France faces a fateful choice this Sunday for the second time in a row.

According to polls, the candidates of the former governing parties Parti Socialiste (PS) and Les Républicains (LR) are too weak to qualify for the second round of the presidential election.

Orderly transfers of power between left-wing and right-wing majorities are a thing of the past.

If the pollsters are to be believed, voters will once again send Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen to the runoff.

Unlike Macron, who is sticking to the suggestions made in his 2017 Sorbonne speech, Le Pen has subjected her European policy program to a general overhaul.

Michael Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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It is therefore no longer aiming for a Frexit.

Unlike five years ago, she has not planned a referendum on leaving the euro either.

Nevertheless, anti-European tones cannot be ignored in her voice.

This applies in particular to the Franco-German relationship.

In her programme, printed on glossy paper, she announces that the relationship with Germany must be extensively revised due to "insurmountable doctrinal, operational and industrial divergences".

With regard to nuclear deterrence and arms exports, there are irreconcilable opposites.

Therefore, as President, she will “end all structuring cooperation in the defense sector”.

In concrete terms, this means that Le Pen wants to exit the German-French-Spanish Future Combat Air System (FCAS) fighter aircraft system and the joint Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) tank project.

This cooperation contradicts their “vision of sovereign defence”, writes Le Pen. This return to national decision-making authority is quite popular in French army circles.

The boss of the armaments company Dassault, Éric Trappier, has been criticizing Germany for some time.

He has repeatedly advocated designing the successor to the Rafale fighter plane alone rather than handing top French technology over to German hands.

In her program, Le Pen announced that she would withdraw French support for Germany to have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

Back out of the NATO structures

While Macron, in the tradition of his predecessors, rejects converting the French Security Council seat into an EU seat, he supports Germany's candidacy.

Le Pen, on the other hand, does not want to give Germany more weight internationally.

Shortly before signing the Aachen Treaty of Friendship, she accused Macron of having sold France's UN seat in return for vague expressions of friendship.

The concern of giving up one of the attributes of the victorious power position goes far beyond the Rassemblement National (RN).

The situation is similar with the exit from the integrated military structures of NATO, which Le Pen wants to organize “after the end of the Ukraine war”.

In 2009, President Nicolas Sarkozy ended France's 43-year exceptional position in the defense alliance.

Since then, France has once again sent officers into the military command structures and takes part in all decision-making processes.

Only in the nuclear planning group it is not represented.

Le Pen wants to undo this integration.

French soldiers could then no longer be used under NATO command to secure the eastern flank.

Even if the alliance and assistance obligations for NATO founding member France continue to apply, this would mean the end of common European defense efforts.

Despite the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, Le Pen strives for an "alliance with Russia".

"Without fear of American sanctions", cooperation in the fight against terrorism should be expanded.

Social benefits only for the French

In terms of immigration policy, Le Pen wants to go on a confrontational course with the EU.

Immigrants are said to be denied housing and social assistance, as well as basic medical care.

According to the program, social benefits should be reserved “exclusively for French people”.

Only French citizens receive child benefit.

EU citizens and other foreigners should only become entitled to social benefits after five years of uninterrupted employment.

The aim of their program is the return of regular border controls at all crossings.

She wants a constitutional amendment to state that international law cannot prevail over the French constitution.

She cites the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court of 2019 as exemplary. The judges in Karlsruhe, who traditionally question the competence of the higher European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, ruled at the time that the ECJ had acted “ultra vires”, i.e. outside its powers.

Le Pen wants to proceed in a similar way after the constitutional amendment and thus, among other things, undermine the European Convention on Human Rights in immigration policy.

In her program, she points out that for her, the rule of law in France is above that of the EU.

The former Brexit negotiator and EU Commissioner Michel Barnier (LR) argued similarly in his party's primaries.

Le Pen cites Poland as another role model, whose constitutional court ruled in 2021 that the EU treaties were incompatible with the national constitution.

Le Pen is preparing to close ranks with the Polish and Hungarian heads of government, Morawiecki and Orbán.

She claims that she will bring the EU back to its core, to a "Europe of fatherlands".

Since the referendum on the European constitutional treaty in 2005, this gentle exit from the integration process has won a majority.