Marine Le Pen Is Seducing France’s Business Elite
Leading France’s opinion polls, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National looks closer than ever to power. Now the far-right party’s top officials are trying to seduce business leaders — and show them that Le Pen’s agenda isn’t a threat to the wealthy.
Marine Le Pen speaks with officials of the Rassemblement National party in Paris, France, on March 20, 2024. (Ludovic Marin / AFP via Getty Images)
Buoyed by excellent poll scores, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National is today laying the groundwork for its potential arrival in power. We see the change in its leaders’ lunches with top French entrepreneurs, in its increasingly Atlanticist geopolitical stance, and in its softening of its past opposition to free trade. Its hobnobbing with business chiefs is surely turning the page on the past era when Le Pen’s advisor Florian Philippot pushed the call to abandon the euro.
Still, whether the Rassemblement National leadership is meeting with these figures, changing its program, or reworking its alliances with other far-right parties, it remains rather discreet about these developments. It knows that its working-class electorate will be the first victim of this shift.
Operation: Seduction
Key in this sense is Jordan Bardella, the Rassemblement National’s rising star and lead candidate for this Sunday’s elections to the European Parliament. While Bardella is the clear front-runner for the French part of this EU-wide election, he has skipped all TV debates in recent weeks, instead sending his lieutenants to appear on his behalf. Doubtless, if he had accepted the invitations, he would have been the target of all manner of attacks — so, he had more to lose than to gain from taking part. And he surely did also hold a few meetings and shoot some videos for his social media. But Le Pen’s second-in-command seems above all to have been busy convincing a group hitherto rather reticent about his party’s arrival in power: entrepreneurs.
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