Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right party, criticised French President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to give French nuclear doctrine a pan-European dimension.
“In this dialogue with European countries, I dispute the very idea that we are wrong to consider deterrence as exclusively nuclear; it is primarily conventional, and here we again have missions in Eastern Europe that must be maintained,” the president of the National Rally party told the television channel, referring to the presence of French troops in Romania and Estonia, as well as air patrol missions in the Baltic states.
‘As members of NATO and the European Union, we have a duty to provide mutual assistance,’ he added.
Bardella acknowledged that French nuclear doctrine has always been based on the premise that the country’s vital interests are not limited to its borders.
‘When it comes to nuclear weapons, I defend principles, and these principles are: no sharing, no joint financing and no joint decision-making on the “nuclear button”,’ Bardella stressed.The Élysée Palace has repeatedly stressed that any decision to use nuclear weapons remains the exclusive prerogative of the French president
