The lead candidate for French President Emmanuel Macron's party in upcoming European elections said she was tricked into taking a photo with members of a "neo-Nazi group." Prominently visible alongside a smiling Valérie Hayer in the photo is one of the men's T-shirts, whose logo aping the North Face outdoor brand reads "The White Race."
"On Sunday, I was approached by men asking me for a photo. On principle, I don't usually refuse, and I accepted as I do every time," Hayer, who is heading the Renaissance party list, wrote on X. "This was a trap set up for me by activists from a neo-Nazi group," Hayer said.
She added that the men – whose faces were blurred out in the photo circulated on messaging service Telegram – had used "shameful methods of the far right, which I fight against with all my might." Hayer said she had "not had time to notice the racist slogans on their clothing." The encounter took place the day after a far-right gathering in Paris where participants had commemorated the 1994 death of a comrade.
Hayer came under attack from the fiercely anti-Macron hard-left party La France Insoumise (LFI), whose leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said that "no sane person would present themselves alongside such perpetrators of ethnic violence."
The incident is the latest blow for Hayer, 38, after she was widely seen by analysts as coming out second best in a televised debate against the head of the RN's list Jordan Bardella, aged 28, earlier this month.
The Macron list is languishing a distant second to the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in polling less than a month ahead of European Parliament elections. A Le Monde poll in partnership with IPSOS also indicated that the ruling party faces a tight race even for second place against the Socialist alliance led by Raphaël Glucksmann, who is credited with running a dynamic campaign.