Marine Le Pen is a French politician, who is the president of the National Rally (French: Rassemblement National, pronounced [ʁasɑ̃bləmɑ̃ nɑsjɔnal]; RN). During her political career she has expressed her positions on a wide range of political issues covering economics, immigration, social issues, and foreign policy. She has stated that as the RN's immigration policies are better known to voters, she focuses her campaigning on the party's economic and social programme.
Described as more democratic and republican than her nationalist father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the previous leader of the party, then named the National Front (, ; FN), she has attempted to detoxify and soften the party's image. This has been done via reformulation of policy positions, and expulsion of members accused of racism, antisemitism, or Pétainism, including her father. Marine Le Pen has also relaxed some political positions of the party, advocating for civil unions for same-sex couples instead of her party's previous opposition to legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, accepting unconditional abortion and withdrawing the death penalty from her platform.
On economic policy, Le Pen favours protectionism as an alternative to free trade. She supports economic nationalism, the separation of investment and retail banking, and energy diversification, and is opposed to the privatization of public services and social security, speculation on international commodity markets, and the Common Agricultural Policy.
Le Pen is opposed to globalization, which she blames for various negative economic trends, and opposes European Union supranationalism and federalism, instead favouring a loosely confederate 'Europe of the Nations'. She has called for France to leave the Eurozone; however, it was reported in May 2019 that she no longer wishes for France to leave the euro currency. She has called for a referendum on France leaving the EU. She has been a vocal opponent of the Treaty of Lisbon, and opposes EU membership for Turkey and Ukraine."Marine Le Pen: Ukraine's association with EU – best option". Ukrinform. 26 June 2013 Le Pen has pledged to take France out of NATO and the US sphere of influence. She proposes the replacement of the World Trade Organization, and the abolition of the International Monetary Fund.
Le Pen and the NF claim that multiculturalism has failed, and argue for the "de-Islamisation" of French society. Le Pen has called for a moratorium on legal immigration. She would repeal laws allowing illegal immigrants to become legal residents, and argues for benefits provided to immigrants to be reduced to remove incentives for new immigrants. Following the beginning of the Arab Spring and the European migrant crisis, she called for France to withdraw from the Schengen Area and reinstate border controls.
On foreign policy, Le Pen supports the establishment of a privileged partnership with Russia, and states that Ukraine has been "subjugated" by the United States. She is strongly critical of NATO policy in the region, Eastern European anti-Russian sentiment, and threats of economic sanctions.
Economy and industry Economic programme
Le Pen opposes free trade and autarky, and advocates protectionism as a middle way. She has compared the economy to a raging river, using this metaphor to say that free trade is like allowing the torrent to flow unchecked and autarky equivalent to the erection of a dam, whereas protectionism is installing a sluice gate. In 2010, she strongly criticized the pension plan proposed by the government of Nicolas Sarkozy.
She paid tribute to the French economist Maurice Allais, who died on 9 October 2010. A laureate of the Nobel Prize in Economics (1988), Allais had expressed reservations about the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the single European currency, free trade and globalization and the 2004 European Constitution.
She favours the repeal of the 1973 Pompidou-Giscard Law, which makes it illegal for France to borrow at zero or a low rate of interest from the Banque de France and forces the country to borrow at a higher rate on the international financial markets. In her view, this law is the reason for the growth in national debt. She claimed that in 2010 France had paid 1.355 trillion euros of accrued interest on loans at a time when the national debt represented around 1.650 trillion euros.
She has expressed support for French public utilities, civil servants, and the public sector in general. She opposes the planned privatization of the French Post Office (), saying that the move would "result in the closure of post offices in rural areas where the relinquishment of the state is already high". In October 2009, she claimed that three post offices had disappeared each day in France since 1 January 2009. She said that the liberalization of the French public utilities had been ratified by the former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin during the Barcelona summit on 15 and 16 March 2002. She also stated that the UMP government planned a "progressive privatization of the French Social Security system from 2011", imposed by the financial markets. During a press conference in June 2011, she called for the reintroduction of the Havana Charter and the establishment of an "International Trade Organization" to replace the World Trade Organization, in order to reform the world trade exchanges. Signed by 53 countries and rejected by the US in 1951, the Havana Charter was a trade agreement that would have established an international currency known as the bancor. She claimed that the "Havana Charters's proposals perfectly fit into her economic philosophy" and that "its first article conciliates international trade and employment".
During her speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in November 2011, she proposed "three essential solutions to stop the current world systemic crisis and turn the world towards greater justice and greater prosperity": reintroduction of a "polymetallic standard" in the international monetary systems as a world standard of reference and exchanges in order to establish a "free monetary system" and combat speculation; the ratification of an updated Havana Charter by the 1948 signatory nations and other countries, in support of "reasonable protectionism that encourages cooperation in trade among nations through the end of 'unbridled free trade'"; application of the 1933 Glass–Steagall Act, which legally separated investment banking and commercial banking, to "the banking system of each country". In her view, these solutions would aid the global growth of employment, thanks to the inclusion of "full employment" as one of the main targets of the Havana Charter, and industry, thanks to the authorization of state aid in the Charter's Article 13.
In October 2011, she called for drastic reform of the banking sector, separating by law deposit banks from merchant banks. She said that "deposit banks should be rescued by temporary and partial nationalization". In her view, "the balance sheet of the banks should be the object of a transparency operation". In October 2011, she proposed seven measures to save €30 billion per year, in order to preserve France's AAA credit rating. The biggest savings were to come from prevention of fraudulent welfare payments and the closing of tax loopholes (together €18.5 bn), reducing local spending (€4bn), and ceasing payments to the EU (€7bn).
Former president of the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF) Laurence Parisot strongly criticises the FN's economic and social programme often. Le Pen replied that "the FN is not a friend of the CAC 40 and is fighting the social regression brought about by MEDEF and inflicted on the French people by the allies of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and the Socialist Party (PS)". After criticism from Parisot, she stated that the FN's economic project was based on "construction of a strong, protective and strategist state, reasonable protections at the borders, support for small and medium enterprises, and reclaiming monetary sovereignty, only able to assure France's recovery". She also described Parisot as "the exact opposite of her democratic and republican project, a project of hope which puts back man and nation in the centre of politics". After Parisot published a book criticising the FN's economic policies, Le Pen proposed a "direct and public debate" between them.
In 2021, Le Pen said she wants to privatise public broadcasting and nationalise motorways.
Agriculture and environment In 2010, Le Pen said that after 2013, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) would be "unable to protect our farmers from speculators and savage global competition, or compensate for the excesses of the multinationals of the food processing industry and large-scale distributors" and would "remain wedged between the ultra-liberal and internationalist market logic of the European Commission and a future 'green' CAP, in reality serving the neo-capitalists of ecological business".
At the Paris International Agricultural Show on 25 February 2011, Le Pen denounced the CAP as an "unbearable bureaucracy" and called for it to be replaced with a "French agricultural policy". She also claimed that leaving the EU would allow 15 billion Euros to be allocated to the French agricultural sector.
She claims that "internationalist organisations" such as the EU, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), United Nations and G-20 are directly responsible for food crises such as the 2007-08 global crisis. She advocates food independence with regard to multinationals, and "a realignment of farm aid politics to the third countries to favour their food sovereignty, in particular by the reintroduction of localized food crops".
She advocates the implementation of the "autarky of big spaces" and an "economy in concentric circles". She said that it is an "ecological heresy to consume products grown 20,000 km away and recycle waste thousands km further". She claims that we should "produce to the closest", "distribute on the spot", "consume as a priority products of its region" and then "in the nearby region" if not produced on the spot. She would seek to implement "contracts of cooperation" for goods like coffee which are not produced in Europe.
Energy and transport Marine Le Pen is a frequent critic of sharp rises in energy prices, such as gas, gasoline, and electricity, which reduce the purchasing power of working and middle-class families. She has blamed these rises on the liberalization of the European energy sector since 1996.
She supports an immediate 20% reduction of the domestic tax on oil products (TIPP), a windfall tax on the profits of the largest gas and oil companies and measures to combat international speculation on basic products such as food and energy. According to Le Pen, the state "has the authority to be the guarantor of public utilities, being the exclusive owner of the strategic companies of public utility and the regulator of tariffs".
After a deadly incident on 12 September 2011 in the Centraco nuclear installation on the Marcoule Nuclear Site, she said that the accident "illustrated the danger of this energy and the necessity to consider a progressive and well-thought-out exit from nuclear power". She added that the government "must secure the 58 French nuclear power plants and invest in research to process nuclear waste". She supports energy diversification in France, including research into hydrogen.
She favours accompanied combined transport (ferroutage) and public transport.
In October 2021, she stated that she supports the construction of new nuclear reactors, including small modular reactors. She also said that she opposes subsidies to solar power and wind power, claiming that they are "not renewable" and "intermittent". She stated, "I will put a stop to all construction of new wind parks and I will launch a big project to dismantle them".
Taxation