Destroyed Syrian buildings
© Abd Doumany / AFP
Marine Le Pen, leader of France's National Front party, has accused the European Union of being responsible for the ongoing chaos in Syria. She added the EU has been too busy trying to overthrow Assad while Russia was actually fighting terrorists.

"You've done everything to bring down the government of Syria, throwing the country into a terrible civil war, while accusing Russia which is actually fighting Islamic State [IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL]," the right wing party leader and France's presidential candidate said, speaking at the European Parliament plenary session in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

"You cannot hide your responsibility [...] for plunging this part of the world into an absolutely monstrous chaos," Le Pen added, noting that policies advocated by both the United States and the European Union had contributed to the state Syria is currently in, as well as neighboring Iraq.

The prominent eurosceptic politician also slammed the bloc's approach toward immigration as "irresponsible," stating that the current migrant policies only increase the number of economic migrants.

"No real measures are taken to curb the crisis. Your irresponsible policy, on the contrary, brings us more and more economic migrants," Le Pen said, adding that only 30 percent of the migrants that had arrived in the EU were from Syria.

Le Pen, who intends to run for the French presidency, has repeatedly spoken out on the migrant crisis and security issues in Europe and France. France has been hit by a number of deadly terror attacks within the past two years, with a state of emergency declared after the November 2015 attacks in Paris and prolonged following an attack this July in Nice.

Some 2,000 teenagers have been radicalized by Islamic State propaganda in the country since the start of the year, according to a security source cited by Le Figaro newspaper. Many French citizens have left home to fight alongside terrorists in Syria and Iraq, while some 300 people have been arrested in France for links to terrorist activity since the beginning of the year.

Syria has been suffering from a destructive civil war, with the government fighting terrorists such as IS and Al-Nusra Front (now Fatah al-Sham) and a number of rebel groups. According to various reports, the total number of fatalities in the civil war in Syria that began back in 2011 ranges from 290,000 to 470,000 people. Over 4 million people have fled the country and some 6.5 million people are considered internally displaced. An estimated 13.5 million people inside Syria are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, including 6 million children, according to the latest report by UNICEF.

The EU, a member of the International Syria Support Group (ISSG), has sided with the US in imposing sanctions on the already devastated country and in calling on Assad's government to step down.


Comment: What country that acts with any amount of compassion would support sanctions agains the Syrian people? See: UN report: U.S. and EU sanctions are punishing ordinary Syrians, crippling efforts to deliver aid
An internal U.N. email obtained by The Intercept also faults U.S. and EU sanctions for contributing to food shortages and deteriorations in health care. The August email from a key U.N. official warned that sanctions had contributed to a doubling in fuel prices in 18 months and a 40 percent drop in wheat production since 2010, causing the price of wheat flour to soar by 300 percent and rice by 650 percent. The email went on to cite sanctions as a "principal factor" in the erosion of Syria's health care system. Medicine-producing factories that haven't been completely destroyed by the fighting have been forced to close because of sanctions-related restrictions on raw materials and foreign currency, the email said.

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said in September that the EU should play a part in Syria peace negotiations and proposed developing a common European strategy for the war-torn Middle East country. However, no developments have so far been made in this regard, despite EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini making a number of calls on the US and Russia to renew their "diplomatic consultations" regarding the war-torn state.