French far right makes immigration focus of EU election campaign
Launching its campaign for June’s European parliament elections, France’s far-right National Rally wants the vote to be a referendum on immigration.
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"It is quite clear these elections on 9 June are a referendum against being submerged by migrants," Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally (RN), who will lead the party in the elections, told the first campaign rally in the southern port city of Marseille on Sunday.
"It is up to the French people to decide who is allowed to enter the country and who is not. With us France will protect its borders,” he said in the closing address, in front of a poster with the campaign’s slogan: "France is back, Europe returns to life".
According to the French national statistics office, Insee, 10 percent of people living in France in 2022 were born abroad, compared to five percent in 1946, and 8.5 percent in 2010. About a third of those immigrants have become French.
In January, the Constitutional Council struck down large parts of a new immigration law that included far-right backed measures to limit access to social benefits for foreigners and establish migration quotas.
Polls predicting success
The RN poses a major challenge to France’s mainstream parties, especially President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance, with some opinion polls giving the party up to 30 percent of the vote.
Like elsewhere in Europe, the far right in France has made headway on issues like the cost of living crisis and the farmers’ protests over high costs and too much regulation. They have also benefited from a general resentment towards the political elite.
Bardella and Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the party’s founder and a former party president, both lashed out at Macron during the meeting in Marseille.
Macron bashing
Le Pen, who had placed herself last on the list, called Macron a president "under siege", pointing to the hostile welcome he received from farmers at the annual agriculture fair in Paris last week, and protests against his unpopular reforms.
She also criticised Macron's recent comments that he would not rule out deploying European troops to Ukraine, saying the President "thinks he can find political salvation in warlike posturing that astounded the French people".
(with Reuters)
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