France’s business leaders scramble to shape far right’s agenda as election looms
Figures like Renaud Labaye, a National Rally heavyweight and close ally of Le Pen, offer some suggestion that a French president from the National Rally would follow the Meloni model.
“We need a balanced budget,” Labaye told POLITICO. “We want the lowest possible deficit because it’s good for the country and because our sovereignty is at stake.”
Influential figures like François Durvye, a financier who is the right-hand man of far-right billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin, and Le Pen’s chief of staff, Ambroise de Rancourt, a former far-left activist who flipped to the far right last year, have been facilitating behind-closed-doors meetings with the business world.
According to the previously quoted senior manager at a CAC40 company, in some of those meetings, the National Rally tries to reassure the entrepreneurs that they would be economically reasonable in government.
But business leaders who think they’ll be able to influence the far right if it wins the next presidential election are going to be in for a rough surprise if Bardella or Le Pen win in 2027, respected political commentator Alain Minc warned.
“They don’t grasp the sense of power that comes when 15 million people vote for you,” Minc said.
Pauline de Saint Remy and Sarah Paillou contributed reporting.
