Marine Le Pen (C), French National Front (FN) political party leader and candidate for French 2017 presidential election, visits the Salon des Entrepreneurs (Entrepreneurship fair) in Paris, France, February 1, 2017. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier

PARIS (Reuters) - Far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen will introduce a tax on all work contracts of foreigners in France, she told a newspaper in an interview published on Thursday.

“We will apply national preference on employment through an additional tax on all new contracts for foreign employees. The income from that would pay for unemployment benefit,” she told Le Monde newspaper.

Opinion polls routinely show Le Pen winning or coming second in the first round of France’s presidential election on April 23 but they also consistently show her losing heavily in the second, runoff round on May 7.

Florian Philippot, her right-hand man in the National Front party, called the measure France’s “Theresa May” tax in reference to a similar strategy in Britain following the country’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union.