World
Marine Le Pen launched her presidential campaign with a focus on “national preference”
The National Rally leader headlined a rally in Hénin-Beaumont and sought to center her program, leaving tensions with Jordan Bardella in the background. According to ANSA, she enters the race with a lead in the polls.
Marine Le Pen launched her path toward the April and May presidential elections in France with a rally in Hénin-Beaumont, in the north of the country, where she again placed the so-called “national preference” at the center of her platform. According to ANSA, the far-right leader argued that French citizens should have priority in access to rights and aid within their own country.
Before some 2,000 supporters, Le Pen chose a speech more focused on governance issues than on attacks against her rivals. According to ANSA, she emphasized housing, access to homes and the need to halt what she described as France’s “decline.”
Among her proposals, she mentioned social housing with priority access for French citizens, reserving state housing aid for them and selling a set number of social housing units to French people. She also proposed repealing the law that sets social housing quotas for municipalities and moving ahead with the eviction of delinquent families from public housing, always according to ANSA.
The rally also served to set aside the differences that had emerged in recent months with Jordan Bardella. ANSA noted that, despite those tensions, Le Pen mentioned him during her speech and said she wants to carry out with him a “project of recovery” for the country.
According to ANSA, Le Pen begins this stage with a wide lead in the first round over her opponents and would also prevail in a runoff. The same report added that her most competitive rival would be former prime minister Edouard Philippe.
The leader also faces the impact of a criminal conviction in the case over irregularities in the management of European Parliament assistants. According to ANSA, that did not remove her from the race and she expects to reach the final stretch of the campaign even if she has to spend part of that period wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.
Sources
About this note. Written by El Notero with the assistance of artificial intelligence, based on what was published by the cited outlet. El Notero did not conduct its own reporting on this event.
