The National Front (FN), now the National Rally (RN), was again singled out on Thursday, June 1, for its links with the Kremlin, in a parliamentary report that Marine Le Pen, former leader of the RN, calls "dishonest" and "politicized". In particular, he accuses the far-right party of Russia's "transmission belt".

Excerpts from this report of the commission of inquiry on foreign interference, written by Renaissance MP Constance Le Grip, have leaked on RMC and Mediapart. The Macronist MP insists on the "alignment" of the FN with the "Russian discourse" at the time of the "illegal annexation" of Crimea in 2014, the year in which the party took out a loan from a Czech-Russian bank.

The RN had itself launched this parliamentary commission of inquiry, precisely to try to cut short the regular accusations of proximity to Russia. The party "wanted to instrumentalize this commission of inquiry. It's a fiasco for them and it comes back to their teeth, "responded the ecologist Julien Bayou.

Lepenist lawmakers - including committee chairman Jean-Philippe Tanguy - voted against the report, which was adopted by 11 votes to 5, according to a parliamentary source.

The Unsubmissive France (LFI) abstained. This shows "at least a guilty flippancy" of the RN with regard to Russia, but it is not "exhaustive" on the influence of other states in France, says MP Aurélien Saintoul (LFI).

In the version of the report presented to MPs on Thursday - it is not due to be officially published until next week - Constance Le Grip believes that the link between Russia and the National Front is "anchored in the long term", but that the "strategy of political and ideological rapprochement" with Moscow tends to be "structured and accelerated" from the arrival of Marine Le Pen at the head of the party in 2011.

It recounts the "frequent contacts" between FN/RN elected representatives with Russian officials, as well as the reception of Marine Le Pen by Vladimir Putin on March 24, 2017 in the Kremlin, a few weeks before the first round of the 2017 presidential election.

A "political trial"

"All his remarks on Crimea, reiterated during his hearing by the commission of inquiry, repeat word for word the official language of the Putin regime," denounces Constance Le Grip. She believes, however, that there has been a "softening of the pro-Russian positions of the National Rally and Mrs. Le Pen", after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, "condemned unequivocally".

During a press conference in the Pas-de-Calais, Marine Le Pen brushed off the conclusions of Constance Le Grip, denouncing "a political trial". "There is nothing, in fact," she continued, considering that the report was "in the image of the rapporteur, that is to say sectarian, dishonest and completely politicized".

The president of the commission, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, denounced a "masquerade". "There is no evidence against it."

Marine Le Pen was heard on 24th May before this committee. Under oath, she had rejected any political quid pro quo in exchange for the Russian loan contracted by the former National Front.

"I formally deny having taken any decision whatsoever to please anyone," she explained, arguing that "the arrival or not of a loan has not changed one iota the opinions that have always been ours."

On the substance, "I considered that freely, the inhabitants of Crimea had expressed themselves by the vote to be attached to Russia," had dropped the president of the RN deputies.

On Thursday, she said her political opponents "accuse (the RN) of thinking differently" from them. She claims that "the report barely talks about the loan on which the whole smear and slander campaign was built, because all the authorities who were questioned indicated that there was nothing".

For six months, the committee heard a series of personalities, often fumbling to establish nuances between "interference" and foreign "influences". Former Prime Minister François Fillon was heard about his presence on the boards of directors of Russian multinationals, which he left after the invasion of Ukraine.

Former BFMTV journalist Rachid M'Barki, dismissed for serious misconduct, came to explain the suspicions of foreign interference in his work on the channel, which he disputes. An investigation has been opened by the courts.

With AFP

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