A Russian's big bet on the French far right

It literally pays to be a European friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. At least that's the experience of Marine Le Pen, whose far-right National Front party has secured a 9 million-euro Russian bank loan in what appears to be a Kremlin bet on the future of French politics.

The National Front is an anti-immigrant, anti-European Union party with a rich history of racism and anti-Semitism. In 2012, the latest year for which data on French political party financing are available, its cash inflows amounted to 6.2 million euros, about 1/10th of what the ruling Socialist Party took in. A combination of big State subsidies for the largest parties and restrictions on private donations entrenches France's two-party system, in which the Socialists battle the center-right UMP in every election. Any force seeking to break in needs a lot of cash. 

Le Pen thinks her party has a chance. The National Front did unusually well in recent elections to the European Parliament and in municipal ballots. By some measures, Le Pen is now the most popular candidate in the run-up to the 2017 presidential election. Granted, the ballot is far off, and polls suggest Le Pen would not do well in run-offs against the established parties' strongest candidates. Still, Le Pen is seeking to solidify her position by lining up loans to fund the party's next campaigns, starting with the 2015 regional elections.

A loan to a foreign political party is hardly business as usual for a small financial institution serving medium-sized businesses and private customers. That said, what would be a big and strange bet for Russian citizen Roman Popov would be a tiny and understandable one for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Russian government spends billions on self-aggrandising projects like this year's Sochi Olympics. If Le Pen breaks through, Putin will have a formidable fifth column inside the EU.

For Le Pen herself, taking Russian money is not a problem: She has never made a secret of her support for Putin, and her voters won't be scandalised. The battle lines are drawn, and there's no point in being shy about declaring one's allegiances. Le Pen's openness about her new funding source is yet another reason for the mainstream parties to get their act together and keep the National Front from making it big — that is, unless they want Putin's backdoor into French politics to turn into a wide-open gate.

Courtesy: Bloomberg