The last two times Marine Le Pen ran for president, French voters judged her far-right policies so toxic they came together from all other sides of the political spectrum to keep her out of office.

This week, her National Rally party took a major stride toward taking power, coming in first in a national election for the first time in its history. On Sunday, in the first round of a parliamentary election, the party raked in more than 33 percent of the vote, well ahead of a broad leftist alliance and French President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble party.

The result promises to plunge France into political and economic turmoil. Once again, the country’s other parties are expected to ask their voters to band together to prevent the National Rally from achieving a majority. The most likely outcome of the second-round vote on July 7 is a hung parliament — but a government run by Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella cannot be excluded.

The National Rally’s strong performance also opens the possibility that Le Pen — who has campaigned on distancing herself from NATO and the EU and pledged better relations with Russia — could finally make a successful run for president in 2027, sending a shockwave across the Western world.

For the establishment in Paris and Brussels, the burning question is whether Le Pen really means what she says. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni — a right-wing firebrand who became prime minister in 2022 — has reshaped herself as a constructive conservative leader, supporting Ukraine and working closely with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Were Le Pen to be elected president of France, the world’s seventh-largest economy and a nuclear power, could she be counted upon to make a similar metamorphosis, a process the French press has dubbed mélonisation? Or would she more likely aim her newly acquired power at the twin pillars of the European political order?

From Benito to Ursula: Meloni’s neo-fascist roots

Before she became prime minister, there was little in Meloni’s biography that indicated she would be feted by U.S. President Joe Biden and wooed by some of the most important figures in Brussels. 

The Italian leader got her start in politics at the age of 15 when she joined the youth section of a neo-fascist political party whose symbol was the tricolor flame and which was founded after World War II by a chief of staff in Benito Mussolini’s last government. She was a teenage activist when, in a now-famous recording, she said that the Italian dictator had been “a good politician.”

After being elected to parliament in 2006, she was plucked by Silvio Berlusconi to serve as Italy’s youngest minister since the end of World War II. After that government fell in 2011, Meloni founded the far-right Brothers of Italy party, choosing the tricolor flame as its symbol.

She spent most of the next decade in the political wilderness, building a following with hard-right rhetoric on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights and frequent attacks on Brussels, Berlin and Paris. But while she celebrated Vladimir Putin’s 2018 election victory as representing “the unequivocal will of the Russian people,” she pivoted after the invasion of Ukraine, becoming one of the Russian president’s loudest opponents before becoming prime minister in 2022.

“She changed, but she is loyal to the tricolor flame, there’s a certain fidelity to neofascism,” said Marc Lazar, an expert of Franco-Italian politics at Sciences Po and Luiss universities. Nonetheless, Meloni has worked closely with NATO and the EU, he added.

By contrast, Le Pen has spent years trying to moderate her image. After taking over her party from her father — Jean-Marie Le Pen, a holocaust denier who once dismissed the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail” in the history of World War II — she launched a process of de-demonization, sanding off the party’s harder edges.

That included ejecting her father from the party in 2015, giving it a new name and recruiting Bardella as the National Rally’s respectable face. What Le Pen didn’t do however was turn down the heat on NATO and the EU. While she backtracked on earlier calls to leave the EU or its common currency area, she has made no secret of her disdain for Brussels and her desire to clip the Commission’s powers.

Le Pen’s 2022 presidential platform included calls for France to exit NATO’s integrated military command. And while she has condemned the war in Ukraine, her party has abstained on key votes in France and in the European Parliament for support for Kyiv. A 2023 French parliamentary report accused the National Rally of serving as a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.

Le Pen’s de-demonization

As it has crept closer to power, however, the National Rally has sought to downplay some of its more radical pledges. 

In the walkup to this week’s election, Le Pen’s party hinted it would likely backtrack on some of its more lavish spending plans, including a pledge to bring down the retirement age to 60.

The party has also quietly removed part of its defense policy from its website, deleting sections that proposed deepening diplomatic ties with Russia, halting cooperation projects with Germany and exiting NATO’s integrated military command. Bardella now describes Russia as “a multi-dimensional threat both for France and Europe.”

Speaking to POLITICO in March, Bardella said that though the National Rally still wanted to leave NATO’s integrated command, it would only do so after the war in Ukraine was over. “You don’t change treaties in wartime,” Bardella said.

“Le Pen clearly put some water in her wine,” said Thierry Chopin, an expert at the Jacques Delors Institute and a professor at the College of Europe, though he added the National Rally still holds what he described as some “radical positions,” such as the belief that French law should have primacy over EU rules.

Some have interpreted Le Pen’s repositioning as an indication that the French far-right leader plans to follow Meloni’s lead and work with the EU and NATO rather than against them.

“You can draw a parallel with the Meloni government,” said Francesco Saraceno, an economics professor at Sciences Po Paris. “The economy and relations with Europe are the files on which Meloni has least marked territory because in fact there are constraints that are difficult to get around.”

A French business executive who was granted anonymity to speak candidly said that entrepreneurs in the country were more scared by the possibility of a government led by the left-wing New Popular Front than Le Pen’s National Rally.

“If she wants a serious shot at the 2027 election, she needs to show that she can be a politician that delivers,” said a Brussels-based diplomat from an EU country, noting that Le Pen would have to choose between following Meloni’s example or playing a more hostile role as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has done.

“If you want to be a politician that delivers, you can’t go right against the EU,” the diplomat said.

‘Le Pen is the exact opposite of Meloni’

So, does Meloni’s example mean the Western establishment can breathe easy?

Probably not.

Whatever their posture on the international stage, neither leader has softened their position at home. Le Pen continues to advocate stripping social benefits from the parents of minors convicted of crimes and has called for a ban on people with multiple citizenships from holding top jobs in the public administration. Some of her candidates to the French parliament have been revealed to have made racist and anti-Semitic comments. 

Meloni has also stuck to some of her most conservative positions, tabling legislation that would allow anti-abortion activists a place inside clinics that provide the procedure. Leaders from her party’s youth wing were filmed making antisemitic comments and boasting of being fascist, Nazi and racist.

On foreign policy and European affairs, Le Pen would have more room to maneuver than Meloni, who as the leader of a coalition government has to coordinate with her partners.

Ahead of last Sunday’s vote, Le Pen vowed to challenge Macron on foreign policy — traditionally the prerogative of the president — should her party gain a majority in parliament. Macron, she said, would be prevented from sending military trainers to help Ukraine. “On Ukraine, the president will not be able to send troops,” Le Pen said in an interview with the daily Le Télégramme.

“Le Pen is the exact opposite of Meloni,” said Benjamin Haddad, an outgoing MP from Macron’s party who is running for reelection. “She has refused all forms of support for Ukraine, had NATO withdrawal on her agenda and is pro-Russian. Her vision would weaken France and Europe at a time of war on our continent.”

While both Italy and France are heavily indebted countries, France’s size and its pivotal role in all EU files would give Le Pen more leverage with Brussels. “France is a stronger country than Italy and is less dependent on Europe so there could be a few more shake-ups,” added Saraceno, the economist. 

Philippe Olivier, Le Pen’s brother-in-law and close adviser argued that while Rome is too dependent on EU funds to pick a fight with Brussels, Paris would face far fewer constraints. “Italy is not in the same economic situation as France … we have more leeway to bend Brussels,” said Olivier, who was reelected to the European Parliament in June. “Since we are la France we are more free, we are not enslaved,” he added.

Given the strength of her rhetoric, Le Pen would also come under pressure from her supporters to deliver on some of her radical promises. “It is a more complicated turn,” said Lazar, the expert on Franco-Italian politics. “Giving up on her position would cost her consensus and would disappoint a part of her Euroskeptic voters.”

Far-right team up

Then there’s the fact that Le Pen wouldn’t be alone in her positions — and neither would Meloni.

So far the Italian has elected to keep Le Pen at arm’s length. Asked ahead of France’s 2022 presidential election whether she preferred Le Pen to Macron, Meloni answered she didn’t feel represented by either. She has also rebuffed a proposal by Le Pen to team up ahead of last month’s European Parliament election.

But it’s one thing to spur a politically toxic opposition figure, especially when you’re isolated yourself. It’s another to be confronted with a potentially like-minded president of the EU’s second-largest economy.

On Monday, Meloni congratulated Le Pen on her victory in the first round of the election and endorsed her party for next Sunday’s run-off vote. France, she noted, is a highly polarized country, and “obviously, I prefer the right.” 

During a meeting of the European Council last month, the Italian leader was reportedly furious about being shut out of the debate over the next crop of EU leaders, joining Hungary’s Orbán in opposition to the decision.

By themselves, there was little Meloni and Orbán could accomplish. With Le Pen at the table, the outcome could have been different.

When it comes to Le Pen and Meloni, the better question might not be whether one will act like the other. It’s how both would act were they to find themselves in power together. 

“It will be another story if the National Rally wins the presidential election in 2027 and obtains an absolute majority in the National Assembly,” predicted Chopin, the political scientist. “In that case, there is a real risk of adopting a much more radical and confrontational attitude.”

Clea Caulcutt contributed reporting.