Le Pen opens presidential campaign in Orléans with vow to restore rule of law

Marine Le Pen opened her campaign for the French presidency in Orléans on Sunday — the city where Joan of Arc broke an English siege in 1429 — telling 8,500 supporters she would restore the rule of law. The day before, more than 400,000 people had marched across France and police made more than 1,300 arrests; a week earlier, nationwide protests had ended in looting and arson.

The unrest began as four weeks of student demonstrations over the state of French schools — absent teachers, decrepit buildings, a university applications platform students want changed — and widened into a cost-of-living movement that unions and gilets jaunes say will keep marching for weeks. Emmanuel Macron leaves office next spring, and his government's answer has been restriction: increased security measures, limits on demonstrating, and a fast-tracked "vandals pay" bill the Senate debates this week. Under the bill, a protester can be held liable for up to €10,000 in damage caused by others, provided they keep demonstrating nearby or as part of the same group as the perpetrators; it also allows greater use of drones over protests. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu calls the law "absolutely essential." Trade unions and the Human Rights League, in an open letter to Le Monde, call it a serious attack on the freedom to demonstrate.

Le Pen did not have to invent her own material. She told the crowd the government is soft on violent protesters and lacks authority, and asked how anyone could claim the rule of law exists "when hordes come to ransack and burn our buildings." Her party says the vandal bill was its idea to begin with. Her own formulation drew the loudest response: "Vandals will pay and if it takes their whole life to pay, then they will spend their whole life paying."

The programme reaches past order. Le Pen, 58, who has run for president three times before, promised "double borders" — one French, one European — said French nationality would again become a privilege, inherited or earned, pledged caps on household energy bills, tax cuts and reduced payments to the EU, and is critical of NATO and of French backing for Ukraine. Jordan Bardella, who spoke first to a standing ovation, pledged a crackdown on the "ultra-left," a criminal-responsibility age of 16 and the deportation of "delinquents and criminals." Interior Minister Laurent Nunez already attributes much of the violence to ultra-left extremists.

The setting is a country whose debt and budget deficit exceed EU limits, and whose government is struggling to pass a budget built on cuts. Le Pen is also appealing her conviction for embezzling European parliament funds before France's highest court, which has not stopped her from making the rule of law the campaign's first banner.

An Ipsos survey released on Saturday found broad anger over the unrest, with most respondents saying the government is to blame. The same poll put Le Pen at 32 to 34 percent in the first round of the election, to be held over two rounds in April and May.