Marine Le Pen confirmed that “National Rally” is not changing its position on the retirement age and considers retirement at 62 to be the right choice; she said this after Jordan Bardella’s interview with the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in which he described the issue as “under review”.
Bardella gave this interview on May 12, and 24 hours later Le Pen appeared on French radio RTL and said that RN’s line on pensions “remains relevant”. In a conversation with RTL host Tom Sotto, she did not dispute the formula “neither right nor left” and replied: “Yes, when we are neither right nor left, we can welcome people from the right and the left, and that is very good”.
The differences over pensions were also confirmed by RN vice president Sébastien Chenu. On May 19, on franceinfo, he said that because of the worsening economic situation the party would look at how to achieve the goal of 62 years, while insisting that RN’s course was unchanged.
On May 20 on TF1, MP Laurent Jacobelli said that “62 ans ou plus de 62 ans, les deux chiffres sont bons”, and explained that the actual retirement age depends on the number of years of contributions. At first he said that a change in position “is not on the agenda”, then added that “on examine tout”.
The pension dispute was not the only example of a difference between Le Pen’s and Bardella’s lines. In early May, Le Pen called an exceptional tax on the super-profits of oil companies “normal”, whereas Bardella said that with mandatory contributions at 46% it was not his priority.
Against this backdrop of differences, Le Pen recalled her alliance with Bardella and said that, as far as she knew, they had been fully aligned on the projects presented to voters. The next important political deadline for her is the Paris Court of Appeal’s decision on her ineligibility, scheduled for July 7.
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