Far-right leaders join National Rally 'Victory Day' in French village
The celebration in the village of some 130 inhabitants in the Loiret region, dubbed "Victory Day", is meant to mark last year's record-breaking result for the RN, when the Jordan Bardella-led list won 31.37% of the vote on 9 June 2024.
On Monday, more than 5,000 people were to gather amid food trucks and ice cream stands to celebrate the party's European success.
In the ensuing French parliamentary elections, however, the far-right party did not achieve the significant victory it had hoped for, notably coming up against the New Popular Front left-wing alliance.
The RN won 120 of the 577 seats in the French National Assembly, becoming the largest party in the chamber but failing to secure a majority that would have allowed Jordan Bardella to claim the Matignon premiership.
With this meeting, the RN leaders also intend to close the ranks of the Patriots for Europe, one of the three far-right groups in the European Parliament, which currently has 85 of the 720 MEPs sitting in Strasbourg.
Le Pen and Bardella invited Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a fervent opponent of the European Union whose anti-LGBTQ+ measures and Moscow-friendly stance have been roundly condemned by the EU.
"The Brussels bureaucrats [want] submission and decline ... whether it's settling migrants, financing war or sharing the debt", Orbán said in a post on social media the day before the rally, while calling for "occupying Brussels".
Other European far-right leaders expected to attend Monday's rally include Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and Lega party chief Matteo Salvini, the president of Spain's Vox party Santiago Abascal, and the leaders of parties allied with the RN in the Czech Republic, Greece, Poland, and Belgium.
A counter-demonstration is also planned in the neighbouring town of Montargis, which is expected to be attended by French lawmakers Philippe Brun and Chloé Ridel from the Socialist Party, Ian Brossat of the Communist Party, Manon Aubry and Louis Boyard from the left-wing France Unbowed (LFI), as well as trade union leaders.
Monday's rally is also intended to demonstrate the unity between Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, three months after a court handed down a five-year ineligibility sentence to the former in connection with the corruption scandal involving European parliamentary assistants.
While the polls had her well ahead in the polls for the 2027 presidential election, this sentence - which was accompanied by provisional execution, as requested by the prosecutors - will prevent Le Pen from running for president, unless the decision is overturned by the Court of Appeal hearing, scheduled for the summer of 2026.
At the time, the leader of the RN denounced "a political decision" and described the immediate application of her ineligibility as a "violation of the rule of law".
The party's president Bardella immediately echoed the criticism, referring to "a democratic scandal" and claiming that "part of the justice system" was trying to"prevent (Le Pen's) accession to the Elysée by any means necessary."
While the 30-year-old has continued to show his support for Le Pen since the court ruling, the man who was seen as the RN's "Plan B" for the presidential election is now considered a serious candidate for 2027 by many of the party's supporters - particularly among young people - as well as by parts of the French press.
According to a recent Ifop poll, Bardella would get 34% of the presidential vote if he faced Horizons president Édouard Philippe, compared with 36% for Le Pen if the latter were allowed to run.
The Elabe personalities ranking for "Les Echos", published on Friday, also gives the RN president "35% positive image among the French as a whole, behind Édouard Philippe (39%) but still ahead of Marine Le Pen (34%)".
Poland and NATO nations scrambled fighter jets early Monday to secure Polish airspace following Russian airstrikes near its border with western Ukraine, authorities said.
The Polish armed forces stated on X that these measures were to ensure security in regions next to at-risk areas over concerns that Russian stray missiles might veer into Poland.
"In connection with the intensive air attack of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine, activity of Polish and allied aircraft in the Polish airspace began in the morning hours," the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command said on Monday.
The Polish military activated "all available forces and means at his disposal (including) on-call fighter pairs ... and ground-based air defence."
No violation of Poland's airspace has been reported.
"The Polish military is continuously monitoring the situation on Ukrainian territory and remains on constant alert to ensure the safety of Polish airspace. We thank the NATO Air Force for its allied support," the army command press release said.
The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian drones targeted the Sumy, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Poltava, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr and Zaporizhzhia regions overnight on Monday.
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