She has been the leader of the anti-immigration, anti-EU Front Nationale in France since 2011 and has just been unanimously re-elected by her party at its annual conference. It won most French seats in the 2014 European elections and is poised to mount a serious challenge for the presidency in 2017. Marine Le Pen spoke to Euronews’ Sophie Desjardin. <br /><br />SD <br />Marine Le Pen, the opinion polls continually have your party first among the opposition. What do you think when you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning? <br /><br />MLP: <br />I’m preparing the great democratic upset that’s going to happen in the next presidential election for sure. It’s the aim of each one of us in the Front Nationale to do our utmost to win power so we can pursue our policies, not just to have power for itself, but to change the situation in our country. <br /><br />SD <br />When you started your career as a lawyer, you sometimes defended foreigners who had no residency status. It seems you fought for their right to stay in France. What became of that Marine Le Pen? <br /><br />MLP <br />She’s still here! What you have to understand is that we can reasonably consider that a process is devastating for a country – which is the case for immigration – without wanting to make those who weren’t responsible for the situation pay for the political choices of our leaders. We have always said we’ve nothing against immigrants, but rather those who made them come here. <br /><br />SD<br />You talk about ending massive immigration, but, realistically, what are you going to do with those undocumented people already here and those who feel they have to come to Europe to save their lives? <br /><br />MLP<br />But they can go home. I’m here to save the skin of the French people. I do understand suffering, but I think first we have to tackle the causes. I would take the same approach as the Pope, that is, lay the situation at the door of the warmongers.<br /><br />SD<br />But if tomorrow you’re elected, you’ve told us you would stop all that. You went to Lampedusa, you saw the distress of these people. It’s one thing to say ‘stop the boats and send them home’, but would you drive the boat?<br /><br />MLP<br />Have you been to Lampedusa?<br /><br />SD<br />Yes.<br /><br />MLP<br />You will have seen young people who come to work in Europe because they have been led to believe that there was work in Europe. Because we led them to believe that it was Eldorado. So, in a way, they are also victims of lies as much as the French people who suffer the consequences of this immigration, to whom we say ‘could you make room because there are people coming’. Well, no, we can’t make room. We can’t, because there’s no more room. <br /><br />SD<br />Turning to Europe, and to put it simply, you want France out of the eurozone and the EU. But if France alone were to leave the euro it would be hugely complicated.<br /><br />MLP <br />Listen, I wouldn’t be so sure about that because the countries that are outside the European Union are doing very well.<br /><br />SD<br />But they were never in in the first place, that’s the difference.<br /><br />MLP<br />So the moment you join you’re condemned to stay?<br /><br />SD<br />No, but it’s more difficult to get out.<br />We don’t know because there’s no precedent. <br /><br />MLP<br />But that’s because we’re kind of guinea pigs in this experiment. They’re trying to impose a kind of Europe on us which is not at all the one we were sold… and then afterwards they say ‘Oops! we never thought about how you could get out.’ There’s a kind of amateurism in not having foreseen a process where one of the populations of the European Union people would want to leave this European Union. <br /><br />SD<br />What do you think of someone who criticises their company?<br /><br />MLP<br />Well, that depends on the circumstances but if was done publicly, that wouldn’t be very loyal.Why? <br /><br />SD <br />Well, what are you doing at the European Parliament, which contributes so much to your income?<br /><br />MLP:<br />You’re very kind, madam, but I am not an employee. OK? I am not an employee of the European Union. I am an elected representative of the people. Excuse me! Excuse me! I’m elected by my voters who strongly feel that the Front Nationale must have a maximum of representatives to protect them from the European Union.<br /><br />SD<br />Are you ideologically close to Vladimir Putin?<br /><br />MLP<br />I share at least a part of Vladimir Putin’s economic vision. That’s for sure, but it didn’t start yesterday. <br />The Front Nationale has never changed its position on this subject. We welcomed the arrival of a government that did not serve the ‘apparatchiks’ ; and which developed a patriotic economy. <br /><br />SD<br />You’ve said you have a certain admiration for him as a person.<br /><br />MLP <br />Yes. I admire his cool head. Because there is a cold war being waged against him by the EU at the behest of United States, which is defending its own interests. I admire that he has managed to restore pride and contentment to a great nation that had been humiliated and persecuted for 70 years. Simple as that. I think that there are things you have to look on with a positive eye, or at least with an impartial eye . <br /><br />SD<br />Well, just on the reasons behind those
