France concerned about the risk of foreign interference ahead of elections

In his New Year's wishes to the French people, President Emmanuel Macron assured the country that he would do everything possible to ensure that the 2027 presidential election in France would take place free from any foreign interference.

According to Macron, the main threat comes from Russia, which he said is trying to destabilise France and, more broadly, Europe, by orchestrating an information war.

Two months earlier, the French president had made a similar warning. "We underestimate the extent to which the Russians influence our public opinion by spreading misinformation," he said.

Viginum, a defence ministry service tasked with detecting foreign digital interference, recently published a report detailing 25 attempts, primarily Russian and Chinese, to interfere in the French legislative and European elections held in 2024.

One example concerned a left-wing candidate, Raphael Glucksmann, who said he was the target of an operation "originating from pro-Chinese accounts" accusing him "of being the Americans' Trojan horse – particularly the CIA's – in Europe”.

According to Viginum, foreign digital interference, attempts to manipulate public opinion on social media and hacking have increased in recent years in most French election campaigns.

And these operations are expected to grow as the French prepare to vote in municipal elections in March and to elect their president next year.

'With money, you can attack and destabilise an incumbent candidate... by using social media to play on fears’

– Rachid Temal, socialist senator

The issue is a concern for the French state.

Both houses of parliament have warned, in at least three separate reports published in 2023, 2024 and 2025, against the proliferation of fake news, cyberattacks and, more broadly, disinformation campaigns originating from abroad and aimed at influencing public opinion or corrupting opinion leaders, political figures or political parties.

However, beyond the officially identified suspects, other states appear to be working behind the scenes to influence the public debate and political life in France.

‘Gain a foothold in the country’

According to Rachid Temal, a socialist senator and rapporteur for the upper house of parliament’s inquiry into foreign interference, the possibility of external meddling in the forthcoming elections is real, starting at the local level.

“The risk with municipal elections is that, for example, in towns with fewer than 9,000 inhabitants, there are no campaign accounts and therefore interference is quite easy to implement, because there is little oversight,” Temal told Middle East Eye.

“With money, you can attack and destabilise an incumbent candidate, for example, by using social media to play on fears and distort political projects and proposals,” he added.

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In addition to Russia and China, the United States poses a real threat, according to Rayna Stamboliyska, a digital diplomacy expert and researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris.

She warns that the Trump administration's interference could affect the independence of the judiciary and the integrity of the electoral process in France.

In December, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported that Washington considered sanctions against the judges of the Paris criminal court who last year sentenced Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party and three-time presidential candidate, to four years in prison for misappropriating public funds at the European Parliament.

She has since been subject to a five-year ban from holding public office, jeopardising her chances of running for a fourth time in 2027. The verdict of her appeal trial is expected on 7 July.

“Marine Le Pen is the main opposition candidate, and her ineligibility would radically alter the French electoral landscape,” Stamboliyska told MEE.

“Even if sanctions are not imposed [by Trump], the mere threat creates a deterrent effect: the judges could, consciously or unconsciously, take into account the possibility of personal sanctions in their future decisions, which constitutes a direct attack on the independence of the judiciary.”

'Both [the UAE and Israel] are converging in the fabrication of the myth of the Islamisation of France’

- Vincent Geisser, research fellow

US President Donald Trump’s support for Le Pen is part of his ambition to see ultra-nationalist parties take power in Europe. He makes no secret of it.

Less intuitively, considering these parties’ hostility to Islam, the United Arab Emirates also seems to favour such an outcome, particularly with regard to France, albeit more discreetly.

In 2019, French investigative website Mediapart revealed that Abu Dhabi had granted an €8m loan to the National Rally to reimburse the costs of its 2017 presidential campaign. These funds, whose origin remains unclear, are said to have saved the party when it was experiencing financial difficulties.

Qatar and Muslim Brotherhood targeted

In a more recent article, Mediapart unveiled the content of an internal memo from the Emirati diplomatic corps, outlining various methods for influencing the political debate in France against the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar. The group is banned by Abu Dhabi, which considers Doha a sponsor of political Islam.

The memo describes France as “a target country” and shows how the UAE seeks to cultivate closer ties with the right and far-right, “described as more receptive to its arguments about the dangerous nature of the Muslim Brotherhood”.

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Vincent Geisser, a CNRS research fellow at the Institute for Research and Studies on the Arab and Muslim Worlds, told MEE the wealthy emirate is “fostering a fantasy that the Muslim Brotherhood, under Qatari leadership, controls Islam in France”.

He believes that the UAE is playing on Islamophobia and “Islamo-leftism” – the accusation of closeness between left-wing figures and political parties with the Muslim Brotherhood – to “gain a foothold in the country, on a cultural and religious level”.

In 2023, Geisser was among hundreds of individuals throughout Europe placed on a watch list by a Swiss private intelligence agency working for Abu Dhabi. According to Mediapart, who revealed the case, Alp Services inaccurately portrayed these individuals as having links to the Muslim Brotherhood, before sending the information to the Emirati secret services to further target them in a multifaceted smear campaign.

The recently revealed Emirati memo seems to support the accusations of interference levelled against the Gulf state in France, particularly following a highly controversial poll published last November that suggested a radicalisation of young French Muslims.

The survey has been the subject of several legal complaints from Muslim organisations, who accuse it of being “based on biased questions” to spread “the poison of hatred in the public sphere”.

Media reports have established the existence of close ties between the Emirati intelligence services and the commissioner of the poll, the low-circulation magazine Ecran de Veille (Screen Watch), which focuses on denouncing "Islamism" and in particular the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated groups.

Ecran de Veille is distributed for free each month to French parliamentarians, who in January adopted a not-binding resolution aiming to "include the Muslim Brotherhood movement on the list of terrorist organisations of the European Union".

UAE and Israel aligned

For Geisser, in this fuelling of the Islamophobic climate in France and more broadly across Europe, the UAE is making common cause with Israel.

"The Emirates also want to demonise Muslims because they are considered pro-Palestinian," he told MEE. “Both countries are converging in the fabrication of the myth of the Islamisation of France.”

Citing as an example Hassen Chalghoumi, a controversial imam known for his support for Israel, Geisser said both countries are seeking to create dozens of similar opinion leaders “throughout France who can take control and break the solidarity movement with Gaza”.

Like the Emirati leaders, the Israeli government would not be averse to the arrival of the far right in power in France in 2027, although the party was founded by a Holocaust denier, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

‘Israel has many means of penetration into the French political system’

– Bertrand Badie, professor emeritus at Sciences Po Paris

A few days before the 2024 parliamentary elections, the Israeli minister of diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli, officially endorsed the National Rally and expressed his hope that Marine Le Pen would one day become president.

Chikli was also the main architect of the visit to Israel in March 2025 by Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally and a potential candidate in next year's presidential elections.

According to Bertrand Badie, professor emeritus at Sciences Po Paris, Israel is one of the three countries, along with Russia and the US, that "act most explicitly on the exercise of national sovereignty".

"Israel has many means of penetration into the French political system [and] exercises an activity that weighs on the electoral game by influencing public opinion and giving a kind of bonus to political parties that align with this conditioning," he told MEE.

"The Israeli government, in particular, seeks, under the legitimate pretext of fighting antisemitism, to go much further and to distinguish between the good and the bad in the French political system, those who support its policies and those who oppose them," Badie added.

‘Fascist international’

Parties that condemn Israeli policy are subject to strong criticism by pro-Israel opinion leaders, such as former MP Meyer Habib, known for his links to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and who promotes the National Rally as a bulwark against antisemitism.

The left-wing party France Unbowed (La France Insoumise, or LFI), in particular, has been accused of antisemitism or of spreading "Islamist ideology" because of its pro-Palestinian stance and its criticism of Islamophobia in France.

Here too, Israeli and Emirati efforts seem to converge.

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In December, following a fruitless parliamentary inquiry led by the right to establish links between "Islamism" and LFI, the party's leader and former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon accused the UAE of “targeting” LFI, which filed a complaint warning that “an Emirati influence network may have infiltrated our institutions”.

Yunnes Abzouz, a journalist at Mediapart, told MEE the delegitimisation of the left is the other side of the same coin.

“Today, there is a kind of fascist international being built around a false idea of ​​Judeo-Christian civilisation where Israel would be the vanguard of the west and would be doing the dirty work for Europeans against Islam and Arabs,” he said.

Israel has at its disposal several groups known for their influence in French media and political life, including the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF), a prominent pro-Israel lobby whose annual dinner is attended by French ministries, and Elnet, an organisation that defines itself as a “think tank for strategic dialogue between France and Israel" and is registered as an official lobby with the French parliament.

Last year, left-wing MPs submitted a proposed resolution calling for the creation of a commission of inquiry into the political interference of Elnet and its attempts to influence members of the French government and parliament, denouncing "an increase in lobbying practices in favour of the Israeli far right within national political circles".

"Elnet has financed numerous trips for French MPs to Israel to raise their awareness of Israeli interests," Abzouz said.

In March 2025 the group also organised a controversial conference in Paris "against Islamism" that was attended by French ministers and media personalities close to the far right.

In an investigation published in December, Abzouz and his colleagues also revealed Israel's interference in foreign courts, including in France, in moves to sanction the BDS movement.

According to the journalist, Paris’ proximity to Israel probably explains why the latter is not publicly designated as a source of foreign interference – unlike China and Russia.

"It is an allied country," he said, “just like the US or the UAE.”