The extreme right continues to exploit the idea of a European Union closed to immigration.
The National Regroupment (RN), the French far-right party led by Marine Le Pen, has signed Fabrice Leggeri, former executive director of the European border agency (Frontex), who resigned from the position in 2020 surrounded by various scandals related to returns. of migrants and the opacity of his management, after a thorough investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) into his conduct at the head of the agency.
Leggeri has said that the objective of his jump into politics aboard the RN is to put France and Europe “on the right path.”
Le Pen's party is a favorite for the elections to the European Parliament that will be held in June and for which polls show a significant advance of far-right formations in several EU countries.
The jump of the former head of Frontex to Le Pen's party once again puts the European border agency, based in Warsaw, under the spotlight, questioned for collaborating with the authorities of countries, such as Libya, that do not respect human rights, to avoid arrivals into community territory.
“We are determined to combat the migratory immersion that the European Commission and the Eurocrats do not consider a problem, but rather as a project: I can attest to that,” said Leggeri, 55, in an interview this weekend with
Le Journal du Dimanche
, in which he reveals his candidacy.
She seems to have forgotten that he was for years one of those “Eurocrats” in the pay of Brussels.
The former head of the EU border agency, trained in the elitist National School of Administration, began his career at the helm of Frontex in 2015. He headed the entity during the great refugee crisis in Syria and left in 2020 — despite having received a second mandate in 2019—surrounded by scandals published in the international press about illegal returns at European borders and the lack of control over them by Frontex and its leadership.
During Leggeri's mandate, the border agency multiplied its budget almost fourfold (up to 543 million euros) and Brussels approved the creation of its own police force that will eventually have 10,000 troops deployed on the borders: the first armed force of the EU.
With this signing, the French ultra-conservative party seeks a coup for the European elections in June.
Leggeri will occupy third place on the RN list headed by Jordan Bardella, president of the party and Le Pen's right-hand man.
The former director of Frontex, due to his training and experience, fills a gap in the far-right political formation, where leaders and candidates from the high administration are scarce.
And even less with experience in the EU.
Leggeri is
normal
and
enarca
.
That is to say, he has gone through the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the National School of Administration, the nursery, respectively, of France's intellectual and administrative elite.
Furthermore, he has held a position of high responsibility in the EU, which will allow him, and a party that is recognized as Eurosceptic, to say that he knows the beast
inside
.
Le Pen's strategy, for a few years now, no longer consists of promising France's exit from the EU or the euro, but rather about changing the EU from within.
Leggeri allows him to hold this speech.
He is someone who has been in the Brussels engine room, who has emerged from it scalded and who has the keys to transform it.
With Leggeri, Le Pen also aims to counter accusations of incompetence due to her usual approximate proposals and poor mastery of European and French issues.
President Emmanuel Macron, in his debates with her in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, defeated her largely because he knew the technical details of public policies, and she did not know hers.
For Le Pen, the signing of Leggeri is one more step in his goal of normalizing the RN and turning it into a party like the others.
A party that, without giving up its nationalist and anti-immigration ideological DNA, does not scare the majority of French people who decide the elections.
All polls indicate that the RN is a favorite for the European elections, with 10 or more points ahead of President Macron's list.
A survey by the Ifop institute, published two weeks ago, gave Le Pen the winner in the second round of the 2027 presidential elections, if they were held now.
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