Front National presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, kicking off the presidential campaign | Jeff Pachoud/AFP via Getty Images Marine Le Pen: Either the EU changes ‘or it will die’ French far-right leader calls the euro a ‘political weapon.’

Political divisions in Europe aren't between left and right but "between populists and globalists," French far-right leader Marine Le Pen told the BBC in an interview to be broadcast Thursday. "I am on the side of patriotism. And many European leaders have been on the side of globalization."

The head of the National Front was speaking about her vision for the future of Europe after elections this year in France, Germany and the Netherlands and in the wake of the U.K.'s vote to leave the European Union. She was speaking to the BBC for a documentary called "After Brexit: The Battle For Europe."

Asked if leaving the eurozone, as Le Pen wants, would mean the end of the EU single currency, she said: "Maybe, and so what? The euro isn’t a currency, it’s a political weapon. The euro is a knife which the EU puts into the backs of the people to force them to go where they don't want to go."

Le Pen also backed a French exit from the EU — a so-called 'Frexit' — if the EU doesn't transfer powers back to Paris. "Either the EU gives French people back their territorial sovereignty, borders, control over their economy, control over their currency and the superiority of their laws, or I will say to the French people that we should leave the EU."

"Either it [the EU] radically and deeply changes, and it abandons its authoritarian character, or it will die."

Let it crumble

Also interviewed for the BBC program was Beatrix von Storch, an MEP and senior member of the far-right Alternative for Germany.

Asked if she saw her party as part of a bigger movement in Europe, Von Storch said yes. "The voices are different. But I think there’s a basic line within all those parties which are now growing in several states, stating that we don’t want to give up our sovereignty."

She added that if the EU "crumbles because the people want it to crumble then ... it should crumble."