French banks warm to election financing in potential boost for Marine Le Pen
Lenders signal willingness to offer campaign loans if government guarantees are in place
Several French banks have said they are open to offering campaign loans to candidates in next year’s presidential election if backed by government guarantees, a move that could help Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National overcome longstanding financing problems.
Officials from the prime minister’s office said they met banking executives in July to discuss how to overcome lenders’ traditional resistance to lending to candidates, over what they cast as financial and reputational risks.
Banks have been particularly against funding the RN because of the lingering stigma from its xenophobic history, despite it now being the country’s most popular party.
No agreement has been reached, but the government has said it wants to avoid “foreign interference” if candidates turn abroad for loans.
The issue has become more urgent as the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron approaches next April. Le Pen resorted to a loan from a Russian bank said to have ties to Vladimir Putin in 2017 and a Hungarian lender allegedly close to Viktor Orbán in 2022.
The French Banking Federation said the state was responsible for facilitating campaign loans. Some lenders have said they would only do so with an explicit guarantee that any losses would be covered.
Olivier Gavalda, chief executive of Crédit Agricole, told reporters in comments released on Friday that he supported a pooled approach “which avoids any partisan risk or the appearance of choosing or backing one side or the other”.
“We recognise that failing to finance presidential election campaigns poses a genuine democratic problem for all political parties,” he said. “The right solution is to go through the state, either through public funding . . . or through substantial guarantees.”
Daniel Baal, chair of lender Crédit Mutuel, also said last week a government guarantee was essential.
A person close to another large French lender said not all banks were fully aligned on the idea of a banking pool and said there was much to be thrashed out after the summer.
Le Pen is polling as the frontrunner to make the run-off with an array of candidates, including former prime minister Édouard Philippe and far-left standard-bearer Jean-Luc Mélenchon, competing for the second spot. Philippe has secured a campaign loan from a French bank, as has Mélenchon.
In early July she overcame an electoral ban that stemmed from a conviction for embezzling EU funds and said she would run despite overhanging legal risks from a final appeal.
But the RN has not secured financing despite months of canvassing French and European banks. A senior person who works for the party welcomed the potential compromise with lenders and the government but said it remained “outrageous” that the party was not treated equally.
The RN’s loan from the Russian bank, taken out initially in 2014, dogged the party for years and fuelled concern that Le Pen was under the Kremlin’s sway. Scrutiny of the financial ties between her party and Moscow intensified after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Russian loan was repaid in 2023 and the Hungarian one in 2024.
In France, the state reimburses campaign expenses up to a certain limit for candidates who win more than 5 per cent of the vote. Accounts must also be validated by the elections regulator.
Candidates, even prominent ones, do not always clear these thresholds, which have made banks wary of not being paid back.
In 2022, rightwing candidate Valérie Pécresse unexpectedly only got 4.8 per cent of the vote, while Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo also fell short with 1.8 per cent, leaving both to foot the campaign bill.
In 2012, regulators refused to pay for Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2012 presidential campaign expenses because he exceeded spending limits.
Crédit Agricole’s Gavalda said: “When you’re a banker, your duty is to lend money only when you have a high degree of confidence that you will be repaid, and here the uncertainty is simply too great.”
The government emphasised the proposal was not aimed at helping Le Pen. “This is a matter of ensuring the proper conduct of the election: making sure that all candidates can obtain a loan from a French lender to finance their campaign, so that foreign financial networks do not become involved.”
BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Natixis owner BPCE declined to comment.
The Rassemblement National did not immediately respond to a request for comment.