Neck and neck with her far-right competitor, Eric Zemmour and weakened by defections in recent weeks, Marine Le Pen is trying to regain control two months before the presidential election. On the move in the Alpes-Maritimes, Friday February 11, the candidate of the National Rally (RN) returned to her fundamentals during a meeting in Vallauris: immigration.
« L’immigration “no matter what”, in two months, it’s over. France, land of immigration, it’s over! »promised the RN candidate in front of more than 600 people, mocking “forty-five years of madness” and the“migratory irresponsibility” d’Emmanuel Macron. “The suction pump is running at full speed”she claimed, ciphering back to “16 billion euros” the gains achievable by limiting in particular non-contributory social assistance to foreigners, a highly disputed figure. The National Family Allowance Fund had told AFP that all allowances paid to foreigners corresponded to “9 billion euros” per year, in 2019, without the minimum old age managed by the National Old Age Insurance Fund.
“Today, nothing is easier to push the door of the house of France: 2,000 euros to smugglers, the complicity of subsidized NGOs, a fake tourist visa, a usurped minority, an arranged marriage, family reunification misguided…she continued. With one or more of these options you find yourself in France fed, housed, cared for, heated, when so many of our compatriots are no longer getting by. »
“This migration (…) for our leaders is not so much a problem as a real project” once more attacked the RN candidate, who proposes in particular to organize a referendum on immigration, to stop family reunification and to abolish state medical aid. “In two months, I will undertake the major project of stopping immigration to France”she promised.
The far-right candidate has also announced that she wants ” end “ at “these excesses, these abuses, these frauds” that “everyone tolerates by looking elsewhere” facing a “submersion that does not say its name”and criticized ” those who [la] deny or encourage it”Who “are either blind, or dishonest, or criminals”. During this meeting, she called the French who “do not agree to let themselves be dispossessed of their country, to allow themselves to be imposed (…) ways of life that are not theirs, to see their country let itself be buried under the veil of multiculturalism”at “say it by voting”. “The fundamental choice that is put to us in this election is that of the disappearance or the preservation of the France that we love”she insisted, while her supporters chanted ” We are at home “.
Increase in the defense budget
Earlier in the day, traveling to Toulon, the RN candidate had unveiled her proposals on defense. After visiting a multi-mission frigate, the far-right candidate held a press conference where she said she wanted to fix the defense budget “at 55 billion [d’euros] per year in 2027, excluding pensions, external operations and internal missions”.
The budget of the Ministry of the Armed Forces must increase once more in 2022, to 40.9 billion euros (+ 4.3%), in accordance with the military programming law (LPM) 2019-2025, which provides for a significant increase in the budget defense following years of decline. But the largest increases (+ 3 billion per year) are planned from 2023.
The candidate of the National Rally described the LPM as “dressing law”, “insincere in its terms”by applying the effort “following 2022”, and “insufficient in substance”. She accused Emmanuel Macron of having “shaken the doctrine of the French strike force with its strategic dialogue with European partners”.
Marine Le Pen, who had been received by Vladimir Putin during the 2017 campaign, reiterated her desire to withdraw France from the integrated military commander of NATO, which has become “a warmongering organization, whose successive enlargements aim less at protecting European countries than at dangerously encircling Russia, from Georgia to Ukraine”.