Le Pen promises French 'rebirth' as RN congress closes in Orléans

Marine Le Pen closed the National Rally's two-day congress in Orléans on Sunday with a promise to lead France toward a national "rebirth", combining appeals to unity with hardline pledges on immigration and sovereignty.

Le Pen, whose conviction for misappropriating European public funds was recently upheld on appeal, cast her campaign for the 2027 presidential election as a project of national renewal. Invoking Joan of Arc — a figure closely associated with Orléans — she told supporters that "no defeat is final as long as a people refuses to resign themselves to it".

On immigration, she promised the automatic and permanent deportation of foreign nationals who commit offences, and pledged a ban on what she called "communitarianism". She attacked what she described as "new forms of obscurantism", grouping together Islamism, the far left, and what she termed punitive environmentalism.

On pensions, Le Pen stopped short of her previous pledge to lower the retirement age to 60, instead promising not to raise it beyond 64 and saying she wanted young people to enter the labour market earlier.

On foreign policy, she pledged to make France "a nation of peace" and rejected "wars that are not our own", without specifying which conflicts she meant.

She also advocated greater use of referendums and proportional representation. The congress took place under heavy security, with around a hundred anti-fascist demonstrators gathered several kilometres away.