“PARIS -- Marine Le Pen, France's leading right-wing presidential candidate, opened her campaign for next year's elections by casting herself as a unifying figure to revive France after weeks of unrest fueled by economic hardship and anger at the government.
Politicians from both right and left have been trying to seize the initiative as this month's protests swept through France.
On Saturday, more than 400,000 people took to the streets to rail against the rising cost of living and deteriorating public services.
While the demonstrations largely were peaceful, clashes with police broke out in several regions in an echo of the looting and rioting that wrecked the country a week earlier.
Addressing thousands of supporters on Sunday in the historic city of Orleans, where Joan of Arc helped lift an English siege in 1429, Le Pen tried to place herself above the political fray with an appeal to voters beyond her traditional base. She will need that broader support to win the presidency, having reached the runoff in both 2017 and 2022 only to lose to Emmanuel Macron.
"Every citizen, with their different backgrounds, talents and sensibilities, is called upon to take part in the movement for France's renaissance that I am proposing," she said.
Invoking the Renaissance and the achievements of French civilization, Le Pen painted a sweeping picture of national renewal. She spoke of beauty, humanism and progress, promising to restore France's greatness and confidence in what some commentators described as suggestive of President Trump's Make American Great Again movement. She also returned to familiar themes of immigration and crime.
"We must regain confidence in ourselves, in our ability to confront and tame the torrent of events bearing down on us," she said.
Le Pen promised higher pay for workers, a stronger social-welfare net and greater job security alongside tax cuts for businesses, inheritance-tax relief and tighter controls on public spending.
She sought to transcend party politics by saying she would step down as head of her National Rally party's parliamentary group and form what she described as a government of national unity with party president Jordan Bardella as prime minister.
Putting aside traditional political labels, Le Pen said, would avoid pitting employees against shareholders or civil servants against entrepreneurs. "I am neither the right wing nor the left wing," she said, quoting what she described as an Indian proverb. "I am the bird."
Still, it seemed that the growing dissatisfaction on the streets of Paris and other cities was seldom far from Le Pen's mind. She vowed a crackdown on lawlessness and zero tolerance for looters and rioters.
"Who can say the rule of law exists when hordes vandalize and burn buildings or carry out wholesale looting in front of police forces deliberately stripped of the means and authority to intervene?" she said.
Le Pen's shift in tone, specifically her claims to be the only political figure who could pull the country together, reflects her position of strength as she approaches her fourth run at the presidency. She leads her rivals by a wide margin in first-round polls, with some surveys also putting her ahead in a runoff between the two leading candidates.
An Ipsos poll published on Saturday underscored the opportunity for Le Pen, finding widespread disapproval of the government's handling of the unrest and giving her the most favorable assessments of any political leader for her response. But there was little sign she had gained new voters from the violence: The poll showed that between 32% and 33.5% of voters would back Le Pen in the first round of the presidential election, little changed from before the unrest.
Macron, the incumbent, has already hit his two-term limit.
Despite more than a decade spent trying to shed her party's extremist reputation, partly derived from her firebrand father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the younger Le Pen remains deeply divisive. Many French voters still regard the prospect of a Le Pen presidency unacceptable. She also faces the prospect of campaigning with an electronic ankle tag after a French appeals court upheld her conviction in July for illegally using millions of euros in European Union funds, though her sentence remains suspended pending a final appeal.” [1]
Cheap Russian energy and Mistral AI expanded on basis of this energy will help Le Pen to revive France. Marine Le Pen has consistently argued that European sanctions on Russian oil and gas harm French consumers and businesses more than they affect Moscow. Her platform emphasizes restoring French purchasing power by lowering energy taxes and, where politically viable, securing cheaper traditional energy sources. Obviously, France needs more cheap energy than it is provided by traditional nuclear power. Germans with most popular AfD are arriving at the same conclusion. Rest economic gnomes of the EU have no AI, no power, no brains, and no need for it.
1. World News: Le Pen Pitches Herself as France's Unifier --- Right-wing candidate echoes MAGA movement as she launches campaign. Kostov, Nick. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 26 Oct 2026: A8.
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