French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday contradicted a remark by his prime minister that the far-right party of Marine Le Pen were the heirs of Nazi-era collaborators, saying they had to be defeated on policy issues, not with such moral arguments., reports FRANCE 24.
Prime minister Élisabeth Borne, who according to French media reports has an increasingly strained relationship with Macron, had said that the far-right National Rally (RN) were the "heirs of (Philippe) Pétain".
Pétain was the head of the Vichy French regime that collaborated with the Nazis in in World War II.
The far right has in recent years emerged as the main opposition to Macron.
Le Pen has challenged him in the run-offs of two presidential elections and is seeking to place her party in the political mainstream.
"You will not be able to make millions of French people who voted for the far right believe that they are fascists," Macron told a cabinet meeting in the presence of Borne, one of the participants told AFP.
Borne, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who later committed suicide, had said in an interview with Radio J on Sunday she did not believe in the "normalisation" of the RN and said it still had a "dangerous ideology".