French far-right accelerates recruitment drive with Macron government on brink

Highlights:

• Government faces no-confidence vote on September 8
• Le Pen's National Rally demanding snap elections
• RN has stepped up efforts to recruit, train lawmaker candidates

France's far-right National Rally is fine-tuning its candidate list for a possible snap legislative election, seeking to avoid what it called "casting errors" that let several "black sheep" derail its hopes for a majority in last year's vote.

With the government hanging by a thread, the RN is betting President Emmanuel Macron's only path out of France's latest budget crisis will be to dissolve its deeply divided parliament.

The RN is the largest single parliamentary party and believes it could finally win a majority that would give the far-right unprecedented power over the eurozone's No. 2 economy.

It is a risky bet.

Only Macron can call a vote, and even if he does, polls suggest the RN is unlikely to perform much better than last year, when opposition forces aligned to block it from power.

The party remains taboo for many in France, with a dark history and divisive pledges to slash immigrant welfare, limit their healthcare access and ramp up deportations.

Antisemitic, Islamophobic and racist comments by some RN candidates - later dubbed "black sheep" by party President Jordan Bardella who blamed "casting errors" for their inclusion - also contributed to its electoral shortcomings in 2024, undermining efforts to convince voters it had changed.

Meanwhile, fresh elections would mean party leader Marine Le Pen, who is barred from running in the 2027 presidential election after an embezzlement conviction which she has appealed, would lose her parliamentary seat, depriving her of a position of national influence.

Le Pen seems undeterred, hoping a fresh legislative election and a battery of legal appeals against her ban will leave her and the RN well positioned for 2027.

"We're calling for an ultra-rapid dissolution," she said on Tuesday after a meeting with Prime Minister Francois Bayrou. "That's the only democratic solution."

The RN has accelerated steps to recruit, train and develop would-be lawmakers, party sources told Reuters, with 85% of candidates already chosen and only a few dozen still vacant.

France has 577 constituencies and the RN expects to compete in almost all of them, except for seats where allied party contenders face better odds.

RN lawmaker Edwige Diaz is in charge of training candidates. She runs an RN Training account on YouTube with nearly 8,000 followers, which includes videos entitled "Patriotic Women and the Need for Political Engagement," and "Agriculture: bad news from Brussels."

Diaz told Reuters that candidates typically come from the RN's ranks of roughly 130,000 members. Each candidate is interviewed for 15 minutes by a 12-person panel of RN officials who have already clocked over 200 hours of hearings. If they cannot decide, Le Pen or Bardella make the call, Diaz said.

MORE RIGOROUS SCREENING?

Approved candidates then receive obligatory media training, which has become an important part of a process begun by Le Pen in 2017 to professionalise a party better known for controversial comments than slick TV interviews.

RN spokesperson Laurent Jacobelli told Reuters the party was well aware of the risks of fielding unpalatable candidates, but said "there is a very tight filter, even tighter than before."

One would-be RN lawmaker, who spoke anonymously as they were still awaiting confirmation of their candidacy, told Reuters the party had hired an outside firm to screen aspiring candidates' social media and make other background checks.

"We are very vigilant on the social networks of our pre-selected candidates," said RN lawmaker Julien Odoul.

A senior RN official said the party has become much stricter about the language its lawmakers use so as not to alienate voters.

"We tell the deputies: 'You cannot say that because we are close to power. If you are polling at 5%, you could say it, be excessive. But now you can't anymore,'" said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Joseph Martin was running as an RN candidate in northwestern Brittany last year when reporters unearthed an old tweet many considered antisemitic.

Bardella initially disowned him but the RN eventually let him stand after accepting his explanation that the tweet was taken out of context and was not antisemitic. He lost.

This year, he is not being allowed to stand again, he told Reuters. "I asked for the nomination again but they refused it, which I regret since I am innocent. That said, I don't blame them and I have renewed my membership of the RN."

Pollster Jerome Sainte-Marie is another trainer of RN recruits, recording podcasts on ancient Greek military thinker Xenophon and the Jacobins of revolutionary France for an in-house website that also includes courses on populism, French agriculture and water management.

Sainte-Marie ran in the 2024 vote, falling just short of victory, and plans to run again if Macron dissolves parliament. He was optimistic about the RN's tougher selection methods.

"There has been considerable progress," he said. "That will allow us to have people of quality."