Four things about Marine Le Pen that you probably didn’t know

On her third attempt to reach the Elysee Palace, Marine Le Pen, 53, She will run on April 24 in the second round of elections in France Against the current president, Emmanuel Macron, who also defeated her in a second vote in 2017.

Although the centrist candidate received the most votes in the first round and leads opinion polls in the second round with an advantage of between two and ten points (according to various polls), the right has the best chance of electing its three presidential candidates: after not reaching the second round in the In 2012, the gap now appears to be well below the 30 percentage points that separated it from Macron in the final contest five years ago.

This time Le Pen benefited from a rhetoric focused on rising prices and the cost of living, the main concerns of the French, and by tempering the Eurosceptic and anti-immigrant rhetoric (particularly against Muslims) that made her known.

However, this platform is still in its government program. Among other things, the candidate wants to limit immigrant access regarding family ties and the right to asylum, ban the use of Islamic headscarves in all public places and give priority to French citizens over foreigners and asylum seekers in housing programs and other public services.

At other points, though, Marine Le Pen has situations that might surprise (or disappoint) those who already have a picture of her. Check out some of them:

She is Putin’s ally

Le Pen said he admires Russian President Vladimir Putin for “putting the interests of Russia and the Russian people first” in 2014, the same year his party, the National Front (renamed from 2018 to National Regroup), took out loans totaling about 11 million euros from banks linked to the Kremlin.

Le Pen also claimed that Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea was not illegal and that the referendum that approved the incorporation was an “indisputable” vote, which the West has not recognized. In 2017, she called for sanctions against Russia to be lifted and visited Putin at the Kremlin.

However, fearing wear and tear from the war that the Russian president started in February, Le Pen has been advocating the “territorial integrity” of Ukraine and the reception of refugees from the former Soviet republic. He also backed sanctions over the invasion last month, but said they should not apply to Russian oil and gas.

She is pro-abortion

In a 2014 interview, Le Pen said that “no one can be happy” with abortion and called for policies to help underprivileged mothers during pregnancy, but she did not contest the legality of the procedure. “the ban [do aborto] Not the way,” he claimed.

Le Pen called for French legislation on abortion to be preserved. Voluntary abortion up to the 10th week of pregnancy was legalized in the country in 1975. The limit was extended to 12 weeks in 2001 and For 14 weeks this year.

The Gazzetta de Beauvo Convictions: Defending Life Since Pregnancy

In 2016, her niece Marion Marechal Le Pen, who was a deputy in the French National Assembly, said that eventually in her aunt’s presidency, abortion legislation would be changed in France, but Navy and party are both denied.

Florian Philippot, Le Pen’s 2017 campaign coordinator, told the Guardian he feared young women might think the candidate intended to ban abortion. “It’s totally wrong and detrimental to our second round,” he said.

Your economic program is nothing but a conservative program

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine’s father, in his five candidacies for the presidency of France, advocated a right-wing economic agenda: the free market and a minimalist state. However, many of his daughter’s proposals in this area are closer to the left.

Marine Le Pen wants to prioritize French products on government trading floors, lower the minimum retirement age to 60 for those who started before 20 and keep it at 62 for the rest – Macron wants to raise it to 65. Does it represent retirement at 65? “This is completely unfair,” he said in an interview with BFM television.

The candidate also wants to abolish income tax for those under 30, reduce energy tax from 20% to 5.5%, and spend €2 billion over five years to increase salaries for health workers and hire more. 10,000 of them, in addition to increasing teachers’ salaries by 15% by 2027.

Macron claimed that his opponent’s program would lead to mass unemployment because it would isolate foreign investors and would not last in terms of budget.

Abandon ‘Frexit’ – but remain skeptical about Europe

A politician from the National Rally told Time that a referendum to take France out of the European Union (“Frexit”) had not been considered this time, but Le Pen’s hatred of the bloc remains.

It aims to reduce France’s contributions to the European Union and foster an alliance with countries ruled by politicians with whom it has ties, such as Hungary and Poland, which are governed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban and President Andrzej Duda, respectively.

As for NATO, the Western military alliance, it wants to remove France from the organization’s integrated command structure, “so that it no longer participates in conflicts that are not ours.”