As far-right leader Marine Le Pen approaches what is predicted will be a tightly fought duel with Emmanuel Macron in the April 24th final round of France’s presidential elections, the credibility of her capacity to govern is under heightened scrutiny, not least over her ability to form a government. Lucie Delaporte reports.
French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who will face incumbent Emmanuel Macron in a final round of the elections on April 24th, has close ties to the Kremlin while her party has received significant funding from Russian banks, wants France to leave NATO, seeks to weakenn the EU, and is opposed to sanctions against Russian oil and gas exports.
Peter Ricketts, Britain's former ambassador to France and once a national security adviser, has described the defence plan unveiled this week by far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, and which includes a withdrawal from NATO, as 'ignorant' and 'superficial', and that if it was put into effect 'no British government or indeed any Nato ally is going to touch a defence relationship with France'.
A woman who interrupted a press conference by French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen with a protest to draw attention to the far-right leader's closeness with the Kremlin was violently thrown to the ground by private security staff who dragged her across the floor and out of the event by her arm.
The French far-right presidential election candidate Marine Le Pen, who will face Emmanuel Macron in a deciding vote between the two on April 24th and who has previously shown support for the Kremlin over its conflict with Ukraine, has said she is opposed to sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
Emmanuel Macron, speaking less than a week before the first-round of France's presidential elections, has urged voters to turn out as a predicted high abstention rate threatens to accentuate a tightening gap in opinion polls between his once comfortable re-election bid and second-placed far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.
For three generations Melinda and Dylan's family from northern France has voted steadfastly for the far-right Le Pen family at elections; first Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the Front National, and more recently his daughter Marine Le Pen who is president of its successor party Rassemblement National. However, the decision on who to vote for has now been thrown into question by the presence of another far-right candidate in April's French presidential election, the polemicist Éric Zemmour. The dilemma, one faced by many voters across the country, threatens to divide the family. Lucie Delaporte reports.
Marine Le Pen was dealt a blow when Marion Maréchal said that far-right rival Éric Zemmour was a better candidate than her aunt ahead of Aprils presidential election in France.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National party, has met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest, when she promised that if she is elected president next year, France will back a "reorientating" of the European Union "whose ideological brutality threatens the very idea of sovereignty".
