The Challenge of Tackling the Far-Right in France

A year ago, French President Macron surprised everyone by triggering a snap parliamentary election on the evening on the European Parliamentary elections, which that saw far-right party the National Rally (Rassemblement National, abbreviated RN in French) come first. Macron’s own centrist coalition Together (Ensemble) came second, far behind the RN list led by then 28-year-old party leader Jordan Bardella. The parliamentary elections saw the New Popular Front, a left-wing coalition, win a plurality of seats, followed by Together and the RN. However, the number of RN deputies went from 89 to 142 in the space of two years.  The months that followed this election and the collapse of Michel Barnier’s government (September-December 2024) showed just how divided and unstable French politics are and how influential the National Rally has become.

The RN has become a key party in the French party system, and no party, be it Macron’s party Renaissance or the traditional parties of government (Socialist Party and The Republicans), seems to know how to tackle this problem. The divided National Assembly that resulted from these parliamentary elections strengthened the RN, which has become much more normalised over the years, as a result of both its own strategy to appear less extreme and other parties’ strategies to tackle its rise by adopting some of its policies. In these parliamentary elections, the ‘republican front’ strategy, in which some of the other parties co-operate to prevent the election of LR deputies, worked well, but there are signs that this strategy may be weakening, potentially opening a path to power for the far right.

The 2024 elections and a government at the mercy of the far right

Over the past ten years, the French party system has become more fragmented, with the traditional parties of government of the centre right (The Republicans, LR) and centre left (Socialist Party, PS) losing votes and seats to newer parties. The July 2024 parliamentary elections created a National Assembly divided into three blocks: the New Popular Front, an alliance of left-wing parties including the PS, the Greens and radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI, France Unbowed), Together at the centre (including Macron’s party Renaissance), and the RN at the far right. In such a divided Assembly (15 parties won seats), no coalition of parties was able to form a parliamentary majority. With the appointment of centrist François Bayrou as Prime Minister on 13^th December 2024 and the formation of a minority government going from the centre to the right (LR), France had its fourth Prime Ministers in the space of a year.

 

Figure 1. Composition of the French National Assembly after the July 2024 elections

Like his predecessor Michel Barnier, Bayrou lacks a parliamentary majority, which also makes his government very vulnerable to a no-confidence vote. Unlike his predecessor, he has managed to pass a budget without losing a vote of no-confidence. Bayrou had claimed that he wanted to be less dependent on the RN than Barnier had been, and he made some limited overtures to the left, while also trying to keep his centrist and right-wing coalition partners on board. When PS deputies abstained from voting the motion of no-confidence supported by their radical-left and green coalition partners, it was a show responsibility to prevent another government collapse rather than a sign of political support. This lack of stable majority and the reluctance of the governing coalition to reach out more meaningfully to the parties of the left places the government at the mercy of the RN. This is therefore a sensitive time in French politics characterised by fragmentation, polarisation, instability, and a far-right party on the rise.

The mainstreaming of the far right

These days, stories about the growth of the far right are not new in France as in much of Europe or indeed the US. Since the early 2000s, the National Front (renamed National Rally in 2017) has been on the rise, reaching the second round in four of the past five presidential elections. However, the electoral system makes it difficult for the far right to win. French presidential elections use a two-round system: if no candidate receives 50%+1 of the vote in the first round, a second round is organised two weeks later between the top two candidates of the first round. Whoever wins the most votes in the second round is elected. This system favours the candidate best able to reach out to parts of the electorate that had not supported them in the first round. In this context, the odds of a victory of RN candidates Jean-Marie Le Pen (in 2002) or his daughter Marine Le Pen (since 2017) looked slim, as there remains a significant part of the electorate that rejects the far right.

Nevertheless, the rise of the RN, with increasing shares of the votes in presidential and parliamentary elections, is undeniable (see figure 2). This is the consequence of the party’s ‘normalisation’, which is the outcome of two parallel processes: Marine Le Pen’s strategy to appear less extreme, and the adoption of some of the RN’s policy positions by other parties. In Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream (London; New York: Verso, 2020), Mondon and Winter call this process ‘mainstreaming’: mainstreaming from within, when the party tries to sanitise its image, and mainstreaming by other parties, when these parties adopt the themes, language, and sometimes policies of the far right.

Figure 2. Evolution of the vote for the National Rally, 1988-2022

Since taking over from her father Jean-Marie as party leader in 2011, Le Pen has tried to change her party’s image. Whereas her father enjoyed the spotlight from controversies, much like Donald Trump now does in the US, Le Pen chose to portray her party as a normal party with ordinary members whose opinions were within the bounds of polite society. She even excluded her father from the party after he repeated that gas chambers were a ‘detail of history’, which led to another conviction for denial of the existence or extent of crimes against humanity, an offence in the French legal system. As her party grew more popular, she also started to appear in lifestyle magazines, presenting a softer image for her party, far removed from her father’s persona as a hectoring far-right firebrand. This strategy was supported by the development of a far-right-friendly media ecosystem thanks to massive investment in TV, radio and print media by billionaire Vincent Bolloré, who supports an alliance between the conservative right and the RN.

This strategy does not mean, however, that the National Rally has changed much in policy terms. Their main issues remain national identity and immigration, with a specific focus on immigration from Muslim countries. The focus on Islam allows the party to present its opposition to immigration as based on the principle of laicity, France’s version of separation between State and Church, and opposition to Islamist terrorism. Recent election campaigns have also seen the party return to its long-standing policy of ‘national preference’, which would give precedence to French nationals in the attribution of social housing and other benefits. In France, social housing is attributed based on needs rather than nationality, and most benefits depend on whether and how much an individual has previously contributed into the system through tax. National preference would therefore be a clear break from the universalist and contributory principles of the French welfare state, as well as a break with European Union rules that prevent discrimination between EU citizens.

The second dimension of normalisation comes from the behaviour of the other parties. Faced with the rise of the far right, the mainstream parties have been divided. Macron was elected in 2017 on a platform that combined economically liberal policies, a relatively liberal outlook on immigration, and moderately socially liberal policies. Over time, his government’s policies took a more conservative turn, with more restrictive positions on immigration and diversity. As the party and its allies lost their majority in the National Assembly in 2022, they became more dependent on the support of the right-wing deputies of LR, who have become increasingly anti-immigration over the years. Whereas Macron used to rail against the RN’s declinist and narrowly nationalist policies in 2017, his 2022 government passed an immigration bill with the support of LR and the RN with LR-supported amendments that instituted migration quotas and further restricted family reunification. Some of these reforms, including migration quotas, were struck down by the Constitutional Court, but this bill further contributed to the normalisation of RN policies on immigration.

LR have been the traditional party of the right and, when in power, have adopted legislation to curb immigration since the mid-1980s. As support for the RN increased, former President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007-2012) chose to compete against the far right by focusing on immigration and linking it to national identity, thinking that he could attract RN voters by adopting policies closer to the RN’s. Research has shown that voters tend to prefer the original to the copy, as Jean-Marie Le Pen used to say, and these efforts to accommodate the far right did not slow its progress. Even as it has declined electorally, LR has retained Sarkozy’s strategy on immigration and national identity. The question of how to deal with the RN even led to a split in June 2024, when a minority faction led by their then leader, Eric Ciotti, decided to join forces with the RN. Whereas LR refused to form an electoral pact with the RN, some of their positions on immigration remain close to those of the far right.

The left is also divided on some of the issues associated with the RN, which has also contributed to mainstreaming the language of the RN. In 2016, the ‘Republican Spring’ movement emerged in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks against satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Bataclan concert hall, mobilising a section of the centre left that wanted to refocus the left on the principle of laicity. However, in doing so they went as far as claiming that the left’s (already limited) support for minority rights undermined laicity and was complicit with political Islamism. The Republican Spring attracted beyond the left, and as it became increasingly strident against those who support minorities, alienated many of their left-wing supporters, who considered that it went too far. The PS, a moderate social-democratic party, is divided between its antiracist wing and those, influenced by the Republican Spring, who see accommodating Islam and minority rights as threats to the French models of laicity and assimilation of minorities. In contrast, LFI, a radical-left party that attracts significant support from ethnic minority voters, adopts a much more adversarial approach against the far right, with a left-wing populist platform that embraces diversity. Even as they formed an electoral coalition together, these two parties still diverge on some of these issues, weakening their efforts against the far right.

The weakening of the republican front

One issue over which the left is united, though, is the necessity to prevent the election of a far-right president or a RN majority in the National Assembly. This strategy, called the ‘republican front’, has often been used to prevent a victory of the far right. It involves parties, candidates, and voters mobilising against a far-right candidate and supporting their opponent, even when this opponent is from a party they would not normally support. For instance, Jacques Chirac won against Jean-Marie Le Pen with 82% of the vote in 2002 thanks to the support of scores of left-wing voters who would not have supported a right-wing candidate like Chirac in other circumstances. Likewise, Macron benefitted from the same type of voting behaviour when he faced Marine Le Pen in 2017 and 2022.

In 2024, as opinion polls showed a likely RN majority, the left parties quickly formed a coalition, aware that they were more likely to succeed united than divided and competing against each other. They were again at the forefront of the republican front, immediately and systematically withdrawing their candidates in constituencies where they finished third in the first round and encouraging their voters to support the non-RN candidate, whichever party they came from (parliamentary elections also use a two-round majoritarian electoral system, but all candidates who have received the support of at least 12.5% of registered voters can stand in the second round, so there may be more than two candidates). Renaissance followed suit, although some of their candidates refused to withdraw against candidates from the radical left. In contrast, The Republicans maintained all their candidates in three-way contests where they came third and refused to advise their voters to vote against the RN.

If the republican front worked well this time, there are also signs, beyond the right’s refusal to engage, that suggest that it is weakening. After many unfulfilled assurances by the right and then Macron that they would remember that the left had loaned them their votes, leftwing voters have become increasingly disillusioned with the republican front, as evidenced by the diminished support for Macron in the second round of the 2022 election (he won with just under 59% of the vote in 2022 against 66% in 2017). The fact that the parties that most supported the republican front are now out of government, while the party that rejected it and helped the election of RN deputies is now in government is also a source of disillusionment for some left-wing voters.

Uncertainty over the leadership of the RN and the next presidential election

The far right is therefore stronger than it has ever been. It is gaining ground electorally across the whole country, it has a sizeable and growing parliamentary group, and the share of the electorate willing to vote against it is shrinking, while other parties are struggling to find effective answers to counter its seemingly unstoppable rise. All this paints a picture of a political landscape dominated by the themes of the far right, with a National Rally increasingly at the centre of French politics, even when it is not in government. The current minority government is very unstable, with a divided coalition and a worrying dependence on the goodwill of the RN for its survival.

However, there is a risk that Marine Le Pen will not be able to be a candidate in the next presidential election. She and 27 of her colleagues were found guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds in March 2025. Part of her sentence includes a period of five years during which she cannot be a candidate in any public election. She has appealed the decision, but as the sentence of ineligibility applied immediately, she has lost her mandate as a local councillor (she can remain a deputy). Although the French justice system is notoriously slow, arrangements have been made so the appeal trial will happen in the summer of 2026, ahead of the 2027 presidential election. If the appeal court also finds her guilty, she will be prevented from being a candidate in 2027.

The question then, is whether the party has become sufficiently mainstream and reliable that the French electorate is willing to elect a 31-year-old President. Although she handpicked Jordan Bardella as her successor when she handed the party leadership to him in 2022, the plan was for Le Pen to be President and Bardella Prime Minister. He is following her mainstreaming strategy with a strong presence on social media like TikTok and building links with the European far right thanks to his leadership of the far-right Patriots for Europe parliamentary group. However, Le Pen and her party immediately attacked her conviction and the justice system, accusing the judges of attacking French democracy by preventing her from standing as a candidate in the next presidential election. This strategy may be risky, as attacking institutions could derail her mainstreaming strategy, but it seems to work with her supporters, who defend her despite her conviction and are convinced that she is a victim of ‘the system’.

If the Bayrou minority government manages to limp on, the next major national election will be the 2027 presidential election. Emmanuel Macron will not stand again, as France introduced a two-term presidential limit in 2002, leaving the field wide open without an incumbent. It is at this stage difficult to know who the candidates will be, but it is certain that the themes of the far right, immigration and citizenship, will once again be at the heart of the campaign. Whereas the radical left will adopt an adversarial strategy, moderate and right-wing candidates are likely to pursue the same accommodative strategies that have been unsuccessful for the past twenty years. A judge will decide the fate of Marine Le Pen in 2026, and possibly that of French democracy, while most other parties are still wondering how to defeat the far right.