French far-right leader Jordan Bardella vows ‘cultural battle’ and demands EU rebate

Jordan Bardella, the far-right candidate to be France’s prime minister, has pledged to fight a “cultural battle” against Islamism and secure an EU budget rebate even as he promised “a lot of pragmatism” on the economy if his party wins snap elections.

The 28-year-old chief of the Rassemblement National party said in a Financial Times interview that he was confident of winning an outright majority in legislative elections, which would force President Emmanuel Macron into a “cohabitation”, or power-sharing government, with a potentially antagonistic counterpart.

“I think the French are ready for change,” said Bardella, adding that the country wanted to “break with seven years of Macronism which has been brutal in its method of governing”. He also committed to using the political “weight” of his election victory to cut France’s contributions to the EU budget by €2bn. “I want to get a rebate,” he declared.

Led by standard-bearer Marine Le Pen, the RN and their rightwing allies lead in polls with a 36 per cent vote share ahead of the two-round election on June 30 and July 7, according to Ifop. The leftwing alliance Nouveau Front Populaire is on 28.5 per cent, and Macron’s Ensemble group is on 21 per cent.

Pollsters say it is too early to make accurate seat predictions for the 577-member National Assembly. A hung parliament is the most likely scenario, but some polls indicate the RN is close to an outright majority of 289 MPs.

The party is reaping a decade-long effort by Marine Le Pen to “detoxify” the movement founded in the 1970s by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of hate speech for calling Nazi gas chambers “a detail of history”.

Bardella, who is Le Pen’s most trusted lieutenant, argues the RN is “ready to govern”. He has been scaling back the party’s big-spending economic programme in a bid to reassure jittery markets and corporate bosses.

“I think economic policy consists of a handful of core convictions and a lot of pragmatism to ensure trust and stability for the business community,” he said. 

Bardella said he was committed to providing military support for Ukraine, as long as it did not lead to escalation with Russia. The RN previously had strong pro-Russia sympathies but has publicly supported Kyiv following Moscow’s full-scale invasion. It continues to oppose Ukraine joining the EU and Nato, and abstained in a vote on France’s security pact with Ukraine last year.

“My position changed. It will not change again,” Bardella said. However, he would not be drawn on the level of aid he would be willing to provide Ukraine next year; France’s bilateral security pact calls for €3bn in military support this year.

But the RN has maintained its tough approach to immigration. Bardella said the RN aimed in the coming years to overhaul the French constitution via a referendum to establish a “national preference” for citizens over foreigners for social housing and other welfare benefits. 

He intends to pass a law this summer to end birthright citizenship for people born in France to foreign parents, a practice that has existed since 1515 and now requires those with foreign-born parents to officially request citizenship at age 18.

He argued France’s approach to birthright citizenship “no longer made sense” given how global conflicts, climate change and demography would lead to “massive arrivals” of immigrants. “I intend to take back control of immigration in our country,” he said.

Experts say ending birthright citizenship may not pass constitutional review and would plunge many French families into administrative limbo.

The RN intends to move ahead with a proposed law that states as its aim “to combat Islamist ideologies”. It includes measures to make it easier to close mosques and deport imams deemed to be radicalised, and a ban on clothing that “constitute in themselves an unequivocal and ostentatious affirmation” of Islamist ideology. 

Bardella said this would include various types of veils and the so-called burkini, or head-to-toe swimwear. “The veil is not desirable in French society,” he said. “The battle is in part legislative, but is also a cultural battle that needs to be pursued.” 

Some of the RN’s economic proposals remain unfunded and scant on detail, such as cutting income tax for those under 30 to combat brain drain and the repeal “in principle” of Macron’s retirement age increase from 62 to 64. Bardella wants to undertake an audit of public finances before deciding spending priorities in the autumn. 

But he said his first move if the RN takes power would be to boost working-class people’s purchasing power by cutting value added tax on energy and petrol, which he says would cost €12bn a year. Funding is to come from taxing windfall profits of energy companies, closing tax loopholes on maritime shipping companies, and cutting France’s annual contribution to the EU budget by €2bn, he said.

Analysts have questioned the feasibility of the revenue-raising moves.

The far-right programme could contravene EU rules on several fronts, including lowering VAT, withdrawing from the EU’s electricity market, and giving preferential treatment to French companies in public procurement.

Nevertheless, Bardella said: “I do not intend to go to war with Brussels.”

“I just want France to defend its interests . . . For more than a decade, France has renounced doing so on the European scene,” he said. Asked if he would act unilaterally, he said he would negotiate with the European Commission on the budget and other issues, using his electoral mandate as leverage.

EU officials see such a wholesale negotiation of France’s EU payments as unfeasible given the common budget is decided unanimously by the EU’s 27 member states every seven years, with the next round due in 2027.

In a shift from what some RN MPs said earlier, Bardella stopped short of committing to bring France’s deficit back to 3 per cent of GDP by 2027, which is the level set out by EU rules. 

“It remains an objective,” he said. “It’s obvious that the room to manoeuvre on the budget will be limited, which will require me to prioritise.”

France overshot its deficit target this year to finish at 5.5 per cent of GDP, denting Macron’s economic record that was once seen as a strength.

French voters have yet to decide if they want to give Bardella a mandate to carry out such policies. Although he has said he will only accept being prime minister if the RN has an outright majority, Bardella says he is now “convinced” that he will have one. 

In France, the president chairs meetings of the cabinet of ministers, an arrangement that risks being conflictual. Asked what he would tell Macron in the very first session, Bardella paused and said: “Things are going to change now.”