The National Rally president, who could be his party’s presidential candidate if Marine Le Pen’s election ban is confirmed in an upcoming appeal decision, has been trying to build his international profile, traveling to the United Kingdom and Italy in recent months.
His apparent outreach to the chancellor contrasts with a recent interview with French right-wing newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, where he struck a defiant tone toward Berlin, accusing the European Union of bowing to “German interests.”
In the FAZ interview, Bardella reaffirmed his hard line on migration, vowing to introduce “national preference” for social welfare benefits, one of his party’s flagship proposals, and propose a referendum on migration to enshrine tougher migration rules in the French constitution and make them “take precedence over European law.”