FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS – In France, the parliamentary commission of inquiry into foreign interference has voted in favor of the report by Macronist MP Constance Le Grip, which highlights the “privileged relationship” between the Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen’s party, and Russia.
In Europe, Marine Le Pen is seen as the “transmission belt” for the official Russian discourse, which is very much appreciated in Moscow.
As soon as Marine Le Pen’s hearing before the commission concluded on May 24, Russian news outlets picked up on her main message, which was that “Crimea is and has always been Russian.”
“In every geopolitical crisis provoked by Russia, the Front National and then the Rassemblement National pledged their support to Putin. […] When Russia illegally annexed Crimea in March 2014, Marine Le Pen supported Moscow’s official line,” the report reads.
The commission had been set up by the Rassemblement national to counter allegations of excessive proximity to Moscow, particularly following campaign borrowing, but it backfired. Members of the Rassemblement National voted against the report’s conclusions and Jean-Philippe Tanguy said he was “dismayed” by the text, which he described as “irrelevant”. Marine Le Pen has expressed outrage at a text she describes as “dishonest and utterly politicised”.
Before the parliamentary commission, Marine Le Pen defended herself by citing previous pro-Russian commitments by other politicians.
A pro-Russian stance has never been lacking in French politicians, particularly among those on the right such as former Prime Minister François Fillon. But it is true that Marine Le Pen went further than others when she spoke of her “admiration” for Vladimir Putin in 2011, when she was elected leader of the Front National to succeed her father Jean-Marie. During the 2017 presidential campaign, Marine Le Pen traveled to the Kremlin to meet Putin, and this privileged relationship made itself felt in European Parliament votes, where Lepenist MEPs consistently sided with Russia’s defence. Even in January 2023, when the National Rassemblement MPs refrained from supporting the creation of a tribunal for crimes against Ukraine.
In an interview with Corriere della Sera last October, Marine Le Pen had this to say about the EUR 9 million loan agreed with a Czech-Russian bank and its relationship with Moscow: “We have all over Europe, in the United States, looking for funding.” , in Asia, in Africa, absolutely everywhere. We have not found another bank that would be willing to finance us. It certainly wasn’t a loan from friends at 6% interest, given by a bank that later went bankrupt, suggesting it might not have been that close to the Kremlin. It is true that we have been saying for 40 years that Russia is a European country and that the cold war stance between the European Union and Russia risks pushing Russia into the arms of China and creating a geopolitical monster: the largest country the world together with the world’s most populous country; the first raw material producer together with the factory in the world. But we immediately condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and support the sanctions, except for those that hurt us more than Russia.”