The French Council of State on Monday rejected a request from Marine Le Pen’s party contesting its attachment to the “extreme right” in the classification of candidates for the September senatorial elections carried out by the Ministry of the Interior.
The National Rally party, heir to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, judged that the circular from the Ministry of the Interior which classified its party’s candidates in the “extreme right” bloc undermined the “sincerity of the vote”.
The party denounced “an unjustified difference in treatment” with the Communist Party and La France Insoumise (radical left), classified in the “left” bloc.
If the candidates can freely choose their nuance, in this case “National Rally”, the attribution of the blocs (“extreme left”, “left”, “others”, “center”, “right” or “extreme right”) falls under the prefectures, for the purposes of “electoral analysis” and “readability of election results for citizens”, recalled the ministry in its circular.
The Council of State, France’s highest administrative court, confirmed a first decision rendered in summary proceedings in September 2023 concerning Marine Le Pen’s party, which regularly protests being classified as far-right.
Widening of the “Republican arc”
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and his new head of government, Gabriel Attal, gave signs in February of widening the “republican arc” to the extremes, like other European countries such as Italy.
Emmanuel Macron notably considered it “completely normal” to have discussions with the party of Marine Le Pen, represented in parliament.
The “Republican arc” is a notion widely used by the presidential camp since its first five-year term to disqualify the extremes (right and left) in the face of the traditional parties of government which are the classic left and right formations.
But at the end of February the French Prime Minister judged that there was “reason to wonder whether Vladimir Putin’s troops [n’étaient] not already” in France, targeting Marine Le Pen by name, in a tense skirmish in parliament with the MP, favorite in the 2027 presidential election.
Three months before crucial European elections for the presidential majority in France, Emmanuel Macron’s camp is trying to counter a given favorite extreme right.