For much of the summer, senior figures in France’s National Rally (RN) kept a low profile. After Marine Le Pen declared her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election, a seminar was held to take stock of the campaign. Yet beyond a “climate plan” against global warming and a promise of a forthcoming budget plan made at a Medef debate, the far-right party gave away little about its programme. That changed when a deputy confirmed the return of a proposed ban on wearing the veil in public spaces—and inadvertently plunged the party into embarrassment.
A Return to an Old Battle
If the RN wins next year, “if there are women who wear the veil while it is banned, they will get a fine,” just like “people who do not wear a seatbelt” in a car, declared Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a close ally of Marine Le Pen, on BFMTV on 30 August. The proposal is not new for the candidate, who backed it as early as her first presidential campaign in 2012. But over the years, the issue has become a quagmire for the RN. So much so that by 2025, Jordan Bardella himself appears to relegate the subject to the margins of his priorities, following a painful moment for Marine Le Pen during her 2022 debate against Emmanuel Macron.
Its reintroduction into public debate drew near-unanimous opposition. Édouard Philippe argued that the Constitution’s “principle of religious freedom” should not be changed “according to the whims of one or another.” Jean-Luc Mélenchon denounced the proposal as “vile,” and even the government expressed “reservations” about its constitutionality and enforceability. Gabriel Attal, despite having proposed a law to ban the veil for under-15s, said he was in “radical disagreement.” Bruno Retailleau, often sympathetic to the far right’s identity obsessions, dismissed it as “populism” and “demagoguery.” But for the National Rally, such criticisms represent only a fraction of the problems.
Internal Cacophony and Damaged Credibility
The episode first exposed persistent divisions within the Le Penist party, on this issue as on others. Contradicting Jean-Philippe Tanguy, RN MEP and spokesperson Andréa Kotarac insisted there would be “no fixed fines for veiled women the day after the election.” Then the party president himself hammered the point home. “It is not about setting up a clothing police,” Jordan Bardella said on Monday 31 August, deferring the measure’s implementation to “a societal debate” followed by “a referendum.” The next day, on franceinfo, Jean-Philippe Tanguy tried to salvage the situation, insisting that “no one is going to hunt veiled women.” He then outlined the referendum route, which raises another difficulty for the National Rally: its feasibility.
Under Article 11 of the French Constitution, a referendum can only be used for “the organisation of public powers, reforms relating to economic, social or environmental policy,” or to ratify treaties. Questions touching on religion are therefore off-limits. Constitutional scholar Benjamin Morel, quoted in Le Parisien, points to another obstacle. “According to Article 10 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, one cannot ban the veil for religious reasons. (…) It is also not in line with European law,” he notes. To get around this, the National Rally tries to frame its measure as part of the fight against “Islamic ideology.” “We are not attacking a religious symbol but the symbol of an ideology that has nothing religious about it,” argued Jean-Philippe Tanguy. But Morel calls the method “acrobatic.” “The principle of submission to Islamist ideology is a fine political slogan, but it has no legal value,” he says.
Between internal cacophony and technical infeasibility—both constitutional and practical, with police unions already voicing doubts—the credibility of the National Rally’s programme has once again been undermined. The sequence is all the more damaging because the veil ban has been part of Marine Le Pen’s proposals for fourteen years, and Jean-Philippe Tanguy presented it as “settled” during the summer seminar. The blade was evidently blunt.
The Return of a Controversial Marker
Beyond doubts about the programme’s seriousness, the resurgence of this proposal has also revived the image of a party obsessed with the Muslim religion. This comes as the National Rally has for years pursued a “normalisation” strategy that has so far paid off. In 2023, the annual “Fractures françaises” survey by Ipsos/Sopra Steria for Le Monde showed that 52% of French people considered the National Rally “dangerous for democracy,” a figure that has steadily declined over the years and placed the far-right party second only to La France Insoumise.
In a sign of internal unease, Jean-Philippe Tanguy denied on 1 September having “sought to launch this issue,” insisting he had “simply” answered a journalist’s question. He then spent much of his morning interview denying any Islamophobic bias in his camp. He claimed the measure aimed to combat “a symbol” of “Islamic ideology” rather than a religion. “There are signs linked to the Muslim religion that pose no problem of Islamism: the Hand of Fatima, a number of cultural signs that pose no problem in public space and are not appropriated,” he offered as an example.
Eager to move beyond the religious debate, Marine Le Pen also took to X to insist that the measure was part of a “major law to combat Islamist ideologies” including “many powerful measures.” But she failed to convince. Her rival for the Élysée, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, immediately seized the opportunity to stress that “the RN has not changed and is spewing its sexist and Islamophobic obsessions.” And so the veil has eclipsed the tie strategy.
