Paris (AFP)

Marine Le Pen met on Monday the mayor of Béziers Robert Ménard, very critical of her in recent months, during an exchange described by the latter as "peaceful", AFP learned Tuesday from the two elected officials, confirming information point.

The president of the National Gathering and Member of Parliament for Pas-de-Calais, at her initiative, received the councilor and his wife, the Member for Hérault Emmanuelle Ménard, in her offices of the National Assembly.

"The atmosphere was freezing and now we are talking again normally", welcomed AFP Robert Ménard, supporter of a "union of the rights", and who still considers that Marine Le Pen can not bring together a majority in the 2022 presidential election without concluding alliances.

It was a question "of forgetting a little the exacerbated, passionate relationships, and the remarks which could be made on both sides a little unpleasant, to try to see how we could talk politics and do things together", a added the mayor of Béziers, elected with the support of the RN.

"It does not erase disagreements on economic issues - we have a more liberal vision of the economy, less statist - but that does not prevent us from doing work together," said the elected official.

Robert Ménard, who had thought for a time of presenting himself to the regional with the LR mayor of Montauban Brigitte Barèges, recently sentenced to five years of ineligibility, also said that he shared "95% of the ideas" of the probable head of the list. RN in Occitania, the former LR deputy Jean-Paul Garraud.

He also told Marine Le Pen of the "qualities" he saw in polemicist Eric Zemmour who, according to him, would "have more desire than before" to be a presidential candidate, but that he did not want harm the head of the RN, credited in the second round by recent polls.

Mr. Ménard had told AFP last week that the "presence of Eric Zemmour" in the race for the Elysee Palace was "desirable for Marine Le Pen because he is capable of attracting people to him that it is not capable of attracting ", after an investigation by the Express into the Elysian ambitions of Mr. Zemmour.

© 2021 AFP