France’s Le Pen launches presidential campaign with anti-EU rhetoric

Le Pen has been supportive of Britain’s exit from the European Union and of Trump, and her populist, anti-immigrant, France first message has found resonance among some citizens in the country unhappy with the economy and anxious about terrorism. The party also “wants to deport the radical imams”, she said.

France has about five million Muslims – the largest Islamic minority in Western Europe.

“The places of Islamic preaching will be closed and the propagators of hate will be condemned and expelled”, she remarked.

Le Pen listed the veils some Muslim women wear, mosques and prayer in the streets of France as unacceptable cultural dangers “no French person.attached to his dignity can accept”. “This is positive as Macron has been enjoying a significant and growing lead over Le Pen in polls”, chimed in Alberto Gallo at Algebris Investments. One of them is globalization, a process that she (and her party) have bashed year after year.

“Both are working to make our nation disappear, by which I mean the France in which we live and that we love”, she added. “This election is a choice of civilization”, Ms. Le Pen said in her speech, painting a bleak picture of a future in which France has lost its French identity. (“This is our country”) – when she railed against foreigners committing crimes in France and said no illegal immigrant would be granted residency or given free health care if she came to power.

“The primaries have shown that the debates on secularism or on immigration, as well as on globalization or generalized deregulation do constitute now a fundamental and cross-cutting division”, she told crowds in the central city of Lyon.

In language that that is similar to that used by anti-EU campaigners, such as the Leave.EU campaign and UKIP, Le Pen used the speech to describe the EU as a failure that had “kept none of its promises”.

Alluding to the scandal over fictitious jobs that has blighted the candidacy of the mainstream conservative candidate and former front-runner François Fillon, Le Pen began by saying that “recent news has provided a striking demonstration: against the right of money, the left of money, I am the candidate of the France, of the people”.

The FN officials taking to the stage targeted Macron more than any other of Le Pen’s opponents, presenting the former investment banker as the candidate of “international capitalism”. “These two ideologies want to dominate our country”. She has qualified the European Union as an organization that is a “master on enslaving its members”.

She also said that no person that is now living in France illegally would receive the nationality if she becomes president in the next spring.

“We will have to find a compromise with Europe to regain sovereignty”.

On full display for two days will be the proud nationalism of the National Front party candidate.

It also outlines plans for social housing to be prioritised for French citizens; a “pro-birth policy” for French families; and taxes on employers who hire foreign workers.