Le Pen and AfD take aim at von der Leyen's two-trillion-euro EU budget

A strategy paper circulating within the AfD on Monday drops the party's demand for Germany to leave the European Union and the euro, while Marine Le Pen on Tuesday presented a plan to cut France's net contributions to Brussels by around 64 percent. Both arrive as Commission president Ursula von der Leyen prepares a two-trillion-euro budget for the coming period.

The AfD paper, produced by the party's European policy experts, proposes remaking the EU as a federation of sovereign states concentrated on the internal market, protection of the external borders and coordination on security, with political powers returned to member states. The euro, it argues, should rest on states taking responsibility for themselves and assuming their own liabilities; the paper calls for an end to "indirect ECB financing of governments", the settlement of Target balances and an insolvency regime for member states.

Le Pen, who leads the French opposition, said France is heading toward sovereign bankruptcy. Her plan relies on spending cuts to generate €140 billion in savings by 2032, a partial return to the Maastricht criteria with annual new borrowing below three percent of GDP, a balanced primary budget within fifteen months of taking office, and a constitutional debt brake — her "golden rule" — enshrined by referendum. Net contributions to the Commission would be cut immediately to five billion euros, the level of the early 2000s.

Ten-year French yields brushed against five percent in late trading on Friday, the highest in more than two decades, before the market calmed at the start of the week. Chancellor Friedrich Merz executed Germany's debt brake with an already-defeated Bundestag and created a special fund; Le Pen's golden rule would go to a referendum instead. She presented the plan ahead of an election she could win, after which she could position herself at the head of a consolidation movement.

Von der Leyen's budget for the coming period runs to two trillion euros. Le Pen's opening bid for the French share is a net contribution of five billion.