In Mormant-sur-Vernisson: Le Pen organizes right-wing populist rendezvous

South of Paris, French politician Marine Le Pen is gathering a who's who of European right-wing populists for a conference. The enemy images are clear: migrants and Brussels.

Right-wing populist and xenophobic politicians from several European countries have gathered in France at the invitation of Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National party. EU migration policy currently amounts to an "organized population exchange," Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said at the conference in Mormant-sur-Vernisson, south of Paris. This is changing the continent's "cultural foundation."

He himself had managed to "push back the migrants" despite resistance from Brussels, Orban told several thousand participants at the meeting: "We will not allow our cities to be destroyed, our girls and women to be raped, and our peaceful citizens to be killed," the right-wing populist added.

The meeting took place one year after the European elections, in which Le Pen's National Front emerged as the strongest party in France. Among the participants were Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the far-right Lega party, Santiago Abascal, leader of the far-right Spanish party Vox, and former Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis. All belong to the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament.

At the event, Lega leader Salvini spoke of an alleged "invasion, primarily of Islamist illegal immigrants," secretly "financed and organized by Brussels." He called on European "patriots" to work together "to take Europe's fate and future back into their own hands."

The meeting also took place less than two years before the next presidential election in France, in which Le Pen currently plans to run. In March, however, the 56-year-old was sentenced to four years in prison and a five-year ban from standing for election for embezzling millions of euros in EU funds.

While the prison sentence is temporarily suspended pending an appeal, the court's ruling makes her ineligible for election effective immediately. This means that Le Pen is barred from running for further office—especially not in the presidential election scheduled for 2027. The RN politician has announced that she will exhaust all legal remedies to be able to run for president after all.