In her speech at a major rally in Madrid, organised by the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, Marine Le Pen, former president of the Rassemblement National (RN) and candidate in the 2027 French presidential election, celebrated the “global shift” underway with the election of Donald Trump and calling for France to “non-align” with American power.
The rally on Saturday, February 8th, brought together the main representatives of the PfE at the initiative of the VOX party, under the slogan “Make Europe Great Again”—inspired by the campaign slogan of U.S. President Donald Trump. Among those present were Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, and the leader of the Spanish VOX party Santiago Abascal.
Marine Le Pen was present on behalf of the French RN party, alongside the party’s current president and chairman of the PfE group in the European Parliament Jordan Bardella. The group has been the third largest force in the European Parliament since the European elections in June 2024, with 86 MEPs out of a total of 720. Of these, 30 are from the RN, making it one of the largest delegations.
Like all the speakers, Le Pen hailed Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections from the rostrum. She described the victory as a “global tipping point”—not a simple spasm of a declining country or a trivial shift allowed by the democratic system. According to her, his upheaval has profound repercussions in Europe. “Everyone understands that something has changed,” she explained.
She spoke in favour of strengthening bilateral relations between European nations and Trump’s United States. “I believe that the power of Europe lies in the power of its nations,” she explained. “In this new context, we, the nationals of Europe, are the only ones who can talk to the new Trump administration,” she added, noting the state of “stupefaction” into which the European Union had been plunged since the announcement of the Republican candidate’s victory, in her view proving the bloc incapable of being a credible interlocutor on the international stage.
In a long interview with the Spanish newspaper El Debate, Le Pen elaborated on her speech. In her view, the election of Donald Trump is revealing the mistakes made by the European Union. “While the United States are going to massively re-industrialise and bring down energy prices, the EU is implementing the Green Deal and waging war on nuclear power,” she criticised. Speaking on behalf of PfE, she added: “We are in the best position today to be able to talk to his administration, because we understand what drives him and what he stands for.”
To Le Pen, it was also important to reaffirm a certain form of French specificity. “France cannot be the daughter of the United States, because it is already the mother,” she reminded, referring to the decisive role played by France in the American War of Independence shortly before the French Revolution.
Marine Le Pen said Trump’s victory should not be “interpreted as a call for alignment,” but “an invitation to follow this movement of rebirth that is emerging in many parts of the West.” “Donald Trump is very American, but I am French,” Marine Le Pen was keen to point out.
According to Le Figaro, the candidate’s entourage also castigated the meeting’s slogan, “Make Europe Great Again,” as “grotesque.” “Liking Donald Trump’s patriotism doesn’t mean being a vassal of the United States,” reminded RN president Jordan Bardella, who intends to keep a reasonable distance from the American president.
Nonetheless, some observers in the French press have noted that the Madrid speech marked a certain shift in the official discourse of the RN, on the road to an “Atlanticist, conservative and liberal [in the French sense of the term] conversion”, even if it is not yet fully embraced—in the words of former Le Figaro columnist Ivan Rioufol, who speaks of a “mental unblocking” in progress.
