French PM: The Nationalists May Take the Power in 2017

15:00     9 March, 2015

France’s far right National Front (FN) party could possibly win the upcoming 2017 presidential elections. This warning was voiced by the French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Agence France-Presse reports.

Valls reminded that last year the National Front won 25% in the European parliament elections, by this becoming represented by 22 parliamentarians instead of the previous 3.
"Do you think that a National Front that scores 25 per cent in European elections, maybe 30 per cent in local elections, and so on, cannot win the presidential election?" - Valls asked a rhetoric question in a joint interview with iTele, Europe 1 and Le Monde. "Not in 2022, not in 2029, but in 2017", he stressed Financial Times reports.

Valls also added, that with this perspective of the FN winning the elections, he is afraid not for himself but for the country.

Marine Le Pen is the leader of National Front since 2011. In 1986 she joined the party founded by her father, being re-elected as the head of the party in 2014.

The popularity of the FN rose after the deadly terrorist attacks on satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket. Playing on the nationalistic moods of the people, the FN has strengthened its position as France’s most dynamic political force.

It is obvious that as the antisemitism movements and anti-terrorism actions rise in Europe and particularly in France, the nationalists will be enjoying the moment of their fame. Thus Valls’s theory may come true sooner than expected. As Le Pen calls it: "It’s the Front’s moment."