Less than a year before the French presidential election, Jordan Bardella is repositioning France’s right-wing party’s EU doctrine.
The calls for abandoning the euro or leaving the bloc altogether that once defined the old National Front era, and Marine Le Pen’s 2017 doctrine, are long gone.
In a lengthy interview with the French magazine Le Point, the 30-year-old Bardella laid out the National Rally’s (RN) post-Frexit strategy, which now aligns with the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) agenda, largely led by the Germans.
He wants France to remain inside the European Union, but systematically challenge its legal, political and financial constraints from within.
In the interview, Bardella repeatedly cited German precedents to justify his new French policies such as border controls, constitutional primacy over EU law, energy-market exceptions and reduced budget contributions to Brussels.
“When the Germans want to defend their interests, no matter how they go about it, they succeed. We have never been able to do the same,” he said.
“Germany and the Netherlands have managed to secure a rebate on their contributions. We also intend to draw inspiration from what works elsewhere; this is anything but knee-jerk anti-European sentiment,” he added.
Bardella also proposed for a constitutional referendum establishing the primacy of French national law over EU migration rules.
Such move would place Paris at odds with Brussels and the European Court of Justice.
“I am a staunch republican and, as such, committed to the supremacy of the French Constitution and, consequently, to the sovereignty of the French people over any international considerations,” he insisted.
He argue that the referendum would amend the French Constitution and make these immigration restrictions constitutionally protected.
RN proposal would be to deport foreign criminals systematically, give French citizens priority for social housing, process asylum applications abroad and ending birthright citizenship.
Unlike Giorgia Meloni who some believed went from ‘far-right’ rebel to EU insider, Bardella wants to extand unilateral national exemptions within the EU.
On energy policy, for example, he argued France should establish a domestic electricity price based on the historical cost of French nuclear production, regardless of current EU market rules.
“Germany decided a few weeks ago to provide its major industrial firms with electricity subsidised at 50 euros per MWh. There is no reason why Europe’s largest economy should be able to offer its industrial firms such favorable rates when France cannot do the same for its entire economy, even though its production costs allow for it.” he explains.
Bardella currently leads the polls in French elections, before pro-EU center right candidate Edouard Phillippe or potential contender Gabriel Attal.
