Marine Le Pen Keeps Distance from Trump as France Election Looms

This is not just uh any other country in Europe having an election. This France does play an outsized role in Europe and in the world. You know, it's got troops in Lebanon at the moment. It's part of a peacekeeping force. It's got troops in Iraq. It's got uh it takes part in NATO operations on the eastern flank. France does have a sort of strategic culture of taking risks of sending troops into difficult places. Now, if that isn't the case anymore, then there are implications not just for Europe, but implications for the rest of the world where

France, including places like Lebanon. If Donald Trump is looking across the Atlantic and saying, "Who should I take seriously? Who matters?" Frankly, he doesn't take Spain seriously. He doesn't take Italy seriously. He does take France seriously because it has the military wherewithal to do something. So, for example, if you're questioning whether to intervene in Greenland, would there be any push back from Europe? Well, France would have the capacity to push back. Those other countries wouldn't. And so although we see other countries like Germany beginning to

spend more and get more capabilities, France and Britain are the two countries in Europe that have shown the will to use it. They have deployed as you say to those parts of the world. They have got involved in fighting and that makes a big difference. And so I think it's not just how opponents see you but how your allies see you. Well you raised the question of Britain that raises my thing. How does Le Pen work with Andy Burnham on these kinds of issues? Do you see? I mean that you couldn't get two more different politicians. You really couldn't. And

what's what's you know, the desperate sort of moment is that Macron and Star have actually worked very well together on all of these issues. I mean after Johnson and Macron disaster and Macron gave Star the Lejon Doner in I think recognition of what a good partner he's found um in the UK prime minister. I mean the RN's great ally is Nigel Farage. you know that's Jordan Bardella made a trip the earlier this year to see him uh end of last year actually uh to see him he's very much sees him as the sort of link point for him in UK politics so um that's that the you understand sometimes a politician by their allies

and that far nationalists in Poland uh Orban's party in Hungary these are the people Salvini in Italy not even Maloney these are the people it's farright or hardright nationalists not the AfD which they have actually broken links with. But it's these nationalists, populist nationalists, that's who they feel allied to. And there will be an a would be uh hypothetically a very difficult relationship I suspect with Andy Burnham's government. Okay. So I've got the sense here of a kind of rather complex but very sort of strong national um approach to sort of

big foreign policy questions. I suspect also with a bit of chaos thrown in because it's you know the president has such an enormous power in France over foreign policy and Marine Le Pen hasn't really had to think about it. Let's now turn to EU rather than just kind of Ukraine and that kind of European just E EU and I want to start here with the relationship with Germany so important they have joint cabinet meetings when France and Germany can work together things really happen in Europe and when they can't nothing much happens in Europe Germany is trying to lead a more

forceful approach towards Ukraine they will be worried if France is not going to lend its support to that but then there's the more general sort of usual stuff that the European union is trying to do to get the economy going, to get the EU to work. Um, there's a budget to be negotiated for the EU coming up, I think next year, the seven-year budget. Um, there's the question about whether France's finances are in good enough shape and whether France will start under a Le Pen presidency to demand support from the EU that France thinks Italy has

had in mutualizing its debt and getting special treatment from the European institutions. So Germany will be very anxious on that side of it. I think on the problems that France brings to the day-to-day running of the EU and then what you implied as well the opportunity cost. You cannot move forward in achieving anything more for the European project if France is becoming a problem rather than you know the sort of thing that Macron has done and putting his shoulder to the wheel. So uh France becomes a burden rather than a support for the European project. Yes. A burden or a

blocking force. I mean it become it joins the resistors those who try to stop the project moving forward. I mean it couldn't be a greater contrast with everything Macron's tried to do over the last 10 years which is to you know increase European strategic autonomy to build up uh Europe's ability to act independently in the world. Um this would be a constant clash. The way I see it is that you know whatever the noise is that some of them have made and Bardella recently said he could work with Mertz Chancellor of Germany on certain issues like immigration ultimately everything that they

want to do in Europe would set them on a collision course with Berlin and that whe whether it's about having the budget that the contribution France makes the European Union which he which they want to do whether it's um you know almost any policy subject it would be uh an absolute clash and once you have a clash between France and Germany. You know, there isn't any other real kind of dynamic in Europe that moves things forward if those two countries can't agree. So, I mean, you're looking at potentially a real situation of paralysis for the European Union, if not worse. you have here as

a euroskeptic party that doesn't like Europe and wants to take sovereignty back from Europe to have a kind of Europe of nations as it were at the same time as the um sort of logical expression of that which is fxit is completely off the table. So what I can't quite judge is to what extent they are willing to damage Europe in the knowledge that actually the French public don't want to destroy Europe in order to prosecute this kind of approach because they can do damage to Europe, you can do damage to them, but there's a kind of limit to how far they go. So I to what

extent are they sort of self-restraining in this? But what you call damage, Ed, they would call reform. I mean they want to undermine or reform the European Union from within so that it doesn't impose all these rules that it doesn't make it impossible for French farmers to use pesticides. The consequences are just could be just chaos rather than you know improvement. That's that's probably the way we would uh imagine it. But that's not the way that obviously for they're going to be presenting this for the um for the uh electorate in France. It's taking back control.