Le Pen's daughter to sweeten party image

In an attempt to modernise and sweeten its image, Jean-Marie Le Pen's ultra-right National Front is planning to give up hard-line Euroscepticism this week and come out in favour of the European Union and the euro.

This startling change in policy by an extreme nationalist and anti-European party is seen as evidence of the growing influence of Mr Le Pen's youngest of three daughters, Marine, 34.

Marine Le Pen believes that the French far right should be remodelled, in appearance at least, on populist movements in the Netherlands and Austria's Freedom Party, both of which have attracted young and educated voters.

She says that her father's "breakthrough" in reaching the second round of the presidential election in May proves that a more presentable version of the far right could win national elections in France in the future.

Ms Le Pen, eloquent and tough, and seen as a possible successor to her father, has already angered the fundamentalist Catholic wing of the NF by saying that abortion should remain legal in France.

The proposal to drop the party's opposition in principle to the EU and the euro will also infuriate believers in Mr Le Pen's old-time, ultra-nationalist religion when it goes before the party's political bureau on Friday.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, however, is ready to support the idea of a shift to a milder form of Euroscepticism, which would accept the reality of the euro and existing EU laws while championing the nation state and opposing a federal Europe. This would make the National Front, in its declared policies at least, more European than the Conservative Party in Britain.

In May's presidential election, Mr Le Pen shocked France and the world when he took second place in the first round of voting, eliminating the Socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin. His crushing defeat by President Jacques Chirac in the second round, by 82 per cent to 18 per cent, exposed the deep distaste held by the great majority of French voters for Mr Le Pen and his xenophobic utterances and policies.

Marine Le Pen has emerged since the summer at the head of a revitalised NF young people's movement, Générations Le Pen. She argues, and her father agrees, that the party could have done much better in May if it had had a halfway serious programme for government and a more realistic policy on Europe.

At the time, Mr Le Pen said that, if elected, he would take France out of the euro and call an immediate referendum on continued EU membership. Much of his economic policy, including the recreation of trade barriers between France and the rest of Europe, would have been impossible inside the EU.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has since admitted that "government was not our cup of tea. We were not in the mood for power." He has, however, let it be known that despite his age, he intends to lead the NF into the next elections in 2007, when he will be 79.

The party's switch to a milder form of Euroscepticism, if approved this week, would be doubly ironic. In terms of actions, though not words, the present French government is the most Eurosceptic for more than 30 years, partly because of the National Front's electoral success. Second, both the Dutch and Austrian populist parties regarded as a model by Marine Le Pen have proved incapable of making the switch to government, and are in serious trouble in the polls.