PARIS — Top contenders for the 2027 presidential election in France laid out their vision for Europe, Ukraine and relationships with fellow capitals at POLITICO’s first Playbook Paris Live summit on Thursday. The event gathered far-right leader Marine Le Pen — who is topping the polls and appears all but certain to make it to the contest’s second-round runoff — far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Gabriel Attal, a centrist former prime minister. Here are the key takeaways from the event.
Attal came out as a strong advocate for increased support for Ukraine. The 37-year-old said backing Ukraine was an “investment for us” rather than a humanitarian expense. He supported seizing Russian assets to help pay for Kyiv’s defense and did not “exclude” sending European planes to police Ukrainian skies.
Le Pen, on the other hand, made it clear that she believes France can no longer afford to assist Ukraine financially given the country’s budgetary constraints. We can no longer provide financial assistance to Ukraine, and we regret that,” she said. Le Pen was adamant that she believed French President Emmanuel Macron had not done enough to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table.
She said she supported U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit in Miami in December. Both Le Pen and Mélenchon argued that supplying any type of military equipment to Ukraine would likely put France in harm’s way.
We’re becoming belligerents.” Le Pen reiterated her pledge to leave NATO’s integrated command, but only after the war in Ukraine ends. Mélenchon said he still wants to pull France out of the alliance altogether but that the country should remain committed to defending Europe’s eastern borders. In eyebrow-raising comments, Mélenchon doubled down on his opposition to Germany’s plans to beef up its armed forces, pointing to the “history” of German attacks against France.
I never believed that the Germans crossed the border several times just for the sake of crossing borders,” Mélenchon said — though he insisted he is not “anti-German.” Berlin aims to become Europe’s predominant military power in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and American retrenchment from Europe — a move Mélenchon argued was motivated by economic interests, with Germany hoping that a stronger defense industry can make up for losses from its struggling auto industry. Standing by her pledge to drastically cut France’s contribution to the EU budget, Le Pen went all out against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, accusing her of wanting to “bypass democracy” by fast-tracking negotiations on the EU’s multi-year budget. Von der Leyen’s “love of democracy is not evident in all of these decisions,” Le Pen said, saying the Commission chief was trying to avoid “accepting the will of the people” by speeding up negotiations before elections next year in France, Poland, Spain and Italy.
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