Jordan Bardella, the leader of the far-right National Rally party who could become France’s next prime minister, has repeated the same basic promises since France called a snap election.
If his party forms the country’s government, it will greatly reduce immigration, lower taxes and combat crime, he says.
But the National Rally is the heir to a political tradition in France associated with overt racism, anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, and while the party has distanced itself from that past, some basic philosophies remain embedded in its policies: immigrants pose a threat to France’s security, economy and national identity.
Bardella’s plans include removing the automatic right to French citizenship at age 18 for children born in France to non-French parents; ending free medical treatment for undocumented people except in emergency cases; and restricting citizens with a second passport from taking jobs deemed sensitive, such as running a nuclear plant and working in “strategic” defense.
He also wants to bar convicted felons from living in public housing and reduce the country’s sales tax on all forms of energy, from fuel to electricity.
It is not entirely clear how he will do these things. The party’s 21-page programme, packed with photographs and graphics, is full of general ideas but short on details about how to implement them. And over the past three weeks of furious campaigning and debates, Bardella has backtracked on some promises or shelved them for later.
But even some of the measures that have remained consistently in his plan — such as removing some automatic citizenship rights — and which he wants to implement immediately will likely face pushback from President Emmanuel Macron and the country’s constitutional council.
And then there is the question of how Mr Bardella would pay for all this.
“They will have difficulty implementing some of their programmes,” says Rémi Lefebvre, a professor of political science at the University of Lille.
It is not even clear whether Bardella, 28, will be France’s next prime minister. His party and its allies won about 33 percent of the popular vote for the 577-seat National Assembly in the first of two rounds of elections last Sunday, but only 38 of its candidates won their seats outright.
Most of the others face a decisive second vote next Sunday, and a nationwide movement has been building across the country to prevent them from winning an outright majority. More than 200 of their challengers have dropped out of three-candidate races, offering extra votes to the strongest opponent to block them.
Bardella has said he will not accept the premiership without an absolute majority of 289 seats, but if he becomes prime minister, he has promised that his government will implement a handful of generous measures this summer.
Some of the bills are in line with his party’s anti-immigrant beliefs, such as restricting dual citizens from taking certain jobs and ending some free medical treatment for undocumented people.
In the coming years, Bardella has promised to implement the party’s long-held principle of “national preference” – giving French citizens preferential treatment over foreigners for certain government jobs, benefits or subsidies.
The measures will likely be rejected by the country’s top constitutional council, said Anne-Charlène Bezzina, an associate professor of public law and constitutional expert at the University of Rouen Normandy.
Last spring, the court ruled against limits on social benefits for non-French citizens who have been in the country for less than five years, saying such restrictions would disproportionately infringe on the right to national solidarity enshrined in the French constitution.
The allocation of benefits by separating people based on their birth or citizenship contradicts the fundamental principles of the French Republic, which date back to the Enlightenment and are enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, Bezzina explained.
“There is no way to differentiate between French nationals and binationals,” he said in an interview. “The same goes for differentiating between French nationals by birth or by blood. It goes against the principle of equality.”
Experts say Bardella’s immediate plans for tougher crime measures are more likely to be implemented quickly and smoothly. In the first weeks of his term, he has promised to pass laws setting minimum sentences for repeat offenders and cut state subsidies to the families of young offenders caught reoffending.
“I think they will be able to do it to satisfy their electorate,” said Lefebvre, a political science professor.
To get the French money back, Bardella’s main promise has been to slash the tax on energy sales. Pressed to say how he would finance that measure (estimated at 17 billion euros ($18.2 billion) by the Finance Ministry), Bardella has offered several possibilities, including cutting France’s payments to the European Union by 2 billion euros.
There he is likely to face another clash with Macron, a staunch defender of the European Union, Lefebvre predicted.
But Bardella could also face a technical challenge. In the short term, if a French government simply refuses to send such a payment, it would likely face an immediate penalty and a proportional reduction in EU transfers, many of which go to French farmers, who are the biggest beneficiaries of farm subsidies, said Eulalia Rubio, a senior fellow in European economic affairs at the Jacques Delors Institute in Paris.
Negotiations on the next multiannual EU budget are due to start next year. If the French government insists on a reduction in its payments in the future, it is likely to get something, he said, although not as much as 2 billion euros.
But the cost to the European Union, to which France is the second-largest contributor, will be large, said Rubio, who is also a senior research associate at the Center for European Policy Studies.
“France has always been the country that has had the vision of a bigger budget for the European Union,” Rubio said. “You already saw Macron asking to double EU spending. So we can completely forget about the big defense budget and completely forget about more economic support for Ukraine.”
