Overview
- The dinner at Paris restaurant Drouant on Tuesday brought Marine Le Pen together with about 15 top bosses, a meeting her team confirmed to AFP.
- Reported attendees included Bernard Arnault of LVMH and TotalEnergies chief Patrick Pouyanné, while several companies declined to confirm or framed such contacts as routine.
- Links were brokered by Capgemini chairman Paul Hermelin, who leads the Entreprise et Cité network, and by François Durvye, who joined the RN in early April to serve as a bridge to business.
- The employers’ group Medef invited the RN to its annual kickoff for the first time last August, and a planned March 2 lunch with Jordan Bardella was postponed after the war in Iran broke out.
- Business sources describe the outreach as preparation for a possible RN government, a shift that Le Figaro calls the culmination of the party’s “normalization” while left-leaning outlets warn of a political turning point.