“Our ambition is to think big and to build a new European architecture capable of addressing the major challenges of the 21st century — and we will certainly need the largest group possible,” he told POLITICO in the interview.
Bardella will find out if he is his party’s presidential candidate on July 7, when a French appeals court decides whether to uphold his mentor Marine Le Pen’s convictions for embezzlement and the five-year election ban that comes with it. Polls have him winning the election’s first round, and early polls also show him beating other contenders in the runoff, though only narrowly against centrist candidates.
‘Common challenges’
For years, PiS held the National Rally in contempt for its closeness to Russia — a serious liability in a country still scarred by Soviet domination and deeply mistrustful of anybody cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We have as much in common with Ms. Le Pen as with Mr. Putin,” the party’s leader Jarosław Kaczyński quipped in 2017.
Relations warmed up under former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who hosted Le Pen for dinner in Warsaw in 2021, and Bardella himself has made a point of distancing himself from pro-Kremlin figures in his party. He is expected to meet with Kaczyński and other party figures on Friday.
“Poland and France share many common challenges, as well as numerous opportunities for cooperation,” Nawrocki’s chief of staff, Paweł Szefernaker, posted on X after the Polish president met with Bardella. “It was a very good conversation about the future of Europe, security, and the role of sovereign states in the European community.”