Le Pen's French presidential bid dashes EU hopes for a Meloni-like successor

 

Le Pen's French presidential bid dashes EU hopes for a Meloni-like successor

 

Brussels insiders had quietly come to see Jordan Bardella as the less disruptive of the far-right National Rally's two leading figures.

 

By NICHOLAS VINOCUR and MAX GRIERA

in Brussels

July 8, 2026 4:00 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/marine-le-pen-2027-french-presidential-bid-brussels-eu-hopes-dashed-pragmatic-successor-far-right/

 

Marine Le Pen is running for French president again — ending cautious optimism among some in Brussels that she might cede her place to a younger and potentially more amenable successor.

 

While lawmakers, officials and analysts said a victory by either Le Pen or Jordan Bardella would have profound consequences for the EU, several privately and publicly described the 30-year-old National Rally leader as the more pragmatic and less ideological of the two far-right figures, raising hopes he would be easier to work with in Brussels.

 

Le Pen announced on live TV Tuesday evening that she would make a fourth bid for the French presidency, despite being sentenced to one year of house arrest with an ankle monitor earlier that day.

 

“I am here tonight to tell you I am the candidate for the 2027 elections,” she told broadcaster TF1, ending speculation about whether she would step aside and allow her former protégé to lead the party’s presidential bid.

 

The announcement reverberated in Brussels — a favorite punching bag for National Rally politicians — where officials and lawmakers have spent months weighing what a Le Pen or Bardella presidency would mean for the bloc. With the EU heading into contentious negotiations over its next seven-year budget and seeking to deepen defense cooperation, many fear a Le Pen presidency threatens to make consensus among the bloc’s 27 leaders far harder to reach.

 

“What worries us is the threat of the extreme right, the attack on European citizens’ rights and the policies that benefit these citizens. And we are going to fight, whatever their names or surnames may be,” Socialists and Democrats group leader Iratxe García told a press conference Tuesday morning.

 

Dirk Gotink, a Dutch lawmaker from the center-right European People’s Party, was similarly cautious: “Whoever runs, they are still far away from having a credible economic program.”

 

Ahead of her decision, several of the lawmakers and officials voiced a preference for Bardella, citing his experience in the European Parliament and what they described as a more pragmatic, less ideological approach to EU affairs than Le Pen, whose legal troubles stemming from the Parliament embezzlement case have complicated her political future.

 

“I think he’s [Bardella] more moderate than Marine Le Pen,” said Željana Zovko, a Croatian EU lawmaker and vice-chair of EPP. “Marine Le Pen still has this heritage from her father,” she added, referring to the Holocaust-minimizing former head of the National Rally (formerly National Front), Jean-Marie Le Pen.

 

But Zovko tempered the comment by saying that Bardella would be unlikely to move as far into the EU mainstream as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, particularly on matters like EU defense and enlargement.

 

In the end, she said that a National Rally victory in France’s 2027 election — by Le Pen or Bardella — could mark “the end of the European project as we know it.”

 

Latvian MEP Ivars Ījabs, of the liberal Renew Europe group, called Bardella a “very talented politician,” and said the Baltic countries “are really going to work with any French leadership” out of pragmatism.

 

But he also warned that the younger National Rally party leader is “very skeptical towards NATO” and has in the past supported pulling Paris out of the alliance’s military operations command center. “This is what we really would be happy to avoid, because this would fragment NATO.”

 

Not Brussels’ choice

In Brussels, the cautious favoring of Bardella over Le Pen boiled down to the hope that he would be more pragmatic than Le Pen in dealing with the EU and other leaders around the Council table.

 

“Between the two, Bardella is preferred but Bardella would still represent a major rupture in France’s historical relationship with the EU,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe for the Eurasia Group think tank.

 

Unlike Le Pen, Bardella never vowed to abolish the European Commission, pull France out of the EU (le “Frexit”) or exit the euro currency area. His rise within the party as Le Pen’s heir apparent coincided with a softening of nearly all the party’s positions on the EU following Le Pen’s defeat in the 2017 presidential runoff against Emmanuel Macron.

 

Bardella has also set himself apart from Le Pen in other subtle ways. He has worked to soften aspects of Le Pen’s economic program that cause shudders in Brussels — namely her pledge to bring down France’s legal retirement age to 62. This is in keeping with a more collaborative attitude toward business owners and economic actors, suggesting to many observers that Bardella would be more of a classic right-wing leader on economic matters than Le Pen.

 

“He is engaging with CEOs, he is less ideological,” added Rahman.

 

Unlike Le Pen, Bardella had signaled openness to partnering with other conservative leaders on the EU stage, namely Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz. In a May interview with Germany’s FAZ newspaper, Bardella stated that he saw “common ground” with the German chancellor on reducing bureaucracy, migration policy, competitiveness and easing green rules.

 

Officials also draw a distinction between the two on Russia.

 

Much of Le Pen’s time at the helm of the National Rally has been dogged by accusations that she is loyal to Russian President Vladimir Putin after her party contracted a loan from a Russian-backed bank to finance her 2017 campaign.

 

While Le Pen has distanced herself from Russia since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Bardella is less burdened by the geopolitical baggage of his elder. But his youth and relative inexperience may well have been considered, inside the National Rally, a liability for 2027.

 

“Depending on what end of the telescope we’re looking through, Bardella’s inexperience could have been an advantage, or a major challenge,” added Rahman.

 

That said, not everyone in Brussels is lamenting Le Pen’s decision.

 

Patryk Jaki, co-chair of the European Conservatives and Reformists group that includes the leaders of Italy, Poland and Belgium, cracked open a door to potential collaboration with either Le Pen or Bardella.

 

“We are looking to real change in Europe and if we can cooperate with these two partners, we will be happy,” said Jaki.