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The far-right candidate for the second round of the French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, has spoken out about her views on the relationship between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia. For her, the ties between the two parties should be strengthened.
The candidate for the Presidency of France, the far-right Marine Le Pen, announced as a proposal of her campaign that, after the end of the war between Russia and Ukraine, NATO should strengthen ties with the Kremlin.
“As soon as the Russo-Ukrainian war is over and resolved with a peace treaty, I will call for the launch of a strategic rapprochement between NATO and Russia. It is in the interests of France and Europe, as well as the United States,” Le Pen said at a press conference.
The candidate, who has expressed her admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past, is running against current President Emmanuel Macron in the presidential runoff on April 24. A victory for Le Pen would reverberate throughout the European continent due to her Euroscepticism.
With her statements, Le Pen sought to clarify the “misunderstandings” of her foreign policy. In the 2017 elections, she was received by the Russian president, while affirming that she shared the same values as him and that the world was facing a “new world order” with Trump, Putin and her at the head of their nations.
But she said she had been misunderstood and misjudged in her earlier expressions of esteem for Putin, saying she was only defending French interests.
In the middle of the press conference on Wednesday, a protester took a photo of the 2017 meeting between her and Putin, cut out in the shape of a heart. The protester was immediately removed from the room.
Claims that draw criticism
Le Pen, in his government program, seeks to cut French contributions to the European Union budget and restore the primacy of French law over the law of the bloc.
At the press conference he also said that “Frexit” was not in his project, emulating the name of the Brexit that allowed the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, but that when this country left the bloc “the French ruling class spoke of a nationalist and insular retreat and predicted disaster for the British. That didn’t happen,” he assured.
Le Pen has been harshly criticized on previous occasions for her poor geopolitical knowledge, once claiming that Russia had not invaded Crimea in 2014.
French politics also referred to the Paris Agreement, which seeks for countries to drastically reduce CO2 emissions, and to the surprise of many of its detractors, said that it would not abandon it and that it is “in favor of the guidelines of this Agreement ( …) I wish to abandon fossil fuels as much as possible in favor of civil nuclear energy”.
Le Pen’s view of Franco-German relations
In his speech, which lasted about an hour and a half, he stated that he wanted to continue a close relationship with Germany, Europe’s largest economy, but that this country “intends to be the complete opposite of the French strategic identity, which is based on independence, deterrence, and a comprehensive, world-class military and industrial model,” adding that these are “irreconcilable” differences.
In the midst of his controversial statements, he stated that French and German should replace English as the operating languages of the European institutions and warned that “strategic differences” would imply a new way of working with Berlin.
As for military cooperation between the two countries, including future warplane and tank programs, he said he would end these projects.
In the latest poll conducted by the Ipsos company, Emmanuel Macron would beat Marine Le Pen with 55% of the votes.
With Reuters and EFE
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