France’s far-right leaders Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen are courting business leaders and international investors keen to prepare for the possibility that Rassemblement National may come to power.
Leading figures at Cac 40 companies have stepped up their engagement with RN — a link once considered taboo — with one senior board member describing it as a “duty” to influence a political force that is leading in opinion polls. At business lunches in Paris, the party is now taken far more seriously by a business class keen to steer it towards a more liberal economic platform.
“They are a political force that matters in France,” Guillaume Faury, chief executive of Airbus, told France Inter radio station in December. “It’s not us who chooses the parties that are powerful and have influence.”