Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate in the French presidential election, has been accused of plagiarism after she gave a speech that appeared to borrow language from a political rival.
Le Pen’s speech on Monday evening in Villepinte, a suburb of Paris, had been intended as a key moment in the run-up to the second and final round of voting on Sunday. However, supporters of Francois Fillon, the conservative candidate who was knocked out in the first round of voting, soon noticed that her speech contained several passages that appeared remarkably similar to a speech Fillon made on April 15.
The video, posted by the pro-Fillon group Ridicule TV on Monday evening, cut up the two speeches to show the overlapping passages. As Ridicule TV noted, Le Pen repeated “word for word” the passages used by Fillon.
The text of the speeches was also available online — Fillon’s on his website and Le Pen’s on her Facebook account — so the phrasing can be compared in detail. Both speeches discuss France’s role in Europe and its place in the wider world, and the language is undeniably similar. In particular, Fillon and Le Pen speak at length about students learning French abroad and describe France’s relationship with its neighbors – in often-identical language.
The speeches also included the same quotes, such as one by France’s prime minister during World War I, Georges Clemenceau: “Once a soldier of God, and now a soldier of Liberty, France will always be the soldier of the ideal.”
Fillon had once been a favorite in the presidential race, but he came third in the initial round of voting last month after his campaign was hit by a corruption scandal, leaving him out of this weekend’s two-person runoff vote. Le Pen is widely expected to lose against centrist Emmanuel Macron on Sunday. To broaden her appeal to voters, she recently stepped down temporarily as the head of the far-right National Front, a party her father founded.
Exactly how the speech passages came to be reused is a subject of rife speculation in France. Le Monde reports that David Rachline, Le Pen’s campaign manager, said the passages were “a nod and a wink” to Fillon voters and an attempt to show that she was not “sectarian.”
A report by RTL suggested that the speeches were similar because both candidates had been provided notes by Paul-Marie Couteaux, a writer and politician. However, Le Monde later spoke to Couteaux, who said he had not been in contact with Le Pen or her National Front colleagues during the campaign. Couteaux also confirmed this on Twitter, suggesting that some of the shared themes came from a book he had published in 1997.
Most polls show Le Pen trailing Macron by about 20 points ahead of the runoff vote.
