Along with her main rival, the center-right Francois Fillon, Le Pen has called for closer ties with Russia and has criticized NATO expansion into eastern Europe. Le Pen has promised that she would take France out of the alliance if she became president because, as she said, the organisation has become redundant.
“It was established when there was a risk from the Warsaw Pact and the expansionism of the communist Soviet Union,” Le Pen said in an interview with a Greek newspaper, Dimokratia.
“The Soviet Union no longer exists, and neither does the Warsaw Pact. Washington maintains the NATO presence to serve its objectives in Europe.”
In 1958 already French president Charles de Gaulle took the view that NATO was dominated by the US and UK, and that America would not fulfill its promise to defend Europe in the event of a Russian invasion.
In February 1966, France eventually withdrew from the NATO Military Command Structure. De Gaulle also ordered all foreign military personnel to leave France within a year.
Le Pen, the leader of France’s popular National Front and a candidate for the 2017 presidential elections, is known for her anti-NATO views. Together with France, she suggested that Portugal, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Greece and Cyprus should also leave the European Union.
She added that she planned to hold a Brexit-style referendum, another typical Gaullist political stance based the founding President of the Fifth French Republic’s criticism and opposition to an EEC, the forerunner to the EU.
De Gaulle countered political integration that, in his thinking, would impinge on the sovereignty of France, both internally and externally, before he passed away only three years after denouncing NATO in 1969.
Le Pen similarly has confirmed her disparagement at the EU’s supranational tendencies, something that De Gaulle in 1961 had tried to halt with the so-called Fouchet Plan that maintained all decision-making powers in the hands of governments, reducing the projected European parliamentary assembly to a mere consultative assembly.
“Frexit will be a part of my policy,” she said in the interview with Dimokratia. “The people must have the opportunity to vote for the liberation from slavery and blackmail imposed by technocrats in Brussels to return sovereignty to the country.”
She has expressed not only Euroscepticism but warned against the dangers of flooding the continent with immigrants.
“I am against the policy which would promote the entry of immigrants into Europe, which cannot accept them … this tsunami of migrants should be limited. Europe does not have the power to ensure they all find work and opportunities to enrich themselves. Immigrants are illegal since once they set foot on European soil … they have violated the law. They must be sent back to their homeland.“
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