POLITICAL MAP REDRAWN
Both Le Pen and far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon have publicly sympathised with the yellow vests - named after the high-visibility jackets they wear - and asked for their support.
Le Pen hopes the EU vote will advance a redrawing of France's political map. The process began with the first round of the 2017 presidential election, when Macron's upstart centrist movement and her own National Front, since renamed, eliminated the traditional big parties - the conservative Les Republicains and the Socialists.
"The battle is now between nationalists and globalists," she said.
Since the start of the yellow vest protests, Le Pen's RN has gained in the polls. A mid-December Ifop poll gave it 24 percent support against 18 percent for Macron's LREM.
The conservatives had 11 percent, Melenchon's La France Insoumise ("France Unbowed") 9 percent, the movement of former Le Pen ally Nicolas Dupont-Aignan 8 percent and the Socialists just 4.5 percent.
Le Pen herself is not running in the European election as she wants to remain in the French parliament, and on Sunday presented 23-year-old Jordan Bardella as the NR's leading candidate.
"In Italy and Austria, our allies are governing," Bardella said. "A better tomorrow is within our grasp."
Macron himself will launch three months of national debate this week to air yellow-vest grievances in the hope of appeasing the movement.
An RN supporter at Sunday's rally, Sebastien Lefevre, told Reuters he fully supports the yellow vests as does his party.
"And from what I understand from the polls, most of the yellow vests would vote for us," he said.
