Le Pen arrived for a visit to Serbia at the invitation of the "Dijamant" motorcycle club from Arandjelovac, about 70 kilometres southeast of Belgrade.
The municipal committees of the Democratic Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, the League of Vojvodina Social Democrats, the Gren Party, the Serbian Revival Movement, the Social Democrats, the Serbian Christian Democratic Party and the nongovernmental organisation People's Parliament staged a rally outside the local airport protesting against the announcement that Le Pen would open the motorcycle championship. The participants in the peaceful protest carried banners reading "Mr Le Pen, We Don't Want You Here" and "We Don't Want Extremism". The banners were written in French.
Le Pen is president of the far-right National Front party and perennial candidate for the presidential elections. He is known for advocating contentious viewpoints and policies: including the reinstatement of the death penalty, a revisionist approach to history (including Holocaust denial), incentives to encourage women to stay at home and have children rather than work, strong restrictions on immigration to France from countries outside Europe, compulsory military service, strict censorship of the cinema and the arts as well as withdrawal or at least far greater independence from the European Union.
admirer.
The controversial politician already visited Serbia in 1997 at the invitation of the Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav Seks, whom the ICTY indicted for war crimes.