Marine Le Pen ‘ditches plans for Frexit’ in shock U-turn

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen is to ditch plans to pull France out of the European Union and to stop using the euro and restore the franc, her party’s chief economic strategist has said.

"There will be no Frexit,” Bernard Monot said in an interview with a British newspaper, explaining that the Front National (FN) leader had realised that this was not what the French people want.

Contacted by The Local,  Alain Vizier, the FN's communications director, refused to comment on whether this was now official party policy or if Monot was simply expressing his own opinion.

The issue of the EU is threatening  to split the party, with deputy leader Florian Philippot vowing to resign if it dumped its core policy to restore the franc as the national currency.

But Le Pen, who is running for a parliamentary seat in next month’s legislative elections, has admitted that her hostility to the euro had played a big role in her defeat to pro-EU Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election.

Monot told the Daily Telegraph that “we have taken note of what the French people told us” and decided to put an end to the high-risk strategy of pulling France, a founding member of the EU, out of the
bloc.

“I continue to think that the euro is not technically viable but it makes no sense for us to keep insisting stubbornly. From now on our policy will be to renegotiate the EU treaties to give us more control over our budget and banking regulations,” he said.

Renegotiating France’s membership of the EU, and ending it if she did not get what she wanted, was a key pledge in Le Pen’s campaign for the recent presidential election, alongside hardline views on law and order, immigration, and Islam.

But she faltered on the European issue after she made it it through to the second round of the vote, sending out confusing signals on whether she really did want Frexit and an end to France’s use of the single currency.

Many experts said that France pulling out of the EU, in the wake of Brexit, could lead to the bloc falling apart.

Now Le Pen appears to have completely abandoned her policies on Europe, according to Monot, her chief economic strategist.

Hmm. Flip-flopping on major issues is not good.....