France facing rise in all types of racism, human rights commission says

Anti-immigration ideas pushed by the far-right in France are contributing to a rise in racism across the country, a report from the nation’s human rights commission has found.

Following Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October last year, the report found there has been a 284 per cent spike in antisemitic attacks, while tolerance is “declining towards all minorities”.

And ahead of this weekend’s first round of crunch elections in France with the far-right National Rally (RN) currently leading in the polls, the report warned of a European trend towards more extreme right-wing politics at the expense of “equality, fraternity and freedom”.

The snap elections were called by French president Emmanuel Macron after RN earned more than 30 per cent of the vote in European parliamentary elections at the start of June, soundly beating Mr Macron’s centrist alliance.

RN, with their figurehead Marine Le Pen, currently enjoy an eight-point lead in the polls, running on a platform that proposes restricting the rights of immigrants in France. Among their policies is the “national preference” plan, which would afford priority to those born in France when seeking employment or social benefits.

Though the human rights commission report found that 69 per cent of those polled do not support the RN’s “national preference” plan, they added that wider support for RN has allowed their more extreme policies to influence legislation. The report claimed that an immigration law proposed by the government in February 2023 “contained echoes of the ‘national preference’, adding that the debates surrounding it amplified this xenophobic trend”.

The “national preference” policy, they say, is in “frontal opposition to the principles of equality, fraternity and freedom” enshrined in the French constitution and will embolden racist opinions.

According to the report, 51 per cent of survey respondents from the general population said they don’t feel at home in France anymore, compared to 43 per cent of French citizens last year. The commission said they believed this increase was linked to a rejection of immigration worsened by the prominence of the far-right. Support for this sentiment rises to 91 per cent among RN supporters, the report found.

When asked what was causing national insecurity, the report’s authors found that 43 per cent of French residents blamed immigration, compared to 83 per cent of RN supporters.

The party’s 28-year-old leader Jordan Bardella pledged to “restore faith in France and its greatness” in a recent public speech, suggesting that a “cultural battle” is necessary to achieve this.

Ms Le Pen told regional newspaper Le Telegramme de Brest in an interview published on Thursday: “Immigration is the elephant in the room. We don’t know how much it costs.”

Should RN become the single largest party in parliament in the wake of this election, taking place over two rounds of voting on 30 June and 7 July, Mr Bardella could assume the role of French prime minister in a power-sharing agreement known as “cohabitation” with Mr Macron. France has had three periods of “cohabitation” – when the president and government were from opposite political camps – in its post-war history.

“On the choice of prime minister, the president has understood he doesn’t have much of a choice, as Jordan Bardella will have a mandate from the French people,” Ms Le Pen told Le Telegramme de Brest.

Opinion polls consistently suggest the anti-immigrant, eurosceptic RN has a comfortable lead, with a left-wing coalition in second place and Mr Macron’s centrists in third. However, the big unknown is whether the RN can win an absolute majority of 289 seats or more in the National Assembly. The latest poll, published on Wednesday by Ifop, projected it and its allies would get 220 to 260 seats.

Ms Le Pen predicted Mr Macron would find this uncomfortable, even hinting that she thought he may throw in the towel early.

“I don’t know what his reaction will be. Given his arrogance, will he put up with it for long?” she said.

Ms Le Pen also appeared to suggest Mr Bardella, as prime minister, will also take over at least some decisions on France’s defence and its armed forces. “For the president, being head of the military is an honorific title as it’s the prime minister who holds the purse strings,” she said.

Defence minister Sebastien Lecornu, hit back. “The constitution is not honorific,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, going on to quote a 1962 address by then president Charles de Gaulle on the head of state’s extensive powers.

Deputy foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot told the TV channel TF: “How arrogant of Marine Le Pen to consider that the RN has already won the election.”

Reuters contributed to this report