French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has received a 10.6m-euro loan from a Hungarian bank to finance her presidential campaign, according to RTL radio.
This is after the candidate for the presidency of “Rassemblement National” stated that she has a problem with obtaining bank loans in her homeland.
Le Pen’s party has a long history of seeking controversial funding.
During the 2014 municipal elections, Le Pen’s party turned to Russia’s First Bank of Russia to finance its campaign with 9 million euros.
A few years later, the bank went bankrupt.
Concerns were then raised by the news that Lepen, who has said she is a fan of President Vladimir Putin, promised a softer line towards Russia for Ukraine, urging the West to abandon economic sanctions against Moscow.
Earlier this week, the interim president of the Rassemblement national party, Jordan Bardella, told AFP that a loan had been granted by “a European bank”.
The bank was recently revealed to be a Hungarian bank, whose name has been withheld from party officials due to a “non-disclosure clause”.
In October, Marin Lepen made the trip to Budapest, a few weeks after Eric Zemour.
Reluctance of French banks for financing
The € 10.6 million is a major boost for Le Pen, which has been forced into a low-key election campaign due to the party’s limited finances and the reluctance of French banks to lend it money.
In France, election campaigns can be financed by membership fees and donations from individuals up to a limit of € 4,600 per donor and per election, making loans a vital source of funding.
After the election, a one-time reimbursement system allows candidates and parties to recover some of the money spent on the campaign.
Candidates reaching the second round – and Le Pen seems to be succeeding at the moment – are reimbursed 47.5% of the spending limit set by decree. In 2017, this amount was 10.7 million euros.
In 2021, she warned President Macron that some candidates – including Jean-Luc Melanson and Eric Zemourne – would have difficulty accessing bank loans.
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