France's Le Pen launches election bid with vow to fight globalization

The far-right candidates' campaign promises include drastically curbing migration, expelling all illegal migrants, and holding a referendum on France's European Union membership.

|
Michel Euler/AP
Far-right leader presidential candidate Marine Le Pen gestures as she speaks during a conference in Lyon, France, Sunday, Feb. 5, 2017. Britain's decision to leave the European Union and the election of U.S. President Donald Trump have given the French a "reason to vote" because it can result in real change, the top lieutenant of far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen declared Sunday ahead of her long-awaited speech.

France's far-right party leader Marine Le Pen on Sunday told thousands of flag-waving supporters chanting "This is our country!" that she alone would protect them against Islamic fundamentalism and globalization if elected president in May.

Buoyed by Donald Trump's victory and Britons' vote to leave the European Union, Ms. Le Pen's anti-immigration, anti-EU National Front (FN) hopes for similar populist momentum in France.

With hitherto favorite Francois Fillon, a conservative, embroiled in scandal over his wife's job and rising centrist star, Emmanuel Macron, yet untested, Le Pen's FN says it can thwart polls that see her losing in a second round run-off.

"What is at stake in this election ... is whether France can still be a free nation," Le Pen told supporters at her campaign launch rally. "The divide is not between the left and right anymore but between patriots and globalists!"

In 144 "commitments" published on Saturday, Le Pen says she would drastically curb migration, expel all illegal migrants and reserve certain rights now available to all residents, including free education, to French citizens only.

An FN government would also take France out of the euro zone, hold a referendum on EU membership, slap taxes on imports and on the job contracts of foreigners.

"Past leaders chose deregulated globalization. They said it would be a happy one, it turned out to be atrocious," Le Pen said. "Financial globalization and Islamist globalization are helping each other out ... Those two ideologies want to bring France to its knees."

While Le Pen has sought to make the FN more palatable to mainstream voters since she took over from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011, her speech on Sunday made clear that its anti-migration, anti-EU policy remained at the core of her agenda.

Le Pen received some of the loudest applause during her speech, with standing ovations to the sound of "France! France!" and "On est chez nous!" ("This is our country") when she pledged to expel all foreigners condemned for a crime or misdemeanor, and when she said migrants without identity papers could never be legally allowed to stay in France or get free healthcare.

The crowd chanted in response: "We're going to win! We're going to win!"

(Additional reporting by Simon Carraud; Editing by Louise Ireland)

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to France's Le Pen launches election bid with vow to fight globalization
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2017/0205/France-s-Le-Pen-launches-election-bid-with-vow-to-fight-globalization
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe