KEEP them OUT Marine.

Marine Le Pen planning Italy trip to condemn North African refugees

Marine Le Pen, the new leader of the French far-Right, is expected to travel to Italy to next week to condemn what she described as the European Union's "impotence" in the face of a wave of refugees from North Africa.

France's political establishment was shocked by a poll released on Monday which showed that Miss Le Pen could beat Mr Sarkozy in the first round of next year's presidential election Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Nick Squires, Rome5:36PM GMT 08 Mar 2011

Miss Le Pen said she might travel to Lampedusa, a tiny Italian   island which has been flooded with more than 1,200 mostly Tunisian   immigrants in the last two days.

"Europe is like a sieve," she said, adding that she wanted France to   work with Spain and Italy "to curb the risk of mass clandestine   immigration". The trip to Lampedusa has been pencilled in for next   Monday but has yet to be confirmed, she said.

The dusty outcrop lies closer to the coast of North Africa than to Sicily and   has been the focus of unauthorised immigration to Europe for years.

Italian ministers have expressed concern that it could be inundated by a "biblical   exodus" of refugees fleeing unrest in Tunisia and Libya.

The 42-year-old leader of the National Front, who has compared Muslims in   France to an "occupying force", took over the party from her   father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in January.