No Russian backing: Le Pen

‘I’ll quit office if French reject eurozone exit’

PARIS, March 27, (Agencies): French far right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on Monday she had yet to secure all the funding she needs for her election campaign with less than four weeks to go before voting begins.

The National Front leader, who is running in second place in the presidential race according to opinion polls, repeated her complaint that French banks were refusing to lend her money.

Speaking on Europe 1 radio after a visit last week to Moscow where she met President Vladimir Putin, she said she did not have any financial backing from Russia, nor from any Russian financial institution, but that she was trying to get a loan from a foreign bank.

“I have to,” she said. “I’m prevented from borrowing from French banks so now I am being told off for asking for a loan from a foreign bank. What am I supposed to do? ... The French banks have lent to all the presidential candidates except for me.”

Parties

One French bank, Societe Generale, has said it does not lend to any political parties. The other main banks have declined to comment on the subject.

Le Pen last week declared two loans amounting to 6 million euros for the campaign, money which came from her father and party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Cotelec organisation.

In 2014 it emerged that the National Front had received a 9 million euro loan from a Russian lender.

Potential Russian involvement in Western elections has become a more sensitive issue since US intelligence agencies accused their Russian counterparts of seeking to influence the US election through hacking, something Moscow has denied.

Candidates in French presidential elections are limited to a maximum spending of 16.851 million euros ($18.30 million) in the first round, a sum which rises to 22.509 million euros for the two candidates who reach the second round run-off.

Candidates who secure over 5 percent of the first round vote on April 23 get a state refund amounting to 47.5 percent of the maximum limit, with the proviso that no candidate can be reimbursed more than they have spent.

Opinion polls consistently show Le Pen reaching the second round on May 7 but losing there to independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

In related news, Le Pen says that if her plan to pull France from the euro currency is rejected by the French she will resign.

Le Pen, speaking Monday on Europe 1 radio, reiterated her plan to hold a referendum on the euro issue if elected president, and “If it’s no, I will go.”

She said that a show of support for the eurozone means the French “choose a model of governance imposed by the European Union” — which Le Pen also wants to exit. It also means, she said, that “70 percent of my project cannot be put in place.”

Meanwhile, the European Union will disappear, Le Pen told a rally on Sunday, promising to shield France from globalisation as she sought to fire up her supporters in the final four weeks before voting gets underway.

Buoyed by the unexpected election of Donald Trump in the United States and by Britain’s vote to leave the EU, the leader of the eurosceptic and anti-immigrant National Front (FN) party, told the rally in Lille that the French election would be the next step in what she called a global rebellion of the people.

“The European Union will die because the people do not want it anymore ... arrogant and hegemonic empires are destined to perish,” Le Pen said to loud cheers and applause.

Accusing

“The time has come to defeat globalists,” she said, accusing her main rivals, centrist Emmanuel Macron and conservative Francois Fillon, of “treason” for their pro-EU, pro-market policies.

In another development, the leaders of France and Germany must use the window of opportunity that opens up after elections in both countries to inject new momentum into their single currency project or risk its failure, a leading French think tank warned on Monday.

In a 77-page report entitled “The Europe We Need”, the Institut Montaigne, an independent institute with links to French presidential candidates Macron and Fillon, called for a “multi-speed” Europe in which the eurozone presses ahead with its own budget and even a prime minister.

The report, the product of months of consultation between leading figures from European business, politics and banking, could serve as a blueprint for use by a new French president.

Polls suggest Macron, a pro-European former banker, will face Marine Le Pen, the anti-EU leader of the far-right National Front, in a second round runoff on May 7th, and beat her.

“We are in a geopolitical environment that is extremely dangerous for Europeans,” Ramon Fernandez, finance and strategy chief at French mobile phone group Orange and head of the working group that produced the report, told Reuters.

“If our leaders are to shape the future of Europe and give it back its momentum, it may be now or never. This political will is absolutely necessary. The year 2017 will be decisive,” said Fernandez, a former head of the French Treasury.

The German election will be held four months after the French vote. Conservative Angela Merkel is expected to face a tough challenge from Social Democrat Martin Schulz, the former president of the European Parliament.

In focusing on the need for France and Germany to lead, the report echoes what Macron has said on the campaign trail.

It also calls for Europe’s rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism, to be turned into a full-fledged monetary fund as well as tougher European defences against foreign companies and cross-border mergers to create European champions.

In foreign policy, it stresses the need for good relations with Britain and the United States, despite Brexit and the election of Trump. It recommends offering Turkey an alternative to EU membership, saying the political evolution of the country makes joining the bloc impossible.

Above all it stresses the importance of the eurozone and smaller groups of countries pressing ahead with closer integration, a similar message to the one sent on Saturday at a summit of 27 EU leaders to mark the 60th anniversary of the bloc’s founding Rome Treaty.

The report calls for an “executive” for the currency bloc in the form of a prime minister or finance minister, who would be answerable to a eurozone subsection of the European Parliament.