Le Pen is a nationalist: she doesn’t like the EU or NATO | Opinion

1. On the day that nearly 50 million French people go to the polls in the first round of legislative elections – the second round is next Sunday – many people are wondering what impact a potential government led by Marine Le Pen’s National Union might have on the European Union, its political agenda and the functioning of its institutions. We know that in France foreign and defence policy is traditionally the “reserved domain” of the president and that there will be no presidential election until 2027. But we also know that European policy determines a large part of the domestic policy of the member states and the European Union. And vice versa. And we know something else: the model of “cohabitation” between two different political colours in the Élysée and Matignon, which existed in the past, cannot be a model. Today, for the first time in the Fifth Republic, a far-right political force with a vision of Europe whose history leaves no one at ease can come to power.