France’s National Front would consider imposing a travel ban if Marine Le Pen is elected president this year, one of her senior aides has admitted.
Steeve Briois, who is part of the far-right leader’s campaign team, said American President Donald Trump’s hugely controversial policy could work in Europe.
‘Why not?’ Mr Briois told AFP, France’s national news agency. ‘We not living in the word of Care Bears any more. We are in a horrible world.
‘So from time to time we must take authoritarian measures, even if they shock,’ said the mayor of the northern town of Henin-Beaumont.
Le Pen feels that she can become president of France in May on an agenda of clamping down on Islam, and keeping Muslims from former colonies out.
And Mr Brios continued: ‘It is true that the United States is also a target for jihadists, so if Trump wants to protect it by forbidding the arrival of these people from these countries, he is free to do that.
‘Obviously it is unfortunate for those who have nothing to do with that,’ he added.
Trump’s latest decree of banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries has sparked uproar across the world, not least of all in France.
The French foreign ministry has warned French citizens with a passport from any of the blacklisted countries to avoid trying to get to the U.S.
Mr Trump has insisted the measure is not a ‘Muslim Ban’, saying that it is about fighting terrorism and not religion.
In December 2015, Trump made claims that Paris and London contained no-go zones that had been taken over by Muslims.
Mr Trump said: ‘They have sections in Paris which are radicalised where they police refuse to go there because they’re petrified.
‘We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised the police are afraid for their own lives.’
Marine Le Pen is predicted to get through the first round of the May presidential election, but then to lose heavily in the second.
