‘I don’t know if it reassured or worried them’: European envoys quiz Le Pen over lunch

PARIS — A group of European ambassadors posted in Paris questioned Marine Le Pen about her plans for France and the EU over a lunch on Wednesday, four officials with direct knowledge of the meeting told POLITICO. The lunch at the lavish neoclassical Hôtel de Beauharnais — once home to Napoleon’s stepson, and now the residence of the German ambassador in the capital — mainly covered Le Pen’s future EU agenda, officials said.

Le Pen, who is comfortably leading the polls in the 2027 election race, has pledged to fight in Brussels to downsize EU institutions , turn the European Commission into a secretariat that would no longer have any competence on foreign policy, internal security or health, and to drastically cut France’s contribution to the EU budget. The group of ambassadors from the eight countries that share a border with metropolitan France — Germany, Spain, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Monaco and Andorra — already met with conservative presidential candidate Bruno Retailleau in September.