PARIS — Top contenders for the 2027 presidential election in France laid out their vision for Europe, Ukraine and relationships with fellow capitals at POLITICO’s first Playbook Paris Live summit on Thursday.
The event gathered far-right leader Marine Le Pen — who is topping the polls and appears all but certain to make it to the contest’s second-round runoff — far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Gabriel Attal, a centrist former prime minister.
Here are the key takeaways from the event.
No alignment on Ukraine
Attal came out as a strong advocate for increased support for Ukraine. The 37-year-old said backing Ukraine was an “investment for us” rather than a humanitarian expense. He supported seizing Russian assets to help pay for Kyiv’s defense and did not “exclude” sending European planes to police Ukrainian skies.
Le Pen, on the other hand, made it clear that she believes France can no longer afford to assist Ukraine financially given the country’s budgetary constraints.
“We can train their soldiers and their military leadership and provide them with military aid. We can no longer provide financial assistance to Ukraine, and we regret that,” she said.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon speaks at the POLITICO Playbook Paris Live event in Paris on Sept. 24, 2026. | François Le Guen and Mathias Filippini for POLITICOLe Pen was adamant that she believed French President Emmanuel Macron had not done enough to bring Moscow and Kyiv to the negotiating table. She said she supported U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to invite Russian President Vladimir Putin to the G20 summit in Miami in December.
“Any initiatives aimed at putting an end to this slaughter are welcome,” she said.
Both Le Pen and Mélenchon argued that supplying any type of military equipment to Ukraine would likely put France in harm’s way.
“I would like to remind you that Russia is a nuclear power,” she added. “I do not want France to go to war with any nuclear power.”
Mélenchon said he wanted a ban on Ukrainian deep strikes into Russian territory.
“Do you really think the Russians will just stand by and let Moscow be fired upon without doing anything?” he said. “Do you realize that we’re firing with French and Ukrainian weapons? We’re becoming belligerents.”
Le Pen reiterated her pledge to leave NATO’s integrated command, but only after the war in Ukraine ends. Mélenchon said he still wants to pull France out of the alliance altogether but that the country should remain committed to defending Europe’s eastern borders.
Mélenchon really doesn’t trust Germany
In eyebrow-raising comments, Mélenchon doubled down on his opposition to Germany’s plans to beef up its armed forces, pointing to the “history” of German attacks against France.
“[The Germans want to build Europe’s] largest conventional army, to do what? … We need to talk about this,” Mélenchon said.
“There is history. It matters to me. I never believed that the Germans crossed the border several times just for the sake of crossing borders,” Mélenchon said — though he insisted he is not “anti-German.”
Berlin aims to become Europe’s predominant military power in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and American retrenchment from Europe — a move Mélenchon argued was motivated by economic interests, with Germany hoping that a stronger defense industry can make up for losses from its struggling auto industry.
Le Pen is up in arms against the EU budget (and von der Leyen)
Standing by her pledge to drastically cut France’s contribution to the EU budget, Le Pen went all out against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, accusing her of wanting to “bypass democracy” by fast-tracking negotiations on the EU’s multi-year budget.
Marine Le Pen speaks at the POLITICO Playbook Paris Live event in Paris on Sept. 14, 2026. | François Le Guen and Mathias Filippini for POLITICOVon der Leyen’s “love of democracy is not evident in all of these decisions,” Le Pen said, saying the Commission chief was trying to avoid “accepting the will of the people” by speeding up negotiations before elections next year in France, Poland, Spain and Italy.
Attal marches in Macron’s footsteps on Europe
Attal, who leads President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist political party Renaissance (though the relationship between the two is notoriously frosty), pitched a strongly pro-European agenda, advocating for further economic integration as well as cooperation on environmental and tech regulation.
He once again pushed the idea of a United States of Europe, arguing that the bloc should become a “power continent” that could stand up to China and the U.S. But Attal suggested that could only be done by moving forward with a multi-speed Europe, in which a “small number” of countries, rather than all 27 EU member states, work on ambitious projects like a capital markets union.