France’s 2027 Rivals Split Over Europe – The European Times

POLITICO interviews expose competing doctrines on Ukraine, NATO, the EU and French sovereignty

Separate interviews with Marine Le Pen, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Gabriel Attal have revealed three sharply different ideas of France’s place in Europe. Attal presented deeper integration as the route to greater power. Le Pen promised to curb France’s financial commitments abroad and confront Brussels. Mélenchon advocated non-alignment, withdrawal from NATO and greater suspicion of German military ambitions.

The interviews, conducted during POLITICO’s Playbook Paris Live event on 24 September, were not a debate. The candidates appeared separately and were not required to challenge one another’s claims directly. Even so, the four conclusions highlighted by POLITICO capture a central question in the developing 2027 campaign: should France seek influence through stronger European institutions, or recover room for unilateral national action?

Attal offers integration as power

Gabriel Attal, the former prime minister and leader of President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, offered the clearest defence of continued European integration. He argued that the EU should become a “power continent” capable of acting alongside the United States and China.

His proposal is not necessarily for all 27 member states to advance at the same speed. Attal envisages a smaller group pursuing closer cooperation in areas such as capital markets, technology, environmental regulation and industrial policy. That approach would deepen an already familiar division between countries willing to integrate further and governments determined to protect national vetoes.

On Ukraine, Attal presented French financial and military support as an investment in national security rather than charitable assistance. He did not rule out a multinational operation to help protect Ukrainian airspace if Kyiv made a clear request, although he stopped short of promising such an intervention.

Attal also opposed a major reduction in France’s contribution to the EU budget. His wider campaign argument is that sovereignty can be exercised collectively: France becomes more capable when European states combine their markets, investment and regulatory power.

That message, however, carries the burden of Macron’s record. Attal must persuade voters that further integration represents renewal rather than continuity at a time when many French citizens associate the political centre with public debt, institutional instability and declining purchasing power.

Le Pen connects Europe to fiscal pressure

Marine Le Pen’s answers placed the EU and support for Ukraine within a domestic argument about scarce public money. The National Rally candidate said France could no longer afford direct financial assistance to Kyiv, although she would maintain military training and some forms of defensive equipment.

She also reaffirmed her intention eventually to remove France from NATO’s integrated command, while saying such a move should not take place during the present war. This creates a distinction between her immediate position and her longer-term strategic objective.

On the EU budget, Le Pen repeated her commitment to reduce France’s contribution sharply. She accused European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of trying to accelerate negotiations on the bloc’s next long-term budget before several major national elections.

The position is less explicitly disruptive than the old National Rally demand to leave the EU, but it could still produce a serious institutional confrontation. A large reduction in the French contribution would affect negotiations over agriculture, cohesion funding, defence, research and support for Ukraine.

Le Pen’s caution over France’s immediate budget also showed a more pragmatic side. Rather than seeking an automatic confrontation with the government, she indicated that she wanted a 2027 budget adopted, warning of the danger of a sudden bond-market crisis. She is expected to set out her own five-year fiscal trajectory in October.

That combination is politically deliberate: restraint before the election, followed by the promise of substantial change after it. The unresolved question is whether reductions in European commitments and projected domestic savings can meet France’s fiscal pressures without shifting costs onto vulnerable households, local services or future governments.

Mélenchon’s non-aligned France

Jean-Luc Mélenchon presented a third doctrine. The La France Insoumise leader again supported withdrawal from NATO, arguing that France should not depend on an alliance whose direction can be shaped by an unpredictable US president.

He nevertheless said leaving NATO would not mean abandoning the defence of the EU’s common borders. That distinction is important, but it would be difficult to implement. For many eastern and northern European governments, NATO’s command structures and Article 5 guarantee are inseparable from credible territorial defence.

Mélenchon placed the United Nations, rather than the G20 or NATO, at the centre of his preferred international order. On Ukraine, he supports a Russian withdrawal but favours incremental negotiations and a larger UN role in constructing a settlement.

His sharpest comments concerned Germany’s effort to build Europe’s strongest conventional army. Mélenchon argued that Berlin should explain and coordinate such a transformation with its neighbours. He also suggested that Germany was turning towards defence manufacturing partly because of difficulties in its automotive sector.

The concern about democratic oversight of European rearmament is legitimate. Large military budgets require scrutiny, clear strategic objectives and safeguards against waste. References to wartime history, however, can easily slide from policy criticism into national suspicion. As The European Times previously examined, Mélenchon’s challenge extends beyond defence to the privileged role of the Franco-German partnership in EU policymaking.

Technology reveals another divide

The interviews also showed that artificial intelligence is becoming part of the sovereignty debate. Attal wants international regulation that addresses major risks without slowing European development. He has also called for public procurement to help create European technology companies and for French pupils to have access to a sovereign AI assistant.

Mélenchon focused more heavily on public control of infrastructure. He warned against allowing France to become a location for data centres whose technology, data and environmental impact remained beyond national oversight. His concern about water and energy consumption connects digital policy with local environmental rights and democratic control.

These are not entirely incompatible positions. Both candidates accept that leaving AI governance exclusively to private corporations would be inadequate. The difference lies in their preferred instrument: Attal emphasises international rules and European scale, while Mélenchon prioritises national control and public ownership of strategic infrastructure.

A fragmented field, not a three-way race

The interviews should not be mistaken for a complete portrait of the election. Other credible candidates, including Édouard Philippe, Raphaël Glucksmann, Bruno Retailleau and Marine Tondelier, are competing for political space across the centre, left and right.

A September Ipsos-BVA survey gave Le Pen between 33% and 35% of first-round voting intentions across the scenarios examined. Mélenchon received between 15.5% and 17%. Attal reached 13% to 15.5% when presented as the sole candidate of the former Macronist bloc, but fell to 6% to 7.5% when competing with Philippe. The survey involved 13,060 registered voters, but remains a snapshot rather than a prediction.

What the POLITICO interviews establish more clearly than the polling is the scale of the choice facing France. The country could push for a more integrated European core, use its weight to restrict the EU from within, or attempt a non-aligned foreign policy outside NATO’s command system.

All three candidates speak the language of sovereignty. Their disagreement concerns where sovereignty can still be exercised effectively: through Europe, against its institutions or at a greater distance from its alliances. That argument will shape not only France’s presidential campaign, but the future capacity of Europe to act collectively.