Special Report: In France, far right capitalizes on euro crisis: AMNEVILLE, France (Reuters)- Amneville, a town in the Moselle region of northeastern France, does not look like a fault-line in the euro zone. The smell of grilled chicken wafts over the marketplace on a recent Saturday morning arizona accident lawyers, the CD vendor plays German oom-pah music, and the sky behind the ochre clock tower is a steely blue.
Yet the single currency is a target car donation for an unusual politician canvassing stallholders and shoppers in this town near the German border.
Fabien Engelmann, a 32-year old municipal plumber with tight-cropped hair, was an activist with France's leading trade union and a Trotskyist for many years. Later he joined the far-left "New Anticapitalist Party". This year he switched party again, but not on a leftist ticket.
Special Report: In France, far right capitalizes on euro crisis
He joined France's famed far-right National Front, and he was not the only one.
This year, five trade unionists have joined the minority party that made its name with the anti-immigrant rhetoric of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Since January, Le Pen's daughter Marine has been in charge of the party, and Engelmann says she is a magnet.
"It really is the arrival of Marine Le Pen that convinced me to join the National Front," Engelmann told Reuters. "She has an economic program that is much more geared to defending the little people, the workers, the popular classes of France."
Special Report: In France, far right capitalizes on euro crisis
Marine Le Pen is reshaping France's political landscape and the tremors go beyond people like this reconstructed Trotskyist global life insurance . Her father played up worries about immigration, but the anxiety Marine addresses is economic and deep. The National Front's new target is the oppressive power of global finance, and the mood she is tapping spreads across Europe.
Yet the single currency is a target car donation for an unusual politician canvassing stallholders and shoppers in this town near the German border.
Fabien Engelmann, a 32-year old municipal plumber with tight-cropped hair, was an activist with France's leading trade union and a Trotskyist for many years. Later he joined the far-left "New Anticapitalist Party". This year he switched party again, but not on a leftist ticket.
Special Report: In France, far right capitalizes on euro crisis
He joined France's famed far-right National Front, and he was not the only one.
This year, five trade unionists have joined the minority party that made its name with the anti-immigrant rhetoric of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Since January, Le Pen's daughter Marine has been in charge of the party, and Engelmann says she is a magnet.
"It really is the arrival of Marine Le Pen that convinced me to join the National Front," Engelmann told Reuters. "She has an economic program that is much more geared to defending the little people, the workers, the popular classes of France."
Special Report: In France, far right capitalizes on euro crisis
Marine Le Pen is reshaping France's political landscape and the tremors go beyond people like this reconstructed Trotskyist global life insurance . Her father played up worries about immigration, but the anxiety Marine addresses is economic and deep. The National Front's new target is the oppressive power of global finance, and the mood she is tapping spreads across Europe.
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