Paris (AFP)
The number two of the National Rally Jordan Bardella confirmed Monday that he would lead his party's list to the regional elections in Ile-de-France, where he did not intend to stand before changing his mind.
"Yes, I will be a candidate in these regional elections in Ile-de-France because Ile-de-France is my region. I was born, I grew up in a social housing estate in Seine-Saint-Denis, and the problems that I was able to meet very young in Seine-Saint-Denis, we are seeing them all over the country, "said on RTL the vice-president and MEP of the RN, who is also campaign director for this ballot.
Ile-de-France, where the RN had collected 14.02% of the regional vote in 2015, "is not a stronghold" of the party, admitted Jordan Bardella.
"It's a challenge, with the ambition to take the RN as high as possible in these regional elections."
"We are one year away from the presidential election and the Ile-de-France is the symbol today, unfortunately in a number of cities, of this ultraviolence which plagues the country", underlined the former head of the list of the RN in the European elections, which had brought his party to first place in this election, ahead of LREM.
He specified that he was going to "work with people from the RN but we will go beyond" with "a lot of people from civil society" and "people from Debout la France with whom we are discussing today to constitute a very large gathering list ".
In September, Mr. Bardella had told Le Figaro that he would "not be a candidate", believing that "it is the peculiarity of small parties that the same are systematically candidates for everything" and that it was necessary "to bring out new figures ".
The RN has fewer known candidates in this ballot, while in 2015 Marine Le Pen, president of the RN, Florian Philippot, his right-hand man at the time, and Marion Maréchal, former deputy, had presented themselves.
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