Marine Le Pen praises Brexit Britain, as she pledges to slash France’s EU contributions

Marine Le Pen on Wednesday praised Brexit Britain for freeing itself from the “Brussels strait-jacket”, while pledging to slash France’s contribution to the EU budget and outlining her plans to boost the country’s standing on the world stage.

She made the comments at a Paris press conference seeking to burnish her credentials on foreign policy, which was briefly interrupted by a protester brandishing a heart-shaped picture of Ms Le Pen and Vladimir Putin.

Under fire for her proximity to the Russian president before his invasion of Ukraine, Ms Le Pen said that once the war was over, she would propose closer links between Nato and Russia.

The National Rally candidate, who faces Emmanuel Macron in the decisive second round of the French presidential elections on April 24, insisted she had no intention of taking France out of the European Union – as she had threatened to do the last time the pair faced off in 2017.

But she argued that French leaders’ predictions that Brexit would end in a “nationalist and insular withdrawal” and “a cataclysm for the English” had not come to pass.

“The British got rid of the Brussels bureaucracy, which they could never bear, to move to an ambitious concept of global Britain”, which she pronounced “Brighton”.

“This is not our project. We want to reform the EU from the inside,” she said.

“But the more we free ourselves from the Brussels strait-jacket while remaining inside the EU, the more we will turn ourselves to the wider world. It seems to me that’s what the English have well understood.”

Ms Le Pen also pledged to reduce France’s contribution to the EU budget by €5 billion (£4.2 billion) per year.

It currently hovers around €22-25 billion, which puts the country’s net contribution at “between €8-9 billion”.

“I would not stop paying France’s contribution to the EU, I want to diminish it,” she said. “The EU can also make savings in its operating costs.”

Her pledge came a day after Mr Macron, her Europhile rival, argued that her election would lead to a Frexit by stealth and that the election was a “referendum on Europe”.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he said: “As usual Madame Le Pen is talking rubbish.”

“She explains she won’t pay the bill for the club and she’ll change the rules but all alone. Some people tried that and they ran into problems.”

“That means she will leave but she doesn’t dare say so,” he said.

On Wednesday, Ms Le Pen hit back saying: “Nobody is against Europe.”

The debate is about which type of Europe.

“Poland, Hungary and myself all probably share a common vision of the necessary transformation of the EU into an alliance of nations, as we do for the necessity of the primacy of national law over EU directives,” she said.

Given rising Euroscepticism in France, such a move was the only way to “save” the bloc.

Seeking to defuse claims from the Macron camp that France would be under Russian influence if she were elected, Ms Le Pen insisted she had come under “unfair” attack and that given the number of times her rival had spoken to Mr Putin, there were “similarities” between their stance.

She reaffirmed her intention to repeat France’s 1966 move of leaving Nato’s integrated military command, while still adhering to its key Article 5 on mutual protection.

“I would place our troops neither under an integrated Nato command nor under a future European command,” she said, adding that she refused any “subjection to an American protectorate”.

France is a ‘big power that counts’

While she said she would seek friendly relations with Germany and together stamp out English as the operating language of European institutions, she pronounced the Franco-German motor “quasi-non-existent”.

“Strategic differences” meant she would put an end to Franco-German military cooperation, including future warplane and tank programmes – effectively killing off Mr Macron’s dreams of a European army.

“I would continue ... reconciliation without following the Macron-Merkel model of French blindness towards Berlin,” she said.

Criticised for having a sketchy grasp of geopolitics, Ms Le Pen promised to ensure that “France is not a middle nation but a big power that counts” and to end the “chatty, sketchy and ill-informed” diplomacy of her rival with one based on “independence, equidistance and constancy”.

The race is expected to be close between the pair in the final vote, but Mr Macron appeared to be gaining ground on Wednesday.

An Elabe poll put him on 53.5 per cent with Ms Le Pen on 46.5 while Ipsos showed Mr Macron on 55 per cent with Ms Le Pen on 45.