Just a week ago, Marine Le Pen suffered a severe election failure.
Now the right-wing populist opens the fight for the Elysée Palace.
The main opponent has already been determined.
Perpignan - Nine months before the presidential election in France, right-wing populist Marine Le Pen has made a clear statement of war on her possible adversary, Emmanuel Macron.
"We will strive for this victory," said the 52-year-old on Sunday in front of hundreds of supporters in Perpignan in the south of France.
She accused Macron's middle government, among other things, of bringing the French arms industry into partnerships with Germany and thus selling it off.
She also attacked Macron's loose guessing game with two Youtubers in the Élysée Palace.
"We have to convince the French of the importance of this date, which they must not miss under any circumstances," she said at the end of the Rassemblement National (RN) party congress with a view to the election for the highest office in the spring.
Even after the defeat in the regional elections a week ago, Le Pen, who was confirmed in office, stuck to its opening course.
“We're not going back to the National Front.” Le Pen stands for a course of de-radicalization in order to reach more voters.
In the regional elections, however, Le Pen's party failed in its attempt to win a region of the country as a bastion of power.
The trained lawyer announced that she would start the presidential election campaign in September.
She wanted to temporarily hand over the party chairmanship to her first deputy Jordan Bardella (25).
She wants to be a candidate who stands above party political contradictions and speaks to all citizens.
The daughter of Front National co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen competes for the Elysée Palace for the third time.
In 2017 she lost in the final against Macron.
Surveys give her a chance to make it back to the finals in 2022.
At the meeting in southern France, Le Pen was confirmed in office - she received 98.35 percent of the vote, as the European parliamentarian Jérôme Rivière announced.
There were no opposing candidates.
The party supporters had already voted before the meeting by postal vote or the Internet, as the media reported.
Le Pen has been at the head of the party for a good ten years.
At the start of the meeting, several hundred people protested in the streets of the city on Saturday, as reported by the broadcaster Franceinfo.
Le Pen reminded the supporters that she had allied herself with European right-wing politicians such as Lega boss Matteo Salvini from Italy or the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. In the event of an election victory, she wants to hold a referendum in France on the issue of immigration. The aim is also a government of national unity in order to guarantee “civil peace” in the country. The main task is to ensure the security of the French and to restore the authority of the state.
The media spoke of a "party congress of doubt". There is dissatisfaction at the grassroots level because of the debacle in the regional elections. After the crushing defeat, Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had openly demanded that the party regain its “masculinity” and return to previous principles. However, the 93-year-old right-wing extremist is only an observer - he was pushed out of the party years ago. The occasion was trivializing statements about the Holocaust.
The next few months are likely to be turbulent for Marine Le Pen, as she is coming under pressure outside of her party. Many are convinced that the right-wing journalist and author Éric Zemmour, who among other things publishes columns in the conservative daily "Le Figaro", is entering the battle for the presidential job. In the past few days, posters with his likeness and the inscription “Zemmour président” could be seen in the streets of Paris. dpa
