what did she say in her speech?

SPEECH LE PEN APRIL 24. Marine Le Pen spoke shortly after 8 p.m. on Sunday April 24, following the results estimates for the second round of the 2022 presidential election. Here are her main statements.

Presidential results near you

[Mis à jour le 24 avril 2022 à 23h44] According to an Ipsos Steria estimate for FranceInfo, Marine Le Pen would have obtained 41.2% of the vote during this second round of the presidential election, against 58.8% for Emmanuel Macron. Results which must still be refined in the evening, but which in any case represent the highest historical level reached by the far right in a presidential election.

VSIt was from the Armenonville pavilion, in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and alongside her supporters, that the candidate of the National Rally Marine Le Pen started her speech at 8:12 p.m. this Sunday evening, after having called Emmanuel Macron in order to congratulate on his victory.

• “A great wind of freedom could have risen over the country. The fate of the polls, which I respect, wanted it otherwise”
• “Despite two weeks of unfair and shocking methods; the ideas we represent are being taken to the top: tonight’s result is in itself a resounding victory.”
• “I extend my deepest gratitude to those who trusted me in the first round and to all those who joined us in the second. Especially to our compatriots in the rural and overseas provinces: this honors me and touch. This too forgotten France, we, we do not forget it.”
• “Determined, we are more than ever.”
• “I have no resentment or resentment: buried, we have been buried 1,000 times and history has always proven those who wanted to reach us wrong.”
• “In this defeat, I can’t help feeling a sense of hope.”
• “This result testifies to a great mistrust of the French towards French and European institutions. […] We will protect them against the disintegration of the social system, against the raising of the retirement age, against judicial laxity, against anarchic immigration.”
• “Emmanuel Macron will do nothing to repair the fractures of the country”
• “I will continue my commitment to France and the French people with the perseverance that you know me to be.”
• “The French are demonstrating this evening the desire for a strong counter-power to that of Emmanuel Macron.”
• “A great political recomposition is emerging in this country. (…) The game is not quite played, because in a few weeks in fact, the legislative elections will take place.”
• “We are launching the great legislative battle tonight. I will lead this battle alongside Jordan Bardella (…) with all those who have the Nation in the body. We will unite our forces against his policy which harms purchasing power and the standard of living.”
• “Remember my friends, there is no fatality.”
• “Tonight, I say it again, I will never abandon the French. Long live the Republic, long live France!”

After her speech, Marine Le Pen sang the French anthem with her supporters. There were 10 million votes between the two candidates in 2017, this gap would have melted in 2022, estimated at 5 million votes. As a reminder, 5 years ago, Emmanuel Macron had won 66.10% of the votes and Marine Le Pen 33.90% of the votes.

A new step for the far right

In 2022, while she refounded the FN by transforming it into the RN in 2018 and opted, during this campaign, for a strategy of “de-demonization” with less virulent speeches against minorities ( and aided by candidate Eric Zemmour, an even more radical far-right figure), Marine Le Pen is now experiencing her third unsuccessful attempt at the presidential election.

In view of the legislative elections in June, crucial for the political future of the country, Marine Le Pen now seems to want to record a new chapter of the sovereignist and nationalist right, with the horizon of new alliances for the future: the party zemmourist in particular, capable of bringing together hundreds of thousands of voters or even more. And the National Rally will have a major role in the political recomposition of the right, LR being clearly destined to shrink to a trickle, with even more divisions: some executives approaching LREM, others going towards the RN.

The idea of ​​a unifying RN

The RN candidate finalist in this presidential election called for the “gathering of French people around the millennial idea of ​​France”, saying that she was “free from partisan ties during this campaign” and ensuring that she would be “the president of all French people, without any exclusivity”. She thus presented herself as the solution to the divisions and the gaps which separate the French: “I intend to mend the multiple fractures from which a France is too torn and which no power has been able to repair”, she said. insured, thus citing the “social, territorial, institutional, cultural, medical” fractures. She endeavored to show that the vote for her candidacy was the one that would suit the greatest number of French people, citing pell-mell everything that “will depend on the vote of April 24”, such as “the place we want to give to people facing in the power of money”, ensuring that it was a question of “solidarity with the most vulnerable”, of being able to “benefit from guaranteed rights”, but also “to access retirement in good health”.

“Our country must pride itself on not abandoning any of its children and ensuring equality,” she said, still with the idea of ​​bringing together all French people. Finally, she wanted to project herself, affirming that the vote of the French will not only depend on “the political decisions of the next five-year term”, but that these decisions will commit France “for the next fifty years” on themes as crucial as the “migration policy , security, economic, social, energy, European and military” of the country. “My main ambition is to unite the French through a project that gives pride of place to young people and unites the generations”, concluded the RN candidate, convinced of carrying “a unifying project” dedicated to a “united and invincible community of destinies. “.

After discovering the results of the first round on April 10, finalist Marine Le Pen spoke to her supporters around 8:30 p.m. She had given her rallying speech live from her campaign headquarters in the 20th arrondissement of Paris. She announced that she sees in this result “the hope that the forces of recovery in the country are rising.” “French from mainland France, overseas and around the world. For this vote, I thank you with my most sincere gratitude. I can bear all the responsibility with humility,” declared the RN candidate to initiate her speech at the end of the first round, acclaimed by supporters who chanted “we are going to win” at will. During this speech, the RN candidate recalled the strong themes of her program, such as immigration control, security issues, the RIC or even the “defense of secularism”. Marine Le Pen called “all French people of all sensibilities, all origins, to join this great National and Popular Gathering. “Together, we are going to rebuild this victory to implement this great alternation that France needs to carry out with honor our countries into the third millennium,” she said.

Marine Le Pen’s speech in 2017

In 2017, at the end of the first round which had seen her take second place, her election evening speech had been an appeal to “all patriots” for “the survival of France”, a rather heard appeal since Nicolas Dupont-Aignan had called on his voters to join Marine Le Pen, a shock rally which had marked the start of the campaign between the two rounds. Marine Le Pen should this time reach out to another camp, that of Eric Zemmour, whom many of his former supporters have joined as part of this presidential campaign, including RN MEPs Jérôme Rivière, Gilbert Collard and Maxette Pirkabas, but also Senator RN Stéphane Ravier. Not to mention her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen in the home stretch… Unlike 2017, Marine Le Pen could therefore have new support and a reserve of votes for the second round.

The RN candidate has carefully prepared this presidential campaign, which she began very early on, formalizing her candidacy in January 2020 before leaving the reins of the RN party to Jordan Bardella in the summer of 2021 to devote herself fully to what she presents as his last presidential campaign. Marine Le Pen’s campaign has not lacked upheavals. The announcement of Eric Zemmour’s candidacy was followed by numerous rallyings of tenors and personalities of the RN, sometimes presented as “betrayals”. Marion Maréchal Le Pen’s wish to rally the former polemicist was also one of the highlights of the campaign. But strong from the experience of previous elections, Marine Le Pen has sometimes been able to remain in the shadows, especially at the start of the war in Ukraine before firing red balls at Emmanuel Macron’s economic policy in the face of the inflation and to position itself as the candidate of “purchasing power”.

In January 2020, Marine Le Pen formalized her candidacy, ratified at an RN congress in 2021. During her wishes to the press on January 17, 2020, the future candidate slipped in the first axes of campaign, that around further matured as explained in this first discourse. “I stepped back not from the elections but from the pure electoral contest, from the immediate fight, to favor substantive reflection, a less conspicuous work, sometimes less flamboyant, but more essential” with the aim of “sinking the foundations of the recovery project”, which “will forge the framework of the rally beyond our political family. I do not do this distance by calculation but by instinct, not by timidity but by requirement. I know that the French will not their confidence only on the condition of competence “, wanting to draw a line under the criticisms made after the second round in 2017.

Marine Le Pen first campaigned on traditional RN grounds, his speeches at the start of 2022, when neo-candidate Éric Zemmour seemed to be walking on his toes, attest to this. In February, while traveling in the Alpes-Maritimes, she reaffirmed during a meeting in Vallauris that she wanted to review French migration policy. “Immigration, “whatever the cost”, in two months, it’s over. France, land of immigration, it’s over, she chanted before mocking in this speech the “Immanuel Macron’s migratory irresponsibility”. “The fundamental choice facing us in this election is that of the disappearance or preservation of the France we love”, she concluded then.

Prepared for a long time by Marine Le Pen who had declared her candidacy for the presidential election in January 2020, the campaign of the leader of the National Rally was however marked by many events and upheavals, internationally first. with the start of the war in Ukraine which may have put in difficulty its position and its closeness displayed in recent years with the policy of Vladimir Putin, a point which it transformed into strategy as the consequences of the war began to affect the portfolio of French households. From the candidacy of national identity, national preference, a revised Europe of nations, Marine Le Pen has shifted her discourse towards questions of purchasing power in recent weeks, ensuring that she wants to give back 200 euros on average per month. to the French via various mechanisms including reductions in energy taxes (petrol, gas, electricity, fuel oil, etc.).