Jordan Bardella, National Rally leader: France must control immigration

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? the History Bureau Putin and the Apartment Bombs listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts with the European Athletics Championships the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport and the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists More Than The Score from the BBC World Service.

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1:16Hello, I'm Nick Robinson, BBC presenter, and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. Today we are spending trivians on war and peanuts on peace. Wind power in the United States has been subsidised for 33 years. Isn't that enough? Solar for 25 years, that's enough. I don't have army. I don't have missile rockets. I have my body. I have my voice. I love singing and so my goal was always to do better and better at it. I was still in an induced coma in hospital when the world was defining me. For this interview, I meet Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right National Rally Party in France.

2:00The 30-year-old is currently leading the polls to become the country's next president in 2027. He's on a media tour to woo business and to persuade the world that his party is now mainstream despite its history. It used to be called the National Front. It was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted racist and Holocaust denier. His daughter Maureen rebranded the party and expelled her father from it. But she's currently barred from public office after a conviction from bezzling EU funds, a verdict she plans to appeal. In her absence, her protégé, Jordan Bardella, finds himself in charge. He maintains the party's change since its history as the National Front.

2:42In this interview, you'll hear why Monsieur Bardella rejects suggestions that his party is racist. He also says if he becomes president, he'll call a referendum on immigration to take back control of France's borders. I do not see France as a country that must be closed. But I believe that we must control our immigration. Of course, we must be able to welcome people who come to work, to contribute to our national story and to the country's economic wealth. But it is true that we can no longer be the most lax country in Europe. Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Jordan Bardella.

3:27Listen, I believe there is a wind of freedom and national pride blowing across all major Western democracies. And it is true that President Trump in the United States was an expression of that current stream of ideas of that great popular movement. Now, Trump defends his country's interests, I respect leaders who defend their country's interest. What I criticize French leaders for, and European leaders more broadly, is for not defending their country's interest strongly enough. It is true that Trump was giving a nod to patriotic parties around the world, and I welcome that with a certain goodwill.

4:03But as for me, I wish to defend the interest of my country tomorrow. I do not like this vassalization of Europe towards any great power. Ultimately, my project is both the greatness, the freedom and the independence of France and of Europe. Do you agree with the language that is used in this strategy document by the United States? It says there's a very real prospect of civilizational erasure. It warns that European countries could become majority non-European. Is that your view?

4:40Yes, to a large extent, I share that assessment. It is true that mass immigration and the laxity of our leaders over the past 30 years regarding migration policies are today disrupting the power balance of European societies, Western societies, and particularly the French society. I grew up in a region called Saint-Saint-Denis, An area that receives a very large amount of immigration, particularly from Africa and North Africa. And of course, when you open the floodgates of immigration, then you bring in people. And through family reunification, you bring in even more people who also come with their culture, their language, their customs and their way of life.

5:26Look, I do not see France as a country that must be closed. But I believe that we must control our immigration. And I believe that tomorrow and the day after, France should no longer be a country of mass immigration. Of course, we must be able to welcome people who come to work, to contribute to our national story and to the country's economic wealth. But it is true that we can no longer be the most lax country in Europe. There are politicians all over Europe who could say what you say, but you go much further. You talk about the European people disappearing. You talk about French people being submerged by migrants.

6:06Now, in a second, we talk maybe about the detail of policy. But let's focus on what you're doing here. You've been a busy man. You've been to Israel to visit the Holocaust Museum. You've been wooing French business leaders. You've been meeting with The Economist magazine. and you're now here at the BBC, your job is this, isn't it? You're trying to say to people, we're not extremists anymore. We're not racists anymore. Yes, it is in any case about fighting against the caricatures made of my political movement, of my ideas, of its members, activists and parliamentarians. I lead a political party, the National Rally, thanks to the trust given to me by Marine Le Pen.

6:52And today, in every poll and every voting intention published in France, we are the party predicted to win the next legislative elections and the next presidential election. So my responsibility is obviously to bring the French people together and to present the country with a project of national recovery. because my country, France, is in an economic, social, financial, budgetary and security situation that is extremely difficult. And this means that expectations for change and disruption are extremely high among my people, among the French people. I want to save my country. But I also want France, internationally and around us, to reconnect with its vocation as a civilisation nation.

7:41That is a country capable of defending its interests on the European stage while also being able to work with European partners. You call it a cliché about your party. It's a fact. Your party was a racist party. It is the history of the national rally. After it stopped being the National Front. You know, although you're a young man, you only met him briefly. Jean-Marie Le Pen described the gas chambers used by the Nazis to murder millions of Jews in this continent as a footnote in history. To be taken seriously, do you not need to say to people we were a racist party, we need to change? I reject these accusations because there has never been, in the DNA or in the proposal of the National Front, now the National Rally, any statements or proposals intended to harm or offend groups of people in my country.

8:42However, it is true that there were remarks notably made by Jean-Marie Le Pen, which eventually caused a political rupture between Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party's founder, and Marine Le Pen, then its president. On the key issue of fighting anti-Semitism, she judged that Jean-Marie Le Pen's ambiguities and verbal provocations were dragging the entire political movement into an unacceptable situation. And so in 2015, Marine Le Pen, as I remind you, took the responsibility, an extremely difficult personal decision, of expelling her own father from the National Front. I believe that the Holocaust was one of the greatest atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

9:30And a few months ago, I traveled to Israel at the invitation of the Israeli government. I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem because this duty of remembrance is essential. And today in France, we have many French citizens of Jewish faith who vote for the national rally and who consider us a shield, particularly in the fight against Islamist fundamentalism. I too want to look forward to talk to you about what you would do if you were president of France or indeed prime minister. But just, I need to remind you, when you say this is not in your party's DNA racism, even Nigel Farage, who you're meeting for lunch after this interview, refused to have anything to do with your party because he said it was filled with prejudice and anti-Semitism.

10:21The chief rabbi here in the UK refused to be at the conference you went to in Jerusalem because he said of the attendance of far-right populists, including you, it's not yet in your past, is it? You might want it to be, but it isn't. Well, I answer them by saying that the only French political leader to have been invited to Jerusalem in Israel for an international conference on the fight against anti-Semitism was myself in the year 2025, and that I have always been absolutely unambiguous on this subject. I fight all forms of hatred, all forms of racism, and all forms of violence. Now, I am president of the national rally.

11:08I am not president of the national front. The political party has evolved. What matters to me now is the judgment of people, the judgment of the French. And I see many French citizens of Jewish faith placing their trust in us more and more each day. And I welcome that. You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service. People shaping our world from all over the world. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories.

11:54I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? the History Bureau Putin and the apartment bombs listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts with the European Athletics Championships the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport and the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists More Than The Score from the BBC World Service.

12:35Listen now. Search for More Than The Score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

12:46For this episode of The Interview, I'm speaking to Jordan Bardella. I'd never met him before, but I had seen the charisma people talk of as they watch him at huge public rallies, signing books for queues of adoring fans and posting to his two million followers on TikTok. There is no doubt he is a man with plenty of the charisma you need to reach high office. Charisma, but also quite a lot of steel. One thing that struck me in particular, though, is that Monsieur Bardella, despite keeping his composure throughout our interview, despite being charming and polite at the end of it, He expressed surprise, shock even, that I'd asked him questions, he said, he was rarely asked these days in France, about the roots of his party, about the National Front, about Jean-Marie Le Pen.

13:42Let's return to hear more of that conversation with Jordan Bardella. Let's talk about your story. And what is interesting about you, as you talk of France for the French, is that your parents were not French. One parent, your mother was born in Italy, Your father was born to an Algerian mother and an Italian father. As the son of immigrants, why is it that you are stirring up anger with immigrants? I am indeed a product of immigration. And I belong to a generation of people from immigrant backgrounds who, when they arrived in France, did everything they could to become French, not partially, but fully, to embrace the national story, the language, the culture, the heritage, to blend into the national community, and ultimately to become French in both heart and mind.

14:38There are many people in our country, in France, which is, you know, the country I know best, who made this demanding effort when coming from abroad, from elsewhere, to become completely from here and to become French. And we must never forget the extremely demanding efforts made by entire generations of people from immigrant backgrounds. But it is also true that today many people arrive in our country and seem exempt from this effort. In many parts of France, we see people who are unquestionably from here, born in France, raised in French schools, but who, through the messages they share on social media, in the streets, through the way they challenge our history or sometimes reject Republican institutions such as the police or values like secularism clearly have their hearts elsewhere.

15:28And for me, it is this difference, this injustice that fundamentally troubles me. You say in the book that you've produced that you had a feeling of becoming a foreigner in your own country. You've talked, as I mentioned, of French people being submerged by migrants. You at your rallies, they chant, this is our home. So I want to ask you, who exactly is French? Because you now say it is not good enough to be born in France. Even if you are born in France. Jordan Bardella says you are not French. So who is French? The French are those whose heart bled the day Notre Dame burned. I believe that being French, obviously, there are administrative considerations.

16:20But to me, being French is firstly an honor. Being French also means adhering to values, adhering to ways of life. It also means recognizing equality between men and women. And it is true that today, in a number of French areas and suburbs, banlieue as we say, another culture is taking root, seeing relations between men and women differently, sometimes asking little girls aged five or six to wear an Islamic veil, sometimes demanding separate hours at swimming pool. Of course, all of this is a problem for me. So yes, I am a defender of secularism. And I believe that today, Islamism has become a fully-fledged political project, one that does not seek to live separately from French society, but rather to impose all its prohibitions upon it.

17:14However, I believe there are French citizens of Muslim faith who fully respect the values of the Republic and who do not want France to resemble another country or to see Sharia applied in some towns. France has a Republican tradition that I defend, called Republican assimilation. Republican assimilation means do not come as you are, become what we are. And I ask nothing more from people arriving in our country than to resemble us, to live in the French way and to respect the effort made by previous generations of immigrants, including my own. Monsieur Bardada, you say that you would welcome people who want to be French if they can sing the national anthem, if they can support the football team.

18:02But that is not your policy. Your policy is what you call now national priority, priorité nationale, or the national preference. It means that if you work in France, you live in France, you pay taxes in France, you have your children in France, you, Jordan Bardella, still say, you're not really French. You will not get welfare benefits. You will not get health care. You will not get social housing. So it is not just about integrating, is it? You wish to choose people that you think are really French and those people you think are not really French. What you're saying here does not correspond to my programme because in my concept of national priority, meaning the possibility from the French state to give priority to French citizens in access to social housing or social benefits, this priority is first and foremost for French nationals.

19:08I consider that the French, without any other distinction, those who hold a French identity card because they have only one home and only one country, must have priority access to social housing. Today, one third of social housing in France is occupied by immigrants. 33 % of immigrants on French soil, according to INSEE, the official French Statistic Institute, live in social housing. We also have what I call social window immigration, meaning people who come to our country to benefit from social aid. I say something very simple. If tomorrow you want to receive, for example, family allowances or social benefits, one of your two parents must be a French national.

19:56However, for contributory social benefits such as unemployment insurance, there is no difficulty. If you are a foreigner in France, you pay into the system. And if tomorrow or the day after you become unemployed, you will have access to these benefits because you have contributed to them. But it will no longer be possible to come to France, for example, and receive free health care. Let me ask you about another big policy, the war in Ukraine. Now your party wants to be trusted. And yet you've traditionally been quite close to Russia. Marine Le Pen took money from Russia for her presidential campaign.

20:37If you were in the talks now about ending the war, Would you still insist there can be no French troops on Ukrainian soil? There can be no weapons given to Ukraine to attack Russia. There can be no EU membership for Ukraine. And wouldn't that be a victory for Vladimir Putin? Well, I consider that Russia today represents a multidimensional threat to French and European interest. We see this in particular in Africa, in our historical zones of influence, where France's influence has declined in recent years under the political and military pressures of the Wagner militias. We see it in our overseas territories where Russia systematically sides with foreign countries that claim sovereignty over French territories located overseas.

21:31And we see it regularly when French military personnel are targeted by the Russian Federation. And as you mentioned, we have seen it over the past three years at the gates of Europe. Now, I would just like, if you allow me to clarify one point. More than a decade ago, no French bank, no European bank at the time, had agreed to lend to the national front. And we found this Czech-Russian bank that made a loan at, I believe, 6%. You will agree that this was not a friendly loan. We have a bank that has since gone bankrupt. I believe that when you are tied to the Kremlin, by definition, you do not go bankrupt in Russia.

22:16My first decision as president of the national rally was to immediately repay this loan. So we are beholden to nothing, neither money nor political interest. I have condemned, and we as a party have condemned, without any ambiguity, Russia's aggression against Ukraine. Today, we must bring Western countries to the table. This process has largely begun in recent months to establish conditions that allow Ukraine to implement a ceasefire, but above all, to secure the guarantees for its safety. Because that is the real issue. And once again, Russia is a multidimensional threat. I believe we must be extremely cautious and I am firmly opposed to sending troops to Ukraine because I consider that it would contribute to an escalation, especially given that we have nuclear weapons and that President Putin has intentions whose limits no one can know.

23:14I understand. Monsieur Bardello, I hesitate to end our interview by pointing out that I'm double your age. You're just 30. You dropped out of university. The only job you had outside politics was with your father's firm. Do you really think you're qualified to run a country with nuclear weapons, which is on the UN Security Council, which is one of the largest economies in Europe?

23:41First of all, it is up to the French people to decide and choose whether they consider us credible and close to their concerns. If I believe the results of the last election and certainly the results of polls conducted by your colleagues in France, a majority, at least potentially, of French citizens grant us both legitimacy and the ability to address the country's problems. So I prepare every day. I work every day and I strive to listen to my fellow citizens. It is true that I am 30 years old. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about that. If all goes well, I will be 35 in five years and 40 in 10 years.

24:25It is also true that I'm not one of these leaders who's been coasting away for 30 or 40 years in French political life. but the environment in which I grew up made me aware very early and at a young age of a number of urgent issues which today remain the existential urgencies of my country and I fight for them and I prefer that people tell me today that it is too early rather than come and tell me tomorrow that it is too late.

24:58Thank you for listening to the interview from the BBC World Service. You'll find more in-depth conversations on The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts, including episodes with author Sir Salman Rushdie, Freedom of Speech campaigner Maria Ressa and former Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern. Until the next time, goodbye for now.

25:29If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. With the European Athletics Championships, the Men's FIFA World Cup and the Commonwealth Games all taking place, 2026 is shaping up to be a terrific year for global sport.

26:15And the More Than The Score podcast will be following all the action, bringing you interviews with sports stars and exploring the stories beyond the score sheets with the BBC's expert sports journalists. More Than The Score from the BBC World Service. Listen now. Search for More Than The Score wherever you get your BBC podcasts.