“As of tonight, I am a candidate for the presidential election,” Marine Le Pen said Tuesday evening on French television.
It was the day an appeals court in Paris upheld an earlier ruling against her for embezzlement of EU funds. Le Pen is the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN) faction in the French National Assembly. Her party is considered to range from right-wing populist to far-right.
Le Pen was ordered to wear an electronic ankle monitor following the ruling. Her decision to run for the presidency came as a surprise to many, as she herself had previously ruled out campaigning while wearing one.
She has already run for the highest office three times, losing the runoff election twice to incumbent Emmanuel Macron. Macron cannot run again.
Her decision also means that Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old RN party leader and Marine Le Pen’s political protégé, will not now be running in the election in the spring of 2027.
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An RN victory has never been so close
The polls for the RN look promising. According to the surveys, the party’s candidate is likely to win the first round of the French presidential election in April by a wide margin over the next-place candidate, with vote shares expected to range between 32% and 38%.
Former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe of the center-right party Horizons is considered the strongest contender for the presidency. If he faces the RN candidate in the runoff, he will need to rally both center-right and left-wing voters behind him to prevent an RN victory.
This has already worked in several presidential and parliamentary elections. Similarly, in Germany, political parties from across the political spectrum often form alliances against Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is now leading in opinion polls.
“But this dynamic has grown weaker and weaker in recent years,” Jacob Ross, a France expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations, tells DW. “The likelihood (that the RN will also win the runoff) is greater than ever before — that’s for sure.”
The RN wants nothing to do with the AfD
The rise of the Rassemblement National was made possible by a long-term strategy that Marine Le Pen has called “de-demonization” — moving away from the antisemitism and overt racism that characterized the approach of her father, the party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, and toward a more moderate, government-ready course that is accepted by middle-ground voters.
The more a 2027 election victory seems possible, the more the RN distances itself from far-right parties in other countries and instead seeks contact with center-right parties.
And this is where Germany comes into play. Both Le Pen and Bardella have clearly distanced themselves from the AfD in the past, calling it too extreme. They have even excluded the AfD from their joint parliamentary group in the European Parliament.
Yet both parties share a similar platform, particularly in their opposition to immigration and their skepticism toward the EU.
Praise for Chancellor Merz on climate policy and migration
Jordan Bardella met with the German ambassador in Paris, Stephan Steinlein, for talks earlier this year. And in May, in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bardella explicitly praised German Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative CDU and spoke of “ideological common ground.”
Bardella cited joint criticism of the EU’s Green Deal climate protection program and the handling of “migration flows.” The French politician explicitly welcomed Germany’s reintroduction of border controls.
This was a new development. In the past, RN politicians — like the far left in France — have repeatedly struck a tone that ranged from critical to hostile toward Germany. “Very often, at both extremes of the political spectrum, this any, he says, is seen as “one that pulls the strings in Brussels and through the European Commission, and weakens the French position through legislation and administrative acts.”
With his comments, Bardella wanted to signal to the German government — and above all to the conservative CDU/CSU bloc — that France’s RN has changed and will become a pragmatic partner and leave all campaign rhetoric behind once it is in government.
An RN election victory could cause problems
The German Chancellor’s Office remained silent on Bardella’s overtures. Merz, a former European parliament lawmaker, emphasizes the value of European integration and clearly does not place much value on praise from a far-right French politician. However, the German chancellor will, for better or worse, have to consider how to deal with a potential future far-right president in France.
Jacob Ross expects disputes in such a scenario, both bilaterally and at the EU level. “There will be plenty of potential for conflict on political issues,” he says. It would be a problem if France — which, unlike Germany, relies entirely on nuclear power — were to withdraw from the European electricity market. The same would apply if France were to actually slash its EU contributions drastically, as announced by RN leaders. The question then, according to Ross, would be: Would Germany have to pay even more?
Meloni as a role model?
However, the political analyst does not foresee an end to Franco-German cooperation. Things could turn out as they have with Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, he suggests. “Even before her election victory in 2021, the European press wrote that fascism was knocking on Italy’s door, but Meloni then quickly became a reliable partner at the European and bilateral levels — one whom Friedrich Merz describes as a strategic partner.”
“Of course, there will be a certain loss of trust and a lot of friction,” Ross concludes, “but it won’t be the case that everything will fall apart if an RN candidate actually wins.”
This article was translated from German.
