Presidential: Marine Le Pen’s “Other Europe” – Presidential Election

11:12 a.m. The scene is starting to get classic. Marine Le Pen arrives at a run, cream shirt, black jacket, in the salons of a private mansion in the 8th arrondissement. A not insignificant place, a stone’s throw from the Arc de Triomphe, the subject of the recent controversy over the European flag which flew under the monument, provoking the ire of the nationalist. She greets Jordan Bardella, in charge of the RN during the campaign. Settles down and attacks her text: 12 pages, sent at the same time to the journalists present: she reads quickly, her nose in her notes, while sometimes offering digressions and additions to the written text. “You will not be surprised that this vision – that of Europe, editor’s note – is the antithesis of that defended by Emmanuel Macron and the presidential election will be an opportunity for the French to decide between two visions of Europe” , attacks the candidate. His has varied according to the rallies: Chevènementist with Florian Philippot, around the “double currency” at the time of the rapprochement with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, then centered on the Europe of Nations… Provided that France dominates, rather than to pledge allegiance, as she reminds us several times, to Germany, accusing the French President of being the “factotum of Madame Merkel”.

The Macron and Pécresse twins

Europe? “An ideological construction”, “a space open to trafficking and migration”… Clubbing a European Union “constantly more intrusive and more authoritarian”. Criticizing the management of the pandemic, “preventing member countries from immediately closing their borders”. Shortage of drugs, masks, the candidate illustrates the lacks by the drifts of globalization, France “Trojan horse of multinationals”. The real purpose of the EU? “erasing everything that, directly or indirectly, could recall our roots, our ways of life, our habits and customs, in short, our identities”. It sends back to back “the Macron and Pécresse twins” whose vision is common. In the end, few announcements, and especially apart from the “restoration of permanent controls at national borders”, no more exit from the EU. Above all, Marine Le Pen wants a “new European spring”, with a sovereignist, Hungarian or Polish front. In short, an “other Europe”…

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