With a year to go before France’s presidential election, the far-right National Rally (RN) is stepping up efforts to win over business leaders. RN leader Jordan Bardella met representatives of Medef – the main bosses’ union – for lunch on Monday, just a fortnight after a discreet dinner between Marine Le Pen and several billionaires.
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Arriving at the lunch with the executive board of the leading employers’ organisation, Bardella said he hadn’t come for a “school interview” and that he expected “concrete proposals from Medef for the recovery of French business”.
The lunch, part of a series of Medef meetings with leaders of France’s main political parties, comes a few days after a dinner between RN figurehead Marine Le Pen and several CAC 40 business leaders, including France’s richest man Bernard Arnault.
Asked about RN’s seeming shift towards more liberal economic politics, Bardella replied that he believed “in the freedom to do business”.
“I am not left-wing, I do not view business with disdain,” he told reporters. “The recovery of the French economy and the purchasing power of France’s working class will be at the heart of the future presidential project,” he added.
In a joint letter addressed to business leaders and published on X on Monday morning, Bardella and Le Pen pledged to “liberate” the French economy by slashing red tape and bureaucracy.
“Regulations impose a huge cost on businesses and erode the purchasing power of the French public,” they wrote.
Pro-business image
Bardella is portrayed as the business-friendly face of the RN and has said engaging with business leaders is a necessary step – akin, he has suggested, to revealing aspects of his private life in the media.
He recently appeared on the cover of Paris Match alongside his partner, Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.
Speaking to RFI in Italy over the weekend, following a party seminar on the presidential campaign, he responded to questions about delaying plans to allow more people to work on 1 May – the only paid, non-worked public holiday in France.
“I think the French economy needs oxygen and it needs freedom. And I think it’s suffering today not just from excess, but from excessive taxation and overregulation,” he told RFI.
While the far right has traditionally been wary of corporate interests, more support from the business community could help RN widen its voter base, including wealthier retirees and senior professionals.
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No longer a tabou
France’s business community has historically held the far right at arm’s length.
In her 2011 book, Un piège bleu Marine, Laurence Parisot, then head of the Medef, warned of the dangers posed by Marine Le Pen, highlighting what she saw as her tolerance of the racist and antisemitic remarks of her father Jean-Marie.
But business leaders now appear more willing to engage with the far right – not least for pragmatic reasons.
The far right has reached the second round in three of the past five presidential elections and polls suggest the party has every chance of doing the same in 2027.
Leading executives at companies such as TotalEnergies, Capgemini, Engie, Renault and Accor have opted to talk to RN “just in case”.
“We are in a democracy – we must talk to everyone,” said Thomas Buberl, the German chief executive of insurer AXA, justifying his attendance at the recent dinner with Le Pen.
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Doubts over economic programme
The National Rally has long been working to soften its image among business leaders. Despite being broadly eurosceptic, the party no longer officially advocates leaving the European Union or the euro.
However, Medef’s president, Patrick Martin, has repeatedly expressed doubts about the RN’s economic programme. While the party advocates more liberal policies in some areas, it has also proposed costly measures – such as a €12bn cut in VAT on fuel.
Questions also remain over the RN’s position on the suspension of pension reforms, which would have raised the legal age of retirement from 62 to 64, and which the Medef strongly backed.
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In an attempt to reassure the Medef, RN’s economic adviser François Durvye recently said the party hadn’t ruled out raising the retirement age to 67.
