the term “demographic rearmament” used by Emmanuel Macron, she subscribes to the presidential ambitions: “That he wakes up after seven years is good, but we want action! France is entering a demographic winter, a one-child society, and that changes everything. »
The pension reform in 2023 was an opportunity for the RN to put forward its proposals to revive the French birth rate – and not the birth rate in France. The RN’s proposals are largely inspired by Viktor Orban’s program, such as the granting of a zero-interest loan of up to 100,000 euros for the real estate project of a young couple, the remaining capital being transformed into a donation to the third child – the RN estimates its cost at 2 billion euros annually. Others resemble measures already proposed by Les Républicains (LR) during the last mandates.
You have 35% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
1705971193
#advocates #revival #birth #rate #perpetuation #civilization