Marine Le Pen (left) alongside Jordan Bardella (right) reacting to Emmanuel Macron's announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly following the results of the European elections, on June 9, 2024 at the Pavillon Chesnaie du Roy in Paris. (Credit: Julien de Rosa/AFP)
During a televised debate just days prior to the first round of the legislative elections, Gabriel Attal seized the opportunity offered by Jordan Bardella to score a decisive point in the debate organized Tuesday on TF1. "You want to put a Franco-Russian at the head of a nuclear power plant? Doesn't that pose a subject of national interest to you?" the National Rally's candidate for the premiership asked Attal in an effort to force him to justify his proposal to ban access to "strategic" government positions for dual-national French people. "If this is a measure that concerns Franco-Russians who occupy sensitive positions, can you tell the French people watching us who Tamara Volokhova is?" the Prime Minister replied.
Forced to dodge the issue, Jordan Bardella did not say that the name of this Franco-Russian advisor to the National Raly in the European Parliament, who notably attended meetings of the Foreign Affairs Committee on the war in Ukraine, was mentioned in a note from the French domestic intelligence services, the DGSI, on "the relays of influence" used by Russia in the context of the European elections, as revealed by Mediapart.
A controversial point in his program, the question of dual nationality was raised from the beginning of the campaign when his vice-president Sebastien Chenu declared himself in favor of its removal on the C8 channel on June 12.
"I am attached to the fact of having only one nationality because it says a lot about who you are. You can't be French for some things and Uruguayan for others," he said, before being forced by his party to backpedal a few hours later on X.
'Completely crazy measure'
A strong marker of the electoral program of the National Rally, the abolition of "dual extra-European nationality" was one of Marine Le Pen's 144 commitments during her 2017 presidential campaign. A commitment that was very quickly modulated. In an interview given to L'Orient-Le Jour during her campaign trip to Lebanon, where she has many voters, the candidate said for the first time that she was considering exceptions.
"Marine Le Pen is someone who is quite realistic. During her trips abroad, she ended up realizing that this proposal went too far," said Jean-Yves Camus, co-director of the Observatory of Political Radicalities.
Five years later, the measure was finally withdrawn by unilateral decision, thus presenting many members of her camp with a fait accompli. "She understood that this would come up against too many legal obstacles, particularly with regard to the many countries (such as Morocco or Israel) that prevent their citizens from renouncing their nationality," continued Camus.
"I was pleasantly surprised when Marine Le Pen returned to this measure because it was one of my points of disagreement with her," recalled Sophie Akl, correspondent in Lebanon for the now defunct traditionalist Christian newspaper Present. "I had directly challenged her on the issue ... I am carnally attached to France and Lebanon, one does not prevent the other."
On Jan. 25, the National Rally put the subject back on the table in a constitutional bill tabled by Le Pen and several MPs from her group in the National Assembly. A text mentioning “prohibiting access to functions inseparable from the exercise of national sovereignty” or even “jobs in administrations, public enterprises and legal entities entrusted with a public service mission ... to persons who possess the nationality of another State.”
This back and forth continues to sow confusion about the party's intentions.
"No one knows if this measure will only concern a specific number of senior civil servants with access to classified information or all public sector personnel," explained Camus. "In which case, this measure would be completely crazy in addition to being useless since any senior binational civil servant is in practice already the subject of an investigation in order to identify potential conflicts of interest."
Historical marker
Proposed in the name of national "priority" or "preference", these restrictive measures against some 3.3 million French people with another nationality, according to the latest available estimates from INED, including more than 40,000 Franco-Lebanese in metropolitan France, are not new.
These repeated attacks on this principle, linked to that of the right of the soil, anchored in republican culture since the middle of the 19th century, are part of the legacy of the French far-right which, under the Third Republic, already attacked this "Anti-France" theorized by Charles Maurras.
"Dual nationality has been contested by the far right since the beginning of the last century. This question notably mobilized the Action Française during the interwar period, which considered these dual nationals as potential traitors," recalled historian Patrick Weil in an interview with the French daily Le Monde.
Ideas set in stone by the Vichy government (1940-1944), which restricted access to public service to French people of "French descent," in the wake of the law of Oct. 3, 1940, prohibiting it to Jews. These laws would later be repealed after the liberation by the provisional government of General de Gaulle.
The theme, however, stands out as a marker of the National Front, which later became the National Rally in 2018, from its foundation in 1972, by Jean-Marie Le Pen and his friends, including the former Waffen SS Pierre Bousquet and Leon Gauthier, the former collabors Francois Brigneau, or even the former militiaman of the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS) Roger Holeign. The projection of the "Menhir" against the standard bearer of French tennis at the time, Yannick Noah, described as "Cameroonian" because of his choice to marry in his country of origin, on Antenne 2's L'heure de vérité in 1985, illustrates this rhetoric. A rhetoric which will ultimately survive the strategy of “de-demonization” subsequently undertaken by his daughter. "You have to choose, be French or be something else. We are Algerian or we are French," declared Marine Le Pen in June 2014 following the incidents that occurred in France after the qualification of the “Fennecs” in the round of 16 of the World Cup.
'Insulting to all Franco-Lebanese'
These accusations against athletes deemed "unworthy" of wearing the tricolor jersey have also made their way into the ranks of the traditional right, as in 2011, when the UMP representative for Paris Claude Goasguen, supported at the time by part of the right-wing of his party and the National Front, seized the opportunity offered by the quota affair within the French Football Federation to present a report recommending restricting access to dual nationality and the rights relating to it ... before withdrawing it.
Similar back-and-forths to those of the National Rally, whose final position on this issue, as on many others, is still difficult to read. This Thursday, Chenu spoke again on BFM TV about a "list of perhaps 50 jobs" that would be affected by this ban. "No one knows what a National Rally government with a majority in the Assembly will be capable of doing, nor what its real intentions are," stated Camus. "But what is certain is that its future policy will be directed against French people of Maghreb or sub-Saharan African origin."
The fact remains that these fumblings have not failed to outrage those most concerned, including the former French Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak.
"For them ... there are the real French and the half-French, who do not deserve to obtain positions of responsibility. It is nevertheless extremely insulting for the more than three million French people who have dual nationality, of which I am one as well as all Franco-Lebanese," she said.
This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
