It is still not abundance in the coffers of the National Rally (RN). Despite the election of 89 deputies in June, the far-right party is forced to borrow again from its supporters, pending the payment of public aid corresponding to its score in the legislative elections, which should take place this summer. . As revealed by RTL and The Parisian Wednesday, September 14, the training led by Marine Le Pen will relaunch in the coming weeks a campaign for a « grand emprunt national ».
The party, in debt to the tune of 22 million euros, frequently uses this method to finance its electoral campaigns, failing to obtain loans from French banks. This appeal for loans is now permanent, in the form of a website on which the party’s interim president, Jordan Bardella, boasts of a “beneficial investment” allowing to ” defend [ses] ideas ». The loans, for a minimum amount of 500 euros and repaid, at the choice of the lender, after one to three years, are remunerated at 5%. The last campaigns, in 2019 then 2020, had made it possible to bring in several million euros – some six million euros for that upstream of the Europeans, according to the RN.
Ten million euros per year from 2023
The party has been in debt for years, in particular because of its difficulty in electing deputies and senators. The number of parliamentarians is one of the two elements which determine the amount of public aid allocated by the State, each year for the duration of the legislature, between the political parties. Due to its entry into force in the National Assembly, the RN will now receive just over 10 million euros per year, double what it received before. But not immediately.
“Usually, the subsidy is paid in February or March, but in a post-election year, it is rather June or July, the time for the State to block appeals and validate the results of the elections”, justifies Kévin Pfeffer, treasurer of the party and elected deputy of Moselle. The party is missing a modest sum to hold out until the transfer from the state, less than 3 million euros, according to Mr. Pfeffer.
For this, the party will relaunch its 1,500 lenders and try to convince new ones. “We will explain to them that the prospects are very good but that for a few months, we have cash flow problemscontinues the treasurer. Any bank would agree to make a bridge loan, but unfortunately this is not an option for us. » In recent years, Marine Le Pen has notably used a Russian bank, in 2014; at the microparty of his father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2017; and to a Hungarian bank, in 2022. Each new financing is celebrated as a victory and an opportunity to portray oneself as a victim of the system; all the more so since the government of Emmanuel Macron gave up, in 2018, on creating a “democracy bank”.
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