Marine le Pen/Eric Zemmour : After France, the French far right is coming for Europe by Emma Dedorson
This time there are two French far-right presidential candidates: Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour. They both claim they will win the April election – even though the polls say otherwise.
However, the presidential race is not their last battle. In June, the French legislative elections are held and further ahead: the European parliamentary elections. The French far-right is now building momentum.
EUobserver met both candidates. Marine Le Pen is relaxed in front of the foreign press. She has done this her whole life.
« This is my third personal presidential election but the seventh presidential campaign I have participated in, » Marine Le Pen says, in reference to the four presidential elections her father Jean-Marie Le Pen participated in before she took over the leadership of what was then called the National Front.
They have since renamed the party in order to revamp the party’s image and to distance from the anti-semitic and racist reputation her rabble-rousing father continues to uphold to this day, with a seemingly never ending stream of hate-speech convictions.
In 2015 the National Front that Jean-Marie Le Pen once founded became the Rassemblement National [National Rally], presided over by Marine Le Pen. The party’s support has grown ever since. Even though her father has been expelled from the party and it needed to be rebranded, she is not ashamed of its past. READ MORE