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French Elections: 5 things you didn’t know about Nicolas Dupont-Aignan

The 61-year-old Nicolas Dupont-Aignan is running as a presidential candidate for the third time, pitching himself as the man who can restore sovereignty to France.

Published: 14 March 2022 16:37 CET

Right-wing French presidential candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan delivers a speech. (Photo by EMMANUEL DUNAND / AFP)

1. He is an isolationist

Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, sometimes referred to by the acronym NDA, is the president of the Debout la France (France Arise) party, which is seeking to remove the country from the “tentacles of the EU and NATO”.

While he has voiced his opposition to “Frexit”, the 61-year-old has described Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties, which enshrined greater EU integration, as “scandalous treason.”

He would like to radically restructure the EU to give member states greater autonomy. Dupont-Aignan has previously voiced his support for withdrawing from NATO.

Dupont-Aignan received a public endorsement from Nigel Farage, a eurosceptic politician from the UK, during the 2014 EU parliament elections.

2. He doesn’t want to invade Belgium

Dupont-Aignan wants to raise defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP and recruit a further 40,000 soldiers to bring the total number of servicemen up to 250,000 by 2027.

He has sat on various defence and foreign affairs committees as an MP.

During the 2010-11 political crisis in Belgium, he voiced his support for an idea known as Rattachisme – which advocates French-speaking parts of Belgium seceding to become part of France.

“I am not seeking to invade Belgium,” he later clarified to the JDD.

Dupont-Aignan’s enthusiastic militarism was reflected in a political thriller called Le Séisme. Marine Le Pen présidente by Michel Wieviorka. The story takes place following an imagined 2017 presidential election victory for Marine Le Pen, who appoints Dupont-Aignan as minister of defence.

3. He performs well in local elections

Although he has yet to win more than 5 percent of the vote in a presidential election, Dupont-Aignan has a strong electoral record as a local politician.

Dupont-Aignan is a superstar in the commune of Yerres to the southeast of Paris, where he served as mayor between 1995-2017, winning three elections with more than 75 percent in the first round. During the 2017 presidential election, he was the top polling candidate in the commune.

His campaign website claims he was “the best elected mayor in France”.

Dupont-Aignan proved himself an effective local administrator cutting the commune’s debt by close to half over a 20-year period and winning support for his environmental and crime-fighting policies.

From 1997-2017, he won successive parliamentary races as an MP for the Essone département, frequently winning an absolute majority in the first round. Prior to his election, the seat had only ever been held by candidates from the Socialist party.

4. He loves animals

Dupont-Aignan has been decorated by the French animal rights organisation, la Fondation 30 Millions d’Amis, for his policies in favour of animal protection.

As Mayor of Yerres, he launched a number of initiatives including the construction of a refuge for stray cats, the development of natural spaces for Scottish cows and the subsidisation of a dog shelter. He also created a new post for an official charged with defending animal rights.

“Long considered as simple objects, animals are still too often victims of intolerable treatment,” reads his campaign website. As an MP, he has pushed for bans on slaughter without stunning, for better regulation of abattoirs, a ban on horse meat and a ban on animal shows at circuses.

5. He is Covid-sceptic

Dupont-Aignan has been a fervent critic of the government’s Covid policy, voicing his opposition to the vaccine pass.

“What is crazy is that in a democracy like France, you can vote in the middle of the night for a law that will not resolve anything as far as health is concerned,” he said.

In February, he told RTL that vaccinating young people was “totally useless”.

“We have a government under the grip of money and conflicts of interests… We are in a country where the pharmaceutical lobby has influenced a government.”

Dupont-Aignan has already had Covid but has refused to say whether or not he has been vaccinated.

A number of his campaign staff resigned in December after revelations that he had continued to hold meetings despite having Covid.

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.