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Home , Marine Le Pen

special report marine le pen’s economic cure For the new leader of ’s National Front, the crisis is fertile ground. The media are listening; so are the mainstream parties. Part three of three.

France’s far-right National Front party leader Marine Le Pen leaves a polling both in northern France, March 2011. /Pascal Rossignol

By Geert de Clercq the CD vendor plays German oom-pah municipal plumber with tight-cropped hair, AMNEVILLE, France, Oct 7 music, and the sky behind the ochre clock was an activist with France’s leading trade tower is a steely blue. union and a Trotskyist for many years. Later mneville, a town in the Moselle Yet the single currency is a target for an he joined the far-left “New Anticapitalist region of northeastern France, does unusual politician canvassing stallholders Party”. This year he switched party again, Anot look like a fault-line in the euro zone. and shoppers in this town near the German but not on a leftist ticket. The smell of grilled chicken wafts over the border. He joined France’s famed far-right marketplace on a recent Saturday morning, Fabien Engelmann, a 32-year old National Front, and he was not the only one.

october 2011 le pen october 2011

This year, five trade unionists have joined the minority party that made its name with “OUR IDEAS … ARE SPREADING LIKE AN OIL SLICK.” the anti-immigrant rhetoric of its founder, protectionist barriers, and reassert the ’s Jean-Marie Le Pen. Since January, Le Pen’s supremacy over market forces. At the entrance to the National Front’s daughter Marine has been in charge of the Unlike her father, she is being taken headquarters, an anonymous building in the party, and Engelmann says she is a magnet. seriously by French opinion makers. The suburb of , stands a small statue “It really is the arrival of Marine Le Pen media shied away from Jean-Marie’s rants, of . The 15th-century peasant that convinced me to join the National but Marine has been on the front page girl who led French soldiers to victory is the Front,” Engelmann told Reuters. “She has of every magazine and newspaper and is Front’s mascot. She symbolises its rejection an economic programme that is much more a regular on prime-time TV. She already of foreign domination. geared to defending the little people, the ranks third in polls for the April-May 2012 Inside the building, the party sells election workers, the popular classes of France.” presidential election although she is unlikely paraphernalia playing on Le Pen’s first name. Marine Le Pen is reshaping France’s political to win. Marine means “navy” in French and the landscape and the tremors go beyond people Her score in an early October Ipsos voting lighters, pens and T-shirts are all in navy blue. like this reconstructed Trotskyist. Her father intention poll was 16 percent, behind Socialist “It is very French, navy blue. It is a colour that played up worries about immigration, but the challenger Francois Hollande at 32 percent is part of our identity,” says Marine Le Pen. anxiety Marine addresses is economic and and Sarkozy’s 21 percent. In 2002, her father Nostalgia and identity are still core deep. The National Front’s new target is the beat Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin with National Front concerns, but Le Pen has oppressive power of global finance, and the just 16.86 percent of the first-round votes. moved beyond immigration. The new Front mood she is tapping spreads across Europe. Sarkozy’s biggest fear is that Le Pen could rejects all the ideas that have driven European Traditionally in France, President Nicolas knock him out in the first round of the two- economic growth in the past two decades: Sarkozy’s right-of-centre UMP party wins round vote. globalisation, and the dominance the votes of the self-employed, farmers and According to a TNS-Sofres poll in of services and the financial industry. retirees. Government workers, young people September, 16 percent of the French have The party offers a radical alternative. To and urbanites favour the Socialists. The a favourable opinion of the National Front, restore French competitiveness it will quit swing voters, blue-collar workers and low- with 76 percent taking a negative view. That’s the euro; to boost employment it will close level employees are the National Front’s the party’s best rating since 2007. French borders to cheap Chinese imports, constituency. They are tired of making “Our ideas are gaining ground,” says reindustrialize and empower the state’s sacrifices to shore up the single currency Jean-Richard Sulzer, the man in charge of regulatory role. And it will bring the banks to and fed up with losing jobs to global rivals. the party’s economic programme, who is a heel. To make things better, Le Pen is promising professor of finance at the Paris-Dauphine For some in towns like Amneville, scarred to pull France out of the euro, reinstate University, one of France’s top business by the loss of jobs as its steel mills and schools. His glee is evident as he points factories close one by one, this sounds like an out a protectionist goal idea worth trying. In the eyes of the working which echoes one of the Front’s. “They are classes, power is no longer held by politicians spreading like an oil slick.” but by the financial markets, say Alain

National Front election results

Percent of votes Presidential Parliamentary Regional European 20

16.9

15.0 14.9 15.0 14.7 15 14.4 13.9 12.4 11.7 11.4 11.0 11.3 10.5 10.4 10 9.5 9.7 9.7 9.8

6.3 5.7 5 4.3

0 NEW CONVERT: Fabien Englemann says he joined 1984 1986 1988 1992 1994 1997 1999 2002 2004 2007 2010 the National Front because Le Pen cares about the 1986 1988 1989 1993 1995 1998 2002 2004 2007 2009 “little people”. Here, he distributes leaflets at a market Sources: TNS Sofres, La France aux urnes, Pierre Brechon in eastern France, September 2011. REUTERS/ Vincent Kessler Reuters graphic/Vincent Flasseur, Marion Douet 05/09/11

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JOAN OF ARC: Le Pen speaks in front of a statue of Joan of Arc, the National Front’s mascot, at the party’s annual May Day rally in Paris, 2011. Her father, Jean-Marie, applauds (seated, right). REUTERS/Charles Platiau

Mergier, a sociologist, and Jerome Fourquet told radio network France Info: “The extreme of polling institute Ifop. The , “THE EXTREME RIGHT right certainly needs a candidate, since it is far from protecting workers, overexposes CERTAINLY NEEDS A not me.” them to the effects of globalisation. She delights in overturning received ideas, The working classes are the most eager for CANDIDATE … IT and disdains Sarkozy’s ruling UMP and the France to abandon the euro, Ifop polls show: IS NOT ME. ” opposition Socialist party, PS, lumping them nearly one in two blue-collar workers wants together as the “UMPS” -- no difference a return to the French franc. It’s a similar since 1998 and made her leadership bid with between them. She blasts both for turning picture in Germany and the Netherlands. her father’s backing in January. She won their back on the French model of a protective Le Pen also wants a return to a metallic 68 percent of the votes, defeating Bruno state, saying they have submitted to an ultra- currency standard that would include gold Gollnisch, her father’s longtime right-hand capitalist model of globalisation “based on and silver to prevent unbridled money- man. the law of the jungle”. printing. Another proposal -- pure heresy Since taking over, she has put her party’s “The National Front today is the only for the French government -- is to allow the finances on a firmer footing, selling a former movement that proposes solutions. The other state to fund itself with cheap loans from the headquarters to clear old debts. She has also political formations, all they do is propose, central bank, rather than paying market rates deftly distanced herself from her party’s far- under a different form, what they have to banks or bondholders. right ties. In March, she expelled a young already tried before,” Le Pen told Reuters in Front militant after a man resembling him an interview. Tall, blonde and telegenic, Le Pen, was pictured making the Hitler salute in front She goes on to emphasise how her policies 43, is a twice-divorced single mother and of a Nazi flag, and she has since thrown out a are on a collision course with the received formidable debater, with a fast wit and a dozen or so other members. wisdom of what she calls the evil troika: knack for killer one-liners delivered in a In a September radio appearance the European Commission, International gravelly smoker’s voice. Trained as a lawyer, discussing a former comrade’s plan to run Monetary Fund and . she has been working for her father’s party for president on a right-wing platform, she “The real fault line is between nationalists

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and globalists, between economic patriots and those who believe that nations and Popularity of the National Front borders must disappear and that there should be no obstacles whatsoever to commerce, Percentage of French respondents with a “very” or “quite” good opinion of the National Front

that everything is for sale and everything Percent can be bought, and that there should be no 30 controls on the flows of capital, products and 1988 1995 2002 2007 presidential presidential presidential presidential 25 people,” she says. elections elections elections elections

Marine Le Pen’s economic inspiration is 20 visible in the books stacked on a corner of her 16 desk: mainly French eurosceptic economists 15 and academics including the late Maurice Allais, France’s only Nobel prize-winning 10 economist. 5 January 2011 Most of the authors are not known to have Marine Le Pen Front sympathies, and some are emphatically becomes leader 0 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I left-wing. But Le Pen has borrowed their 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 ideas all the same. Jacques Sapir, a leading eurosceptic French Source: Barometre TNS Sofres/Figaro Magazine

economist, has supported a Communist- Reuters graphic/Vincent Flasseur, Marion Douet 05/09/11 backed party in previous elections and has no links with or affinities to Le Pen. He said he had heard from friends that she was quoting him and discovered the Front’s website carried links to his work. “She quotes me correctly,” he said dryly. Le Pen’s willingness to cross traditional left-right divides prompted the starkest shift in the Front’s economic thinking. In Jean-Marie’s day, the platform was ‘less government’, in line with U.S. president Ronald Reagan’s Reaganomics. Now the party wants a strong state, a regulated economy. Sulzer, the man in charge of the Front’s economic programme, says it wants a state that protects France’s internal markets from foreign competition: “We cannot compete with exporting countries that do not respect any social or environmental norms.” The Front also wants to regulate the financial industry and inculcate it with moral values. It favours separating retail and investment banking. Sulzer said Le Pen would have no qualms about nationalising MORAL VALUES: The National Front argues that France cannot compete with countries “that do not respect any financial institutions that are in trouble, social or environmental norms”. Here, supporters demonstrate in , May 2011. REUTERS/Robert Pratta returning them to the market later. “We do not want to recreate the Soviet Union,” he France’s leading specialists on the extreme off an older sister to become her father’s said. right. political heir. At home, he said, the Front wants freedom She raises her three children on her own of commerce and industry, free competition In person, Le Pen is down-to-earth and in a hilltop villa in leafy Saint-Cloud, near and no cartels, monopolies or social abuse. friendly, but she also exudes determination. Paris. With her current partner, , “When the experts say her economic The youngest daughter of one of the most a top Front official, she likes to go for target programme is inapplicable, there is a fraction reviled men in France, she survived a bomb practice at a shooting range. of the population, notably in the working on her home as a child, lived down a “I think I am more solid in the face of classes, who answer ‘that may be so, but we mother who left the family and posed half- adversity than most of the leaders of our have already tried the left and right,’” says naked in Playboy magazine, and fought country, most of whom have had an easy ride. political analyst Jean-Yves Camus, one of

4 le pen october 2011 “I THINK I AM MORE SOLID IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY THAN MOST OF THE LEADERS OF OUR COUNTRY … IT BUILDS A CERTAIN SHELL.” It builds a certain shell,” she told Reuters. Le Pen’s influence could have consequences Le Pen has a knack for speaking about far outside France. The single currency may complex things in simple terms, which has be a hot topic now, but Charles Grant, director made the Front’s economic programme of the London-based Centre for European appealing to ordinary people. A vote for the Reform, believes trade is the area where the National Front, once fringe, used to be a Front would have most resonance: “This is . But this is no longer the case, where her arguments stand a significant according to Mergier and Fourquet. chance of shifting the intellectual climate in “The vote for the National Front of Marine France.” Le Pen is becoming a vote for, rather than Already, the Socialist manifesto promises against,” they say in “Breaking Point”, a study to “strive to increase import tariffs on for the left-leaning Fondation Jean Jaures. products coming from countries that do not One in two workers could vote for Marine Le respect international norms with regards to Pen in the first round of the 2012 poll, they social, health and environmental matters”. find. Le Pen’s political instincts are astute, their As well as imitating the National Front, study suggests. The working classes do Sarkozy’s UMP is trying to tackle it head-on. indeed consider the UMP and PS to be cut One of his advisers, Henri Guaino, calls her from the same cloth; the left-right divide is ideas “as radical as they are disastrous”. no longer the pertinent fault line in politics. Where Le Pen asserts that disaster is already Central now is how the political alternatives here in the form of the euro zone crisis, differ in their ability to retake power from he replies that people have no idea what Europe and from the financial markets. a calamity it would be if the euro were to “That then leaves just two kinds of political disappear. NOT-SO NOUVEAU: Le Pen’s opponent Nathalie alternatives: those who can envision an exit Kosciusko-Morizet says nothing has fundamentally “The very people to whom this is presented from the political impotence and those who changed within the party. REUTERS/Franck as a solution are the ones who would be its don’t,” Mergier and Fourquet write. To the Prevel first victims. The most vulnerable, the most working classes, the economic crisis has impoverished, the most underprivileged created a situation that is so painful, complex has been marked by constant hammering would pay an exorbitant price for such a and intractable that it’s like a Gordian knot on such National Front themes as national decision,” he said. that needs cutting. identity, banning the Muslim burqa and Spearheading the UMP’s anti-Le Pen drive “The voters who see in Marine Le Pen the expelling Roma immigrants. is Ecology Minister Nathalie Kosciusko- only politician who is able to make that cut, The Front’s economic policies are harder Morizet. The National Front under its new they do not care about the details of her to adopt. Most of what Le Pen proposes is leader has not really changed at all, she programme. ... They feel she is the one who anathema for mainstream parties. Sarkozy argues. is able to move beyond everything that has and his ministers repeat every other day that “In France, when the new Beaujolais been tried by the parties of the left and the without the euro there is no Europe. wine of the season goes on sale, we say ‘Le right.” But Le Pen’s new-look National Front is Beaujolais nouveau est arrive.’ Well, the new For analyst Camus, the National Front also already making an impact. Mainstream party National Front has arrived, but nothing has embodies lost ideological vigour. “To them, stalwarts are beginning to voice proposals changed. They have cleaned the facade, but political action is an expression of political that echo Front ideas. it is the same old shop,” she said. will. From there on, anything is possible: In a speech timed to coincide with a Long-time Front watchers say this is leaving the European Union, leaving NATO, National Front meeting in September, a largely, but not entirely, true. The National leaving the World Trade Organisation, closing member of Sarkozy’s UMP called for the Front’s economic proposals are indeed new, the borders, anything.” reindustrialisation of France. “We need to they say; they point to the expulsions of anti- put an end to the illusion that an economy Semitic and overtly racist elements, as well Marine Le Pen’s is influencing can be built on services only,” said former as skinheads and Nazi sympathisers. the mainstream parties. Her anti-euro stance industry minister . With or without hardliners, though, lets her gain ground with every squabble and Socialist Segolene Royal, currently third the glue that binds Front members is not spat in Europe’s debt crisis, forcing other behind Francois Hollande and Martine Aubry economic policy. A deep resentment of parties to look closely at her policies as they in polls of Socialist candidates, has called for foreign immigrants, particularly Muslims, is work out how to chase the workers’ vote. more and last month took a still obvious, from the party leadership to the In the 2007 election, Sarkozy won them swipe at the banking industry that sounded rank and file. over partly by adopting the Front’s anti- very Marine Le Pen, saying bankers must In Amneville, two dozen Front members immigration agenda; his five-year mandate “obey, not command”. who gathered in the “Auberge des Amis”, a

5 le pen october 2011 cafe by the railway tracks, were not talking “It is true that there are still many National also appeal to him. about the euro. Over a meal of cold cuts, Front militants who like to talk about He left his last party after it added a veiled a history teacher said he was trying to problems with immigration and security Muslim woman as candidate. stop his school from offering halal meat. and the Islam offensive, and rightly so,” says (Additional reporting by Marion Douet Another militant boasted of his efforts to Engelmann. in Paris, Sara Webb in Amsterdam and organise a pork sausage party in a Muslim Even though Marine Le Pen attracted him Stephen Brown in Berlin; Edited by Sara neighbourhood of Paris. to the National Front, some of its old ideas Ledwith and Simon Robinson) THE CALL OF by Geert De Clercq

hey don’t like immigrants and they don’t like Europe. Some of them don’t Teven like being called ‘far right’. However you describe them, fringe parties from Finland to the Netherlands are taking a cue from the euro crisis to revive ideas of economic nationalism. Few go as far as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which advocates a pullout from Europe’s single currency. But some have turned up the rhetoric in favour of a strong state to reclaim powers lost to Brussels. Often they want to shed the burden of bailing out weaker euro zone partners like Greece. In the Netherlands, ’ Freedom Party is now the second most popular, recent polls show. “The peoples of Europe were robbed of their sovereignty, which was transferred to far-away Brussels. Decisions are now being taken behind closed doors by unelected bureaucrats,” Wilders said in a Berlin speech last month. He has toyed with the idea of leaving the STRONG NORTH: Supporters of the Finns Party celebrate victory in Helsinki, April 2011. REUTERS/ euro but it does not seem that strong a Robert Pratta view -– he’d rather be in the euro club with political landscape. Both oppose further German Chancellor has Germany and kick out the countries on the bailouts of euro zone countries. been the reluctant party in euro zone periphery. One, the Freedom Party, has proposed bailouts. The Finns Party, known until recently as dividing the euro zone into two parts: the A September poll showed a eurosceptic the True Finns, won 19 percent of the vote strong north and Mediterranean weaklings. political party would find strong support in an April election. Their opposition to It often comes second in opinion polls in Germany. Around 50 percent said they bailouts gained sympathy among voters behind the Social Democrats. would welcome such a group on the scene. who resent helping southern countries Among Europe’s big countries, Germany’s while they face austerity. The party wants National Democratic Party and the British countries like Greece out of the euro. National Party are more marginalised. (Reporting by Sara Webb, Ritsuko Ando Austria has two far-right parties, both Britain’s Conservatives provide a and Michael Shields; in opposition and widely accepted on the mainstream outlet for eurosceptics, and writing by Geert De Clercq)

For more information contact:

SIMON ROBINSON, sara ledwith, Geert de Clercq Enterprise Editor, EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST Enterprise editor [email protected] AND AFRICA [email protected] [email protected]

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