France is one of many countries where euroscepticism has been on the march in recent years, headed by the leader of right-wing nationalist party – National Rally – previously known as the National Front. Marine Le Pen has become one of the most prominent critics of the EU, and was therefore delighted to see Britain vote to leave the bloc in 2016’s referendum. Following the vote, Ms Le Pen hailed the result and her party ramped up talk of France making its own departure from the EU.

She said:“Victory for Freedom! As I have been asking for years, we must now have the same referendum in France and EU countries.

“The UK has begun a movement that can’t be stopped.”

Le Pen also changed her social media images to the Union flag and exclaimed her “warmest and friendliest” congratulations to “very brave” Boris Johnson and the Leave campaign.

Her party supporters even displayed Brexit posters, showing hands breaking free from chains, with the caption “Now it’s France’s turn”.

The National Rally leader even made scathing remarks about Brussels, calling the European project a “failure” and even claiming the Brexit was the “beginning of the end” for the EU.

Four days after the referendum , she said: “This is the beginning of the end of the European Union. And I hope the birth of the Europe of nations, a Europe of cooperation, that we’ve been propounding for years.

“The European Union is objectively a total failure. It’s a social failure, it’s an economic failure, it’s a failure in terms of power, it’s a diplomatic failure.

“Each time there is a failure they say it is because there is not enough Europe. The British people have just said ‘stop. For us it’s the end. It’s over.’”

Ms Le Pen did try to secure a referendum on France’s EU membership during her presidential campaign in 2017.

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She said in April 2019: “We have made changes in the last two years. The situation of isolation that we had in Europe is now over.

“We didn’t have much choice: either we had to submit [to the EU] or we had to leave it. But now we have allies.”

Last January, she said: “We are pragmatic, we are not ideologues. If we find all our sovereignties, that we can’t reform the European Central Bank, and that the euro remains a major problem, we’ll put the problem back on the table.”