What kind of a political career does Marine Le Pen have, who is often called the ‘French Trump’ who managed to progress through to the the second round in the presidential elections in France. What policies does she propose for her country? What does she think about immigration, women’s rights, and foreign policy?
French President Emmanuel Macron took first place, ahead of far-right leader Marine Le Pen, in the first round of France’s presidential elections. The two will face off in a fierce second-round battle on April 24.
According to the Economist, Marine Le Pen has never been so close to winning France’s highest office. Le Pen’s victory on April 24 will be a new example of the era in Europe where the far right like Boris Johnson and Viktor Orban took over.
What kind of a political career does Marine Le Pen have, who is often called the ‘French Trump’? What policies does she propose for her country? What does she think about immigration, women’s rights, and foreign policy?
Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who is no longer active in politics, is a figure who has left his mark on French politics since the 70s. Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of Front National, was one of the most ardent advocates of anti-immigrant and anti-refugee policies.
Marine Le Pen, who managed the presidential campaign of her father in 2006, tried to draw a line between the party’s anti-immigration policies and being racist. Inheriting the party leadership from his father in 2011, Le Pen began to transform the National Front and made it her own party. In 2017, she competed with Macron and managed to pass through the second round. Although she lost the elections, taking 33.9% of vote convinced Le Pen even more about the impact of change within the party. She changed the name of the party to “Rassemblement National”, the National Rally, so that it appeared more moderate in this election.
She changed some of her policy proposals including France’s exit from the EU and the Eurozone. Instead of supporting the exit from the EU, she began to demand that the EU be reformed on issues such as loans and border security.
Le Pen, who has xenophobic rhetoric on domestic politics, repeats pledge to ban the Muslim headscarf in public if she wins this weekend’s French presidential run-off. Le Pen and promises to hold a referendum in order to prevent the abuse of the asylum system and restrict immigration. She also wants to repeal the “family reunification” law that allowed over 200,000 people to move to France in 2021.
Where does it stand for women’s rights?
An analysis of the gender equality policies in the manifestos of all 12 presidential candidates by a team of postgraduate students at Sciences Po university described Le Pen’s program, which is light on gender equality measures, as “femonationalist”. In a “Letter to French Women” published on International Women’s Day, Le Pen pledged to deport immigrants who engaged in street harassment if she becomes France’s first female president.
Le Pen is campaigning hard on the cost of living. But she is one of the few candidates not to have proposed to increase the minimum wage, a policy that would have an outsized effect on women, who make up 59% of people employed on this wage.
Many groups fear that Le Pen will erode abortion rights if she is running France, although she has not spoken openly about taking a stand against abortion. Le Pen spoke out against extending the time limit for abortions from 12 to 14 weeks – before the bill was passed by the French parliament in February 2022.
Osez le féminisme, a leading feminist organisation in France, says that Marine Le Pen’s programme is misogynistic: “She has no concrete proposals for tackling violence against women, nor for addressing wage inequality. She only talks about women’s rights from a racist perspective, when she uses them to attack foreigners.”
Sources: CNN, France 24, Aljazeera, Le Monde