French civil servants have reportedly held secret meetings opposition National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen, undermining President Emmanuel Macron.
According to a report in British magazine the Economist, party leaders and state officials have been meeting secretly in Paris to discuss a range of issues. Strategists are working on draft legislation shaping a detailed roadmap for a possible Le Pen presidency following the next election in 2027, the report claimed.
Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a young National Rally deputy and business school graduate, gave Le Pen a 60-page economic policy blueprint earlier this month, the report said.
The Daily Express reported that a shadowy alliance of sympathetic senior civil servants — some retired and some still active — are advising Le Pen.
They aim to bolster the "technocratic talent" within Le Pen's party, which it has historically done without.
The recent announcement by Fabrice Leggeri, former head of Frontex — the EU's border-control agency — that had joined the National Rally further underscores this shift. Leggeri, a graduate of the esteemed Ecole Nationale d’Administration, was quickly made a candidate for next June's European Parliament elections.
The Economist said the aim could be to reduce the impact of party figures within the Parisian power structure. The RN seems eager to convince a handful of the party’s bigwigs to resist the urge to cause a stir about the outcomes of the party's victory.
Macron was denounced by the RN in 2022 as a globalist subjugating humanity to economic domination. His government has roused public anger with rises in diesel fuel tax in a repeat of of the 2018 "Yellow Vests" protests, along with public administration reforms - all while France’s public debt ballooned to from €1 trillion in 2003 to whopping €3 trillion in 2023.
The French president’s attempts this week to revive Western support for military and financial aid to Ukraine, pressing for more sanctions and other punitive measures against Russia, and his handling of the French farmers' protests that resulted in €400mn concessions from the treasury has further eroded his authority.