By Ingrid Melander, Leigh Thomas and Simon Carraud

Marine Le Pen © Reuters. France’s FN sets out unorthodox economic plans to support a euro exit – Click to enlarge
PARIS (Reuters) – France’s National Front will combine the euro exit at the heart of its economic platform with a cocktail of unorthodox policies including money printing, currency intervention and import taxes, a top party official told Reuters.
A key measure in the presidential platform National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen will unveil this weekend will be to break France’s dependence on market financing by reserving the right to order the central bank to buy up its bonds.
All of this would require a major overhaul of French laws and would require not only Le Pen being elected president in May but also the FN winning parliamentary elections in June.
“The only way for the French economy to adapt itself to how the global economy is evolving is by getting its monetary and budgetary sovereignty back,” said Jean Messiha, who coordinates the drafting of Le Pen’s election platform.
Opinion polls see Le Pen as likely to top the first round of the presidential poll on April 23 but then lose the May 7 run-off to conservative Francois Fillon or centrist Emmanuel Macron.

ZURICH (Reuters) – Net immigration to Switzerland slowed for a third consecutive year in 2016, potentially easing concerns over immigration that have strained Switzerland’s ties with the surrounding European Union.
Around 143,100 immigrants arrived in Switzerland in 2016, down nearly 5 percent from the previous year, while around 78,000 foreigners left, an increase of 5.6 percent.
This means that net immigration for the year came to around 60,000 people, data from the State Secretariat for Migration released on Thursday showed, a decline of more than 15 percent from 2015.
Of the just over 2 million foreigners living in Switzerland last year, around 70 percent were citizens of European Union countries or EFTA members Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland.
The country’s total population stands at around 8.4 million.
The Swiss parliament last month dodged a conflict with Brussels by adopting a system of giving unemployed locals hiring preference instead of imposing immigration quotas, as Swiss voters had demanded in a binding 2014 referendum.
Swiss-EU relations are being scrutinized for hints of what Britain might expect as it negotiates the terms of its divorce from the EU after its own referendum last June.