France’s
Bardella vows showdown over German influence in the EU
The
30-year-old leader of the far-right National Rally party wants to fight
Germany’s purported influence over Europe.
April 27,
2026 12:40 pm CET
By Victor
Goury-Laffont
PARIS —
French far-right presidential front-runner Jordan Bardella said his first trip
as president would be to Brussels, promising a confrontation with the European
Commission over what he describes as excessive German influence in EU
institutions.
“Our
first trip will be to Brussels, where we will defend our country’s interests in
order to regain the comparative advantages that other European countries are
already enjoying,” Bardella told hard-right Sunday newspaper Le Journal du
Dimanche, accusing the EU of having “made France its trade adjustment variable
in order to satisfy German interests.”
Bardella
is expected to be the far-right National Rally’s candidate in next year’s
presidential election to replace term-limited Emmanuel Macron. Recent polling
has shown him with a comfortable lead in the first round of voting and a chance
of winning the runoff.
The last
three French presidents, on the left and right — Nicolas Sarkozy, François
Hollande and Macron — chose Germany for their first official trips as heads of
state, cementing the post-war French-German friendship born out of the 1963
Élysée Treaty.
A
Bardella presidency would mark a clear break from that tradition from day one.
The
30-year-old nationalist has at times taken a softer approach to the EU than his
party’s previous candidate, Marine Le Pen, who, until 2017, advocated for
France to leave the European Union. Bardella said in December that he does not
support a so-called Frexit and would instead seek to impose the French agenda
in Brussels.
Bardella
told Le Journal du Dimanche that his vision for the EU was “a powerful Europe,
but a different one … capable of shouldering the major industrial challenges of
the 21st century — artificial intelligence, technology and space exploration”
while defending the “national sovereignties” of each member state.
The
National Rally’s euroskepticism has also been a point of friction with France’s
business elites, whom the far-right party is now trying to court ahead of the
next election. But according to Bardella, taking on Brussels would also favor
French economic interests by reducing EU norms and regulations.
“Many
economic actors feel that the European Union is, above all, an additional layer
of bureaucracy that weakens us,” he said.
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