Jordan Bardella did not mince his words when asked about his plans not only for France but Europe as a whole, if elected as the successor to President Macron next year.
“We need a new European architecture,” Bardella told Politico in a recent interview. “What the European Union stands for — globalization, powerful open markets, uncontrolled immigration, economic decline, and excessive regulation — is profoundly outdated.”
The European Union is completely obsolete and, in its current form and scope, is no longer capable of addressing the major challenges our country will face.
Bardella argued that the world is returning to everything that globalism and Brussels have sought to deconstruct in the past decades—the nation, borders, and the pursuit of sovereign national interests—and it’s high time Europe catches up too, or risks joining the losers of the 21st century.
The 30-year-old leader of the French Rassemblement National (RN) and chairman of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group in Brussels took over his party’s 2027 candidacy from Marine Le Pen, his mentor and former party leader. Le Pen had been barred from entering the race herself last year for alleged misappropriation of public funds, a political move that has been condemned all over the world as a severe violation of the rule of law.
What Bardella also inherited was Le Pen’s confident lead in the polls, sending the entire Brussels elite into panic mode. The RN leader currently stands at around 35%, far above the second most-favored candidate, former PM Édouard Philippe (19%). This doesn’t mean the order can’t swap in the second round, but Bardella’s lead could still grow substantially in the ten months still left until the election.
That’s why Brussels is working overtime to get the massively increased 2028–2034 EU budget finalized before April next year, making sure Bardella (and the majority of French people) has no say in what they spend billions of euros on in the next seven years.
“The idea is obviously to lock in the budget before a potential change in France. The European Union is again pursuing its profoundly anti-democratic policy and philosophy,” Bardella explained, arguing that this is exactly why his party is calling for a 50% cut in French contributions to the EU.
“We must change the way the European Union functions, and that is why tomorrow we want France to contribute less to a budget currently projected to increase at a delusional rate on the eve of the presidential election. It is a democratic scandal,” he explained. “The next French executive, whoever it may be, must have a say.”
The biggest driver of RN’s popularity, of course, is the party’s clear stance on mass immigration, which proves again and again to be the main topic of political discourse in France, yet mainstream parties refuse to act.
“There is a fear today that tomorrow Europe will no longer be Europe and France will no longer be France,” Bardella said. “There are many people in Europe who are extremely unhappy to see France weakened and submerged by massive immigration that profoundly changes its identity and its values.”
Of course, stopping mass migration or solving Europe’s competitiveness crisis is simply not possible without a major change in Brussels first.
That’s exactly what Bardella seeks to lead in the future, and has already begun building an international coalition beyond the Patriots’ alliance. Under his leadership, RN has begun cultivating stronger ties with Italian PM Georgia Meloni as well as Poland’s national conservative opposition, PiS, likely to also reclaim the government next year.
“Our ambition is to think big and to build a new European architecture capable of addressing the major challenges of the 21st century—and we will certainly need the largest group possible.”
