Front national

Front National party leader Marine Le Pen, who opinion polls place second in voting intentions for the first-round this Sunday, has said that if elected she would introduce 'a moratorium on all legal immigration to stop this frenzy, this uncontrolled situation that is dragging us down'.

A fire at the entrance to the presidential election campaign offices of the far-right party's leader and candidate Marine Le Pen close to the Elysée Palace caused minor damage in what police said was a suspected arson attack. 

The cash-strapped far-right Front National has been forced to turn to Russian banks to help fund it.

The French far-right leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, when she also spoke to Russia's lower house, the Duma, when she called for international sanctions against the country to be lifted.

In 2012 the Left attracted its biggest shares of votes in the presidential election from the poorest sectors of society. But after François Hollande's presidency that support has dwindled. In the regional elections in 2015 this electorate turned instead towards the far-right Front National, headed by Marine Le Pen. The signs are that large numbers of France's poorest voters will also back Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election in April. Academic and Front National specialist Nonna Mayer analyses the figures.

The Aube département or county in the north-east of France is a rural area that also has pockets of industrialisation. Here, apart from the 'fake jobs' controversy surrounding right-wing candidate François Fillon, the presidential election campaign seems not to have had much of an impact so far. This has left the far-right Front National to take advantage of the relative indifference of the other candidates towards issues affecting those who live in the French countryside. Mathilde Goanec reports.

Gaël Nofri says far-right party recruited him into Le Pen's presidential campaign team, using a fictitious European Parliament (EP) contract.

French far-right Front National party leader and presidential election frontrunner Marine Le Pen, implicated in an alleged scam to pay party workers with European Parliament funds, said she will not attend a French magistrate's summons for questioning over the affair before the end of the elections in May.

The spot market appears to be bracing itself for the possibility that a higher than estimated score for French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in the first round vote may drive the euro lower despite the low odds of her winning the final round.

The chief of staff and senior bodyguard of France's far-right Front National party leader and presidential election candidate Marine Le Pen were on Wednesday questioned in police custody as part of an investigation into alleged fraudulent payments made to them by Le Pen out of European Parliament funds dedicated to remunerating parliamentary assistants. Le Pen's chief of staff, Catherine Griset, was later placed under formal investigation. The case, which mirrors the scandal surrounding conservative presidential candidate François Fillon, now threatens to become more than a severe embarrassment to Le Pen, one of the frontrunners in the election, whose campaign hinges on her image as an anti-establishment alternative to a corrupt political class.

Far-right Front National presidential election candidate Marine Le Pen has increased her lead over rivals in the first-round of voting, and narrowed her trailing position for the final second round playoff, according to a poll of voting intentions published on Monday.

Front National part leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen began a two-day visit to Lebanon by meeting with Lebanese President Michel Aoun and Prime Minister Saad Hariri on Monday ahead of talks with business and religious leaders.

Front National party leader Marine Le Pen, tipped by pollsters to reach the second round of France's presidential elections this spring, is making a French exit from the European Union one of her major campaign pledges, along with resinstating the franc as national currency within a euro-shadowing group of currencies with other nations disenchanted with eurozone policies.

Far-right Front National party member Julien Sanchez, mayor of Beaucaire in southern France, has renamed a street in his town 'rue du Brexit' in what he said was a tribute to the British referendum in June which saw a majority in favour of leaving the European Union.

The Front National has seen its requests for a loan for the presidential electon campaign of its leader, Marine Le Pen, turned down by French banks, said the party's secretary-general, who claimed that political motives were behind the lenders' refusal.