The French government is helping Marine Le Pen raise funds for her presidential campaign. A breach of the cordon sanitaire?

This text is, to a small extent, a continuation of a piece written by my colleague from the association, Vlad, regarding the presidential election in France—to which I refer you and encourage you to read, dear reader, if you haven’t already done so.

Le Monde and Politico recently reported on a very interesting meeting. Representatives of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu met with executives of leading French banks to help politicians running for president secure funding for their election campaigns.

Naturally, an anonymous cabinet member who commented for Politico emphasized that the Prime Minister is “not negotiating on behalf of” the Rassemblement National. He noted that this initiative will also help smaller candidates running for the office of President of the French Republic. The meeting was aimed at avoiding interference from a “foreign financing network.”

The problem of Marine Le Pen and Rassemblement National

Despite government members emphasizing that the initiative is not aimed at assisting Rassemblement National and Marine Le Pen, this right-wing/far-right candidate has encountered difficulties securing campaign funds far more often than any other prospective participant in the 2027 presidential race.

In 2017, Le Pen had to resort to a loan from a Russian bank—the First Czech-Russian Bank.

Meanwhile, after a change in French law prohibiting the sourcing of election campaign funds from outside the European Union, Marine Le Pen took out a loan from a Hungarian bank—MKB Bank.

It’s about reputation

Many French banks do not want to grant loans to Rassemblement National and its leader. The issue is not doubt regarding repayment, but rather reputational risk. It is worth remembering that the cordon sanitaire remains in effect and holds within Ensemble / the National Assembly. Meanwhile, the risk regarding Le Pen’s loan repayment is very low—this stems from the way the French state reimburses candidates who cross the 5% threshold in the first round of voting for 47.5% of campaign costs up to 8 million euros. If a candidate fails to cross the 5% national threshold, they must accept a reimbursement of only 4.75% of campaign expenditures from France. Marine Le Pen easily passed this threshold in 2012, 2017 and 2022, yet bankers privately cite fears of losing 2–5% of their clients if they were to grant her a loan. Naturally, representatives of financial institutions will not state this openly. However, an evident sign is the fact that Marine Le Pen faces systematic problems with securing funds for election campaigns.

Solving Marine Le Pen’s problem

In Le Pen’s case, the biggest issue is without a doubt reputational risk. Therefore, the French authorities would like to establish a banking consortium consisting of the largest financial institutions: BNP Paribas, Société Générale, BPCE, Crédit Mutuel, Crédit Agricole, and La Banque Postale. All these banks would share the financial risk on the same basis as a syndicated loan. Additionally, the Fédération Bancaire Française (the professional and lobbying organization representing the banking sector in France) demanded state guarantees for these loans. This likely stems from the risk the consortium would have to bear in financing smaller candidates, for whom crossing the 5% threshold is highly uncertain.

An additional fact indicating that the problem lies in reputation rather than the risk of default is the question of who will negotiate the loan on behalf of the consortium. It must be one specific bank, and no financial institution in the consortium is expressing a willingness to do so. A solution was proposed for it to be La Banque Postale (the French postal bank), which is state-owned, but even it lacks enthusiasm to undertake the duty of negotiating loan terms for Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign.

Political sovereignty as the limit of the cordon sanitaire?

Although the French government emphasizes that the meeting pertained broadly to the financing of various political parties, there is no denying that the main beneficiary of this mechanism will be the politician who is the leader in every sense except the formal one—the leader of a political movement around which a cordon sanitaire has been erected.

Nevertheless, the French government decided to take action so that political parties and candidates would not be forced to seek political campaign financing outside the borders of the French Republic, but rather make use of local financial institutions.

The mechanism currently being developed is sovereignist in nature, while simultaneously assisting a party that, according to the dogma of the cordon sanitaire, should not be cooperated with or aided at any cost. Here, however, for the “common” good, the biggest beneficiary will be the one surrounded by an enduring cordon sanitaire.