Three polling stations open at 8am on Sunday in Lisbon, Porto and Algarve
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal told Lusa today that “it’s very important” that all citizens eligible to vote – including people of Portuguese descent – take part in the second round of the legislative elections on Sunday.
Following the shock results of the first round – a massive swing to the far-right Rassemblement National (‘RN’) party of Marine Le Pen – Attal stressed that RN seeks to “divide the French” according to nationality.
Speaking on the sidelines of a campaign event in the centre of Paris, Attal was responding to the question of whether he thought that Portuguese residents in France should vote in Sunday’s elections.
“Of course, it’s very important that all French people go and vote,” he said – including French citizens living in Portugal.
Gabriel Attal sketched out how RN “wants to divide the French among themselves”.
“So if you’re French with another nationality – and that’s the case for three and a half million French people, because they have different origins and family histories – for RN that means you are worth less than the others,” he said, reiterating the importance that everyone who can vote, go out and do so on Sunday.
Asked if he thought the RN project could jeopardise bilateral relations between France and Portugal, Attal countered that the current government’s project is “profoundly European”, fighting “for a strong Europe, because that is also in the interest of the French.”
“On the other side, we have a RN which, according to what we see, is proposing a gradual exit from Europe,” he said – accusing the party of wanting to “stop paying the French contribution to the European budget” and “stop respecting European rules“.
“That, of course, would have a very strong impact on our relations with other European countries”.
In its programme, RN argues that French people with dual nationality should not be able to access certain civil service jobs. According to the party, these would be “very few cases”, reserved for “extremely sensitive” state sectors, such as diplomacy, security and/ or defence.
During his campaigning in the 15th district of Paris, Gabriel Attal met Lúcia Fernandes, a Portuguese citizen who came to France in 1971.
“I just applied for nationality a year ago, they’re pushing me from one side to the other. It’s a horror, they don’t accept my country… And now I think it’s only going to get worse,” she said.
Lúcia Fernandes told Lusa she never applied for French nationality before because she felt “at home in France” and never thought it would make a difference.
“But lately I’ve started to see things getting complicated and I wanted to apply,” she said, expressing her “great concern” about the RN project because she believes it could “jeopardise” not only the Portuguese, but “the whole of Europe”.
Any French citizens eligible to vote in these elections have three polling stations available for the purpose in Portugal next Sunday. Opening at 8am and closing at 6pm, they can be found at the Liceu Francês Charles Lepierre in Lisbon, the Liceu Francês Internacional in Porto, and Hotel Tivoli Marina, in Vilamoura, Algarve.
Source material: LUSA
