Secretive French thinkers behind Le Pen come out of the shadows
By Michel Rose and Leigh Thomas
PARIS (Reuters) - A secret group of French experts and technocrats that has been discreetly shaping Marine Le Pen's nationalist programme over the past 10 years came out of the shadows on Friday, aiming to present a less extreme image of the party.
Only little was known about 'Les Horaces', founded in 2015 to help Le Pen polish her party's radical populist programme, including by pushing her to drop plans to take France out of the euro currency.
The group, named after the Horatii warriors who defended ancient Rome, unveiled a website and a YouTube channel on Friday, with videos of its ideas, promising that more of its 50 or so experts will come out.
"We bring her academic, professional, intellectual expertise," André Rougé, founder of the group and former staff member of conservative governments under Jacques Chirac, and now a European lawmaker for Le Pen, told a press conference with six other members.
He said the success of Le Pen's National Rally (RN) in parliamentary elections in 2022 and 2024, which brought some "Horaces" into public office, had encouraged the group to recast itself as a public think-tank.
The group has been a central piece of Le Pen's "de-demonisation" strategy, which has sought to clean up the party's image as a fringe, racist movement keen to take France out of the European Union, and rebrand it as fit to govern.
Matthias Renault, a graduate of the ENA finishing school for the French elite and now RN lawmaker, said their group did not fit a classic left- or right-wing economic mould but had pushed the RN towards "more realistic, more pragmatic" solutions:
"We don't like financial speculation and rent-seeking, but we're not against entrepreneurship."
On international issues, Guillaume Bigot, also a lawmaker, said the Horaces favoured a Gaullist non-aligned diplomatic line, and that France's task was not to be subsumed in the "global West".
"We're in full solidarity with the Ukrainian people. It's a horrible war, but it's not our war," he said, adding that France should not be the "lapdog" of Russia, China or the United States.
(Writing by Michel Rose; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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