While the National Rally has long argued for leaving the command of the Alliance, its president said he was opposed to it on Thursday, as long as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict lasts.
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The president of the National Rally (RN) said Thursday March 28 that he was against an exit from the integrated command of NATO as long as the war in Ukraine “is still in progress”, affirming in passing that he was not totally hostile to the deliveries of French Scalp missiles to kyiv. “We do not change treaties in times of war,” insisted Jordan Bardella during an interview in Paris organized by the media Politico and the think tank Europa Nova.
However, his party has long argued for leaving command of the Alliance, as General de Gaulle did in 1966, before Nicolas Sarkozy reversed this decision in 2009. In April 2022, two months after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Marine Le Pen, then qualified for the second round of the presidential election, had promised to “leave NATO integrated command”in the name of “independence” from France. But this program “didn’t take the war into account”assured the head of the RN list.
Although he did not close the door to deliveries of French long-range Scalp missiles to Ukraine, Jordan Bardella nevertheless warned against sending equipment “which can reach Russian territory”at the risk of “escalation”.
