Jordan Bardella, the President of the French hard-right party National Rally (RN) said binational citizens would be excluded from “key government jobs”, if the party were to win the upcoming snap general elections.
“I can confirm that the most strategic positions in the State will be reserved for French citizens and French nationals,” he declared at a press conference on June 24. “It’s just one way of protecting ourselves from foreign interference.
“Can you imagine Franco-Russians working at the Ministry of the Armed Forces today?” he added.
According to Bardella, the proposal was intended to “protect French interests and not weaken France’s voice on the international stage”.
RN’s political programme relies on the principle of national preference.
Retired senior civil servant and RN campaigning MP Roger Chudeau stated: “Anything that concerns national sovereignty can only be exercised by French citizens.”
According to some diplomats, the RN proposal already exists.
Gérad Araud, a retired French diplomat who has served as French ambassador to the US, said: “In an embassy, for example, all the staff of the political chancellery, from the ambassador to the secretaries, must be French.
He added, “everything depends on the definition of ‘strategic’”, and Bardella had not specified what key positions he was referring to but rather of broad areas including defence and security.
Je crains, jeune homme, que ce ne soit déjà le cas. Tout dépend évidemment de la définition de « stratégique ». Dans une ambassade, par exemple, tout le personnel de la chancellerie politique, de l’ambassadeur aux secrétaires, doit être français. https://t.co/nCdWfGm4Po
— Gérard Araud (@GerardAraud) June 24, 2024
The RN President’s declaration may increase tensions between the RN and some French diplomats.
On June 23, 170 of them signed a petition to the daily national newspaper Le Monde against the hard-right succeeding in the next legislative elections.
“We cannot accept that a victory of the extreme-right will [not] weaken France and Europe while the war is here,” they wrote.
“Our adversaries will read a victory of the extreme right as a French weakening and an invitation to interference in our national politics, to aggressiveness against Europe,” they added.
Additionally, more than 200 civil servants in France’s education sector vowed resistance to the RN ahead of the upcoming ballot on June 30 and July 7.
Chudeau decried the diplomats moves. “Is it an example to give to pupils to say ‘the government doesn’t please, we don’t obey’?”, he said, adding he believed they “openly violate” the 1983 decree that obliges civil servants, in the exercise of their duties, to be neutral.
In the event of a RN victory in the elections, he asserted that the petition’s signatories would be sanctioned should he be installed as education minister.
More than 200 civil servants in France's education sector have vowed resistance to the hard-right National Rally (RN) ahead of upcoming snap general elections.https://t.co/DLSH2pByul
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) June 18, 2024
