Marion Maréchal is the head of the Reconquête Party list for the 2024 European elections. For some time, she has been a shining star on the French political Right. Maréchal tells The European Conservative what she hopes will be the new politics of Europe—one that will help salvage French—and Western—civilisation.
Your support for Éric Zemmour and the Reconquête party at the height of the presidential campaign elicited a lot of commentary. In hindsight, how do you assess that decision today?
My decision to join Éric Zemmour was guided above all by the accordance of my political views with his. I share his ideas on identity, and I agree with him on social and economic issues—ones that I was already defending when I was an MP with the Rassemblement National (RN, formerly the Front National). What’s more, Éric and I believe in the need for a coalition of the Right to ensure that our ideas win the day. I have no regrets because today I’m taking part in a new and very promising political adventure that will enable a genuine right-wing party to return to the French electoral map. This new party is indispensable in the face of the compromising ‘Right’ embodied by certain leaders of the Les Républicains (LR) party. It also expresses real commitments—particularly economic and societal ones—that contrast with those of the Rassemblement National.
Hasn’t explicitly siding with—and campaigning for—one specific candidate deprived you of the possibility of ‘bridging the gap’ between the different factions on the French Right?
I think precisely the opposite. It would have been irresponsible not to get involved in an election where the vital issue at stake is to halt the great replacement of the French people and the decline of our country.
The emergence of Reconquête—already the country’s 4th largest political party—could reshuffle the cards in the years to come. Across Europe, right-wing coalitions are coming to power in Hungary, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Denmark, and the Netherlands. France must not be the exception. One of our missions will be to ensure that our country is part of this political reconfiguration and does not miss the train of history.
You are the face of Reconquête—representing its youth, dynamism, and attractiveness. The Rassemblement National is using similar tactics with the candidacy of Jordan Bardella, now that party’s president. But the press often distinguishes between the Rassemblement National of Marine Le Pen and that of Bardella. Is there a distinction, too, between you and Éric Zemmour at Reconquête?
I’m the Reconquête candidate in the European elections on the 9th of June and Éric Zemmour is the president of our political party Reconquête. He will be at my side to give us the benefit of his depth of vision, his understanding of history and culture, and above all, his uncommon strength of conviction. He places each of our political decisions in the context of a long history, to which he brings powerful intellectual insight and coherence. In this way, he will never be one of those politician-communicators whose convictions change according to opinion polls.
Éric and I are complementary in terms of our generations, our personal histories and our political paths: Éric is a Gaullist, and forged his political conscience in Charles Pasqua’s Rally for the Republic. He is the child of a Jewish family from Algeria and the fruit of successful French assimilation. As for me, I’m the product of the national struggle originally launched by Jean Marie Le Pen 50 years ago. I’m a Catholic and the mother of two little girls for whom I cannot accept the collapse of our French—and, more broadly, our European—civilisation.
In your recent media appearances, you have increasingly used the expression ‘alliance of the Rights’ rather than ‘union of the Rights.’ Can you explain what you mean by these two expressions?
First of all, I’d like to reiterate what I think is obvious: no party can win on its own in our electoral system. All the parties that have come to power in France have done so in coalitions. I had this bitter experience when I headed the Front National list in the 2015 regional elections in the Provence region: with 45% of the vote in the second round, we certainly achieved an exceptional score, but we still lost the election because we had no allies and very few reserves of votes in the second round. I’ve learnt an important lesson from that.
My ambition is for our ideas to win in France and in Europe. And the only reasonable way of doing that is to get political forces that share several essential ideas to work together. I’m talking about an alliance rather than a union because
I believe it’s important for each movement to be able to retain its independence and specificity without succumbing to the temptation of absorption or merger. It’s about complementary forces working together. Finally, forging alliances already tests your ability to govern a country in a particularly perilous situation.
For our readers, French political quarrels are sometimes difficult to understand. Can you explain the differences and disagreements between Reconquête and Rassemblement National?
These are not political quarrels but democratic choices. We don’t propose the same political projects. Reconquête is a party with a strong sense of identity. We are conservative and we are committed to economic freedoms, which is not the case with the others. But that hasn’t stopped us from proposing alliances in the legislative and European elections, which were rejected each time by the leaders of the Rassemblement National and Les Républicains, despite the strong support for the idea of this alliance among right-wing voters in all opinion polls.
For example, unlike the Rassemblement National, we remain firm opponents of LGBT ideology and its consequences. They take gay adoption and fatherless PMA (‘Medically Assisted Procreation’ in French) for granted but we don’t. Rassemblement National MPs say that they are debating the legalisation of surrogacy; we are not. They defend the inclusion of abortion in the French Constitution; we do not. We are also much more committed to defending the reduction of public spending, limiting statism, fighting welfare, and reducing taxes than the Rassemblement National.
Do you see any change in the rhetoric of Jordan Bardella’s Rassemblement National? Do you think collaboration is possible, at least at European level?
While the idea of a single group seems illusory given the balance of power between national parties, it is entirely possible and desirable for different political groups such as Identity and Democracy (to which Rassemblement National belongs) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) to vote together on certain texts. This has already happened on many occasions.
What is the state of your discussions with the various existing groups in the European Parliament? Zemmour has announced that he would like to join the ECR group. What is your relationship with the parties that make up this group? Who would be your preferred partners if you are elected?
I have many formal and informal contacts with a number of European leaders, some of whom I’ve known for a long time, mainly from the ECR, such as Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, Santiago Abascal’s VOX, the Polish PiS, and the Sweden Democrats. I also met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the president of the Republic of Hungary, Katalin Novák, in Budapest.
Today, we are closer to the political line taken by the ECR group. The outcome of these elections will determine the new composition of the various groups.
What do you think of Giorgia Meloni’s strategy of negotiating with Manfred Weber’s European People’s Party (EPP)? Do you believe that a right-wing coalition is possible at the European level between the ECR group, Rassemblement National’s ID group, and the EPP, similar to the ‘alliance of the Rights’ that you are calling for at a national level (recognizing that most of the time—with the exception of a few people like François-Xavier Bellamy—the EPP routinely votes with the centre and the Left)?
That’s the tragedy of Les Républicains: in Brussels, they often support exactly what they denounce in France. For example, although they elected Ms. von der Leyen, as soon as the elections got close, they pretended to denounce the harmfulness of her policies as the head of the European Commission.
This election should enable the ECR to become the new centre of gravity on the Right of the European Parliament. The polls show that this is possible. The ten or so Reconquête MEPs that the polls are promising us today could also contribute to this. If this is the case, it could finally bring about a reshaping of the European political landscape—and force part of the European People’s Party to question its past alliances.
We need to put an end to this unnatural majority that ranges from the EPP to the Renew Europe group, via the socialists and the environmentalists. I am convinced that we can overturn this majority, change the political line of the European Parliament—and put an end to the reign of Ms. von der Leyen.
You have just returned from Lampedusa, where you saw first-hand the extent of the damage caused by immigration. What role do you see for the EU in managing immigration? Do you believe in the usefulness of agreements such as the one put in place with Tunisia? And what are the main points that you intend to defend during the forthcoming European elections?
The main objectives must be to stop the flooding of our continent with people from Africa and end the ongoing Islamisation of Europe. This concern is widely shared by a good number of MEPs and will, I’m sure, provide an opportunity for unprecedented political convergence. That’s why I wanted to make my first campaign trip to Lampedusa. It is the border crossing for the whole of Europe—and in the face of this vital challenge, a solely national response will not be enough.
It is high time to clarify the role of Frontex, the European border and coast guard agency. Let me remind your readership that the former French Director, Fabrice Leggeri, was forced to resign because he wanted the agency to play its role in controlling and blocking illegal migration into Europe. Unfortunately, Ursula von der Leyen and the Left want to use the agency primarily to assist and support migrants.
We need to coordinate and pool our resources to organise a maritime blockade of the Mediterranean Sea along the lines of Operation Sophia [an EU military operation that aimed at ‘neutralising’ established refugee smuggling routes], without chartering migrant boats to our ports but rather returning them to the ports of departure. At the EU level, we need to fund a major communication campaign aimed at Africa and Turkey similar to Australia’s ‘No Way.’
Asylum policy must be reformed, and the examination of asylum seekers’ files should be conducted outside European borders. To achieve this, the EU will have to find hot spots in the countries of departure and establish migration management agreements with African countries, as Giorgia Meloni wanted to do with Tunisia. We will have to make fundamental changes to all the European texts that currently restrict the freedom of member states to tighten up their border control.
Finally, as far as I am concerned, the question of France’s continued membership in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) must be raised. The case law of the ECHR prevents the French state from protecting the French people. A staggering example: on the 30th of August 2022, the ECHR condemned France for having revoked the refugee status of two Chechen jihadists who had pledged allegiance to Daesh, and then expelling them, on the pretext that these individuals were at risk of ill-treatment in their country of origin.
What solutions does Reconquête consider for regulating immigration at European level? What do you think of the closure of borders between European countries within the Schengen zone? Is this fair for countries like Italy, which have to bear the heavy burden of controlling Europe’s external borders?
At Reconquête, our aim is not regulation but remigration. The aim is not to reduce immigration but to reverse the flow. The challenge is a civilisational one, requiring a response on a European scale. Since January 2023, 124,000 migrants have landed on Lampedusa, almost twice as many as during the same period in 2022. This is only the beginning, given the dizzying demographic dynamics at work in Africa. Every day, more children are born in Nigeria than in the whole of the European Union.
Faced with this civilisational challenge, we will not protect France by abandoning Italy to its fate—this is neither fair to our Italian friends nor effective for the safety of the French. We absolutely must review the way Schengen works. I agree with the former French ambassador to Algeria, Xavier Driencourt, that we need to think about restricting freedom of movement in this area to Europeans only. It is not normal for a foreigner who is not a Schengen citizen to be able to cross from one European country to another without any controls, just because he has entered the Schengen area once.
The European elections are obviously very important for your party. But once this interim election is over, what will Reconquête be working on between now and 2027, which is still a long way off?
I returned to the political arena to do my bit to win power in France and Europe. For the moment, I’m concentrating on the election of 9 June 2024, when we hope to get as many Reconquête MEPs as possible into the European Parliament to help put an end to the progressivist and immigrationist majority. If we achieve this goal, and the European Parliament’s political centre of gravity shifts to the conservative Right, Europe’s destiny can change.
This essay appears in the Winter 2024 edition of The European Conservative, Number 29:46-50.
