The rightwing French presidential candidate Valérie Pécresse vowed to crack down on immigration as she held her first big rally on Sunday amid competition from the growing far right and defections from her party to the centrist leader Emmanuel Macron.
“There is no sovereignty without borders,” Pécresse said on stage in Paris as more than 6,000 people waved French flags in support of the first female presidential candidate for Les Républicains, the traditional rightwing party of Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy.
Pécresse, who on a recent trip to Greek migrant camps said she was not against “barbed wire” to keep migrants out of Europe, told the rally that she would support the building of barriers and “even walls” on the edge of Europe if the countries on the frontline wanted it. It was a clear reference to her rival, the controversial, far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour, who this week suggested building a Donald Trump-style anti-immigration “wall” around the edges of the EU.
A former budget minister under Sarkozy, Pécresse, 54, wants to be seen as the only feasible rival to Macron ahead of the April election. But she faces the serious challenge of whether she can make it to the second round runoff. The far right has risen in force to represent about 30% of the vote in current polls, and is split between two candidates, Marine Le Pen, running for the third time, and the newcomer Zemmour. Both are hovering around the same score as Pécresse in the polls.
At the rally, Pécresse cited her heroes, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Germany’s Angela Merkel, as “women who always defended their people”, saying she wanted to create a “New France” of law and order, with tight controls on immigration and quotas for migrants.
She said she would also oppose what she termed woke movements, which she said threatened to “demolish French identity”, tellling the rally that as leader of the Île-de-France region, which includes Paris and its surrounding area, she had banned “burkinis” or full-body swimsuits, from pools. To cheers from the hall, she said: “For me, the headscarf is not a piece of clothing like any other. It’s not a religious prescription. It’s a sign of the submission of a woman.” She criticised Macron’s government for refusing to ban the Muslim headscarf from competitive sports.
Pécresse repeated her promise that “the salaries of French people will increase by 10% during my presidency”, and said she would decentralise France, attacking Macron for a top-down leadership style and high public spending, which she said had tipped France into dangerous debt.
A fluent Russian-speaker, Pécresse delved into international affairs, saying that under Macron, France had been “humiliated” on the international scene, including over the Aukus defence agreement between Australia, the US and the UK.
While Macron is at 24% in the first round, according to the latest Cevipof poll for Le Monde, Pécresse is at 15.5%, with Le Pen at 15% and Zemmour at 14.5%.
Without naming Zemmour or Le Pen, Pécresse told the crowd: “The extremists are lying to you. Refuse the venom of their nostalgia. Don’t let anger and fear win.”
Pécresse is under pressure from her party to pull ahead of her far-right rivals in the polls just as president Macron is expected to declare his re-election bid this month.
But she suffered a blow this week on immigration when Natacha Bouchart, the rightwing mayor of Calais, broke ranks and announced she would support Macron for the presidential race.
Bouchart is an outspoken critic of the situation of migrants wanting to reach Britain from the northern French coast on small boats. Bouchart said Macron had “listened attentively” to the problems of Calais and increased government involvement. She said she was supporting Macron “in the general interest of Calais”.
Pécresse has failed to dominate the political debate with her policy ideas, in part because she is seen as attempting to cover all ideological bases in a divided party.
She is seen as hailing from the moderate, centrist wing of the right, which Macron himself has won over by appointing two rightwing prime ministers. But Pécresse is also veering very hard right to win over the increasingly anti-immigration line on French national identity in her own party. Pollsters say her messaging to voters is not always clear.
Chloé Morin, a political analyst who interviewed Pécresse on her communication style for a new book, We Get The Politicians We Deserve, said the rightwing candidate had been accused of appearing too studious and lacking spontaneity on screen. But Pécresse has criticised those who “act” in front of the cameras.
Morin added: “Today, part of Pécresse’s space is occupied by Emmanuel Macron, who has the advantage of being the president in office … he has stifled her ground on the economy. And on the other side, she’s facing serious competition from Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, who have the advantage of being in a more populist register of one-upmanship and can make themselves more audible in a media world that values clashes and buzz. They are more audible than Pécresse, who has to be more measured.”
Meanwhile, Le Pen and Zemmour continued their own vicious battle to win far-right voters, with another defection from Le Pen’s National Rally party. Stéphane Ravier, Le Pen’s only senator, jumped ship to Zemmour saying he was best able to “unite” the far right.
