A secretive group of French experts and technocrats, known as ‘Les Horaces,’ that has been shaping Marine Le Pen’s nationalist program for the past decade, emerged from the shadows on Friday, aiming to present a less extreme image of the party.
Founded in 2015, ‘Les Horaces’ has been instrumental in helping Le Pen refine her party’s radical populist program, including pushing her to abandon plans to remove France from the Euro currency.
The group, named after the Horatii warriors of ancient Rome, launched a website and YouTube channel on Friday, featuring videos outlining their ideas and promising that more of its approximately 50 experts will come forward.
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André Rougé, the group’s founder, a former staff member of conservative governments under Jacques Chirac, and now a European lawmaker for Le Pen, stated at a press conference with six other members that they bring academic, professional, and intellectual expertise to Le Pen.
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 central to Le Pen’s “de-demonisation” strategy, which aims 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 an RN lawmaker, said their group does not fit a classic left- or right-wing economic mould but has pushed the RN towards “more realistic, more pragmatic” solutions. He added that they are against financial speculation and rent-seeking but not against entrepreneurship.
On international issues, Guillaume Bigot, also a lawmaker, said the Horaces favored a Gaullist non-aligned diplomatic line, and that France’s task was not to be subsumed in the “global West.” He expressed solidarity with the Ukrainian people, calling the war horrible but not France’s war, and stating that France should not be the “lapdog” of Russia, China, or the United States.
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