More than 1,000 persons participated in the September 20 conference organized by Nicolas Dupont Aignan, president of the sovereignist party “Debout la France” (Rise, France), in his district of Yerres (Essonne). Three times a presidential candidate after being a deputy for Jacques Chirac’s “Gaullist” party for 22 years, Aignan is once again campaigning, now for the upcoming presidential election in May 2027.

While he previously campaigned to reform the EU from within, today he recognizes that he was wrong, that it’s impossible to change the EU from within, and he is calling for France to leave the EU entirely, to regain full sovereignty and establish relations with all countries in the world as it sees fit.

One of the big differences between this run and earlier ones, is that LaRouche associate and former presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade was invited this time to give an eight-minute speech during a morning round table. Nicolas Dupont Aignan (NDA) called in his speech for “working with the BRICS, because, as Jacques Cheminade has stated, the world is of a polyphonic nature.” Present in the room was also Florian Philippot, the leader of “The Patriots” party, who organized a similar meeting Sept. 19 in Arras, which gathered an audience of 4,000, which also heard from Cheminade during a round table. Philippot is working toward unity with NDA.

NDA presented the other thrusts of his campaign: adopting an “intelligent protectionism” allowing France to bring 2 million jobs back to the country; pulling out of NATO’s integrated military command; and ending the Ukraine war, “which should have never started,” through negotiations.

On economics, he promoted the “Asian model,” which is about “effort and protection,” not about savage neo-liberalism. He called for a return to Gaullist “Colbertism,” where the development of industry in France was fully backed by the State to increase the “value added” of French exports.