Marine Le Pen
Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen (French: [maʁin lə pɛn]; born 5 August 1968) is a French lawyer and politician who ran for the French presidency in 2012, 2017, and 2022. A member of the National Rally (RN; previously the National Front, FN), she served as its president from 2011 to 2021. She has been the member of the National Assembly for the 11th constituency of Pas-de-Calais since 2017. She currently serves as parliamentary party leader of the National Rally in the Assembly, a position she has held since June 2022. Le Pen has been widely described as being far-right on the political spectrum.[1][2]
Marine Le Pen
Office established
Office established
National Rally (since 1986)
Louis Aliot (2009–2019)
3
Marion Maréchal (niece)
Philippe Olivier (brother-in-law)
Jordan Bardella (nephew-in-law)
Vincenzo Sofo (nephew-in-law)
She is the youngest daughter of former party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and the aunt of former FN MP Marion Maréchal. Le Pen joined the FN in 1986. She was elected as a regional councillor of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (1998–2004; 2010–2015), Île-de-France (2004–2010) and Hauts-de-France (2015–2021), a Member of European Parliament (2004–2017), as well as a municipal councillor of Hénin-Beaumont (2008–2011). She won the leadership of the FN in 2011, with 67.6% of the vote, defeating Bruno Gollnisch and succeeding her father, who had been president of the party since he founded it in 1972.[3][4][5] In 2012, she placed third in the presidential election with 17.9% of the vote, behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy.[6][7][8] She launched a second bid for the presidency at the 2017 election. She finished second in the first round of the election with 21.3% of the vote and faced Emmanuel Macron of centrist party En Marche! in the second round of voting. On 7 May 2017, she conceded after receiving approximately 33.9% of the vote in the second round.[9] In 2020, she announced her third candidacy for the presidency in the 2022 election. She came second in the first round of the election with 23.2% of the votes, thus qualifying her for the second round against Macron,[10] although she went on to lose in the second round to Macron, receiving 41.5% of the votes.
Le Pen has led a movement of "de-demonisation of the National Front" to soften its image,[11] including limited expulsion of members accused of racism, antisemitism or Pétainism. She expelled her father from the party in August 2015, after he made fresh controversial statements.[12][13] While liberalizing some political positions of the party by revoking its opposition to same-sex partnerships, its opposition to unconditional abortions, and its support for the death penalty, Le Pen still advocates many of the same historical policies of her party, with particular focus on strong anti-immigration, nationalist and protectionist measures.[14][15][16] She is supportive of economic nationalism, favoring an interventionist role of government, and is opposed to globalization and multiculturalism. Le Pen supports limiting immigration and banning ritual slaughter.[17] Le Pen has made supportive comments of Vladimir Putin and Russia in the past, advocating closer cooperation before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine; she strongly condemned the war in Ukraine, but stated Russia "could become an ally of France again" if it ends.[18][19]
Le Pen was featured by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011 and 2015.[20][21] In 2016, she was ranked by Politico as the second-most influential MEP in the European Parliament, after President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.[22] In January 2024, after months of rising polling numbers, and for the first time ever, Le Pen became the most popular politician in France according to a Verian-Epoka for Le Figaro Magazine.[23]
Early life and education[edit]
Childhood[edit]
Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen was born on 5 August 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine,[24][25] the youngest of three daughters of Jean-Marie Le Pen, a Breton politician and former paratrooper, and his first wife, Pierrette Le Pen. She was baptized on 25 April 1969 at La Madeleine Church in Paris. Her godfather was Henri Botey, a relative of her father.[26]
Le Pen has two sisters: Yann and Marie Caroline. In 1976, when Marine was eight, a bomb meant for her father exploded in the stairwell outside the family's apartment as they slept.[27] The blast ripped a hole in the outside wall of the building, but Marine, her two older sisters and their parents were unharmed.[28]
She was a student at the Lycée Florent Schmitt in Saint-Cloud. Her mother left the family in 1984 when Marine was 16. Le Pen wrote in her autobiography that the effect was "the most awful, cruel, crushing of pains of the heart: my mother did not love me."[29] Her parents divorced in 1987.[30][31]
Legal studies and work[edit]
Le Pen studied law at Panthéon-Assas University, graduating with a Master of Laws in 1991 and a Master of Advanced Studies (DEA) in criminal law in 1992.[32] Registered at the Paris bar association, she worked as a lawyer for six years (1992–1998),[32] appearing regularly before the criminal chamber of the 23rd district court of Paris which judges immediate appearances, and often acting as a public defender. She was a member of the Paris Bar until 1998, when she joined the legal department of the National Front.
Personal life[edit]
Le Pen was raised Roman Catholic.[33] In 1995, she married Franck Chauffroy, a business executive who worked for the National Front. She has three children with Chauffroy (Jehanne, Louis, and Mathilde).[30] After her divorce from Chauffroy in 2000, she married Eric Lorio in 2002, the former national secretary of the National Front and a former adviser to the Regional election in Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The couple divorced in 2006.
From 2009 until 2019, she was in a relationship with Louis Aliot, who is of ethnic French Pied-Noir and Algerian Jewish heritage.[34] He was the National Front general secretary from 2005 to 2010, then the National Front vice president.[35] She has lived in La Celle-Saint-Cloud with her three children since September 2014. She has an apartment in Hénin-Beaumont. In 2010, she bought a house with Aliot in Millas.[36]
Early political career[edit]
1986–2010: Rise within the National Front[edit]
Marine Le Pen joined the FN in 1986, at the age of 18. She acquired her first political mandate in 1988 when she was elected a Regional Councillor for Nord-Pas-de-Calais. In the same year, she joined the FN's juridical branch, which she led until 2003.
In 2000, she became president of Generations Le Pen, a loose association close to the party which aimed at "de-demonizing the Front National".[30] She became a member the FN Executive Committee (French: bureau politique) in 2000, and vice-president of the FN in 2003.[30] In 2006, she managed the presidential campaign of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She became one of the two executive vice-presidents of the FN in 2007, with responsibility for training, communication and publicity.[32]
In the 2007 parliamentary election, she contested Pas-de-Calais' 14th constituency but came second behind incumbent Socialist MP Albert Facon.[37]
2010–11: Leadership campaign[edit]
Early in 2010, Le Pen expressed her intention to run for leader of the FN, saying that she hoped to make the party "a big popular party that addresses itself not only to the electorate on the right but to all the French people".[5]
On 3 September 2010, she launched her leadership campaign at Cuers, Var.[38] During a meeting in Paris on 14 November 2010, she said that her goal was "not only to assemble our political family. It consists of shaping the Front National as the center of grouping of the whole French people", adding that in her view the FN leader should be the party's candidate in the 2012 presidential election.[39] She spent four months campaigning for the FN leadership, holding meetings with FN members in 51 departments.[40] All the other departments were visited by one of her official supporters.[41] During her final meeting of the campaign in Hénin-Beaumont on 19 December 2010, she claimed that the FN would present the real debate of the next presidential campaign.[42][43] Her candidacy was endorsed by a majority of senior figures in the party,[41] including her father.[44][45]
On several occasions during her campaign she ruled out any political alliance with the Union for a Popular Movement.[46][47] She also distanced herself from some of Jean-Marie Le Pen's most controversial statements,[48] such as those relating to war crimes, which was reported in the media as attempts to improve the party's image. While her father had attracted controversy by saying that the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers during the Holocaust was "a detail of the history of World War II", she described genocide as "the height of barbarism".[49][50]
In December 2010 and early January 2011, FN members voted by post to elect their new president and the members of the central committee. The party held a congress at Tours on 15–16 January.[51] On 16 January 2011, Marine Le Pen was elected as the new president of the FN, with 67.65% of the vote (11,546 votes to 5,522 for Bruno Gollnisch),[32][52] and Jean-Marie Le Pen became honorary chairman.
Legal issues[edit]
In October 2023, Le Pen was convicted of committing defamation against French NGO Cimade when she accused the organization in a January 2022 television interview of being "accomplices to smugglers" and being involved in an "illegal immigration network from the Comoros" in Mayotte.[154] She was ordered to pay €500 and to also sustain court costs.[154] In December 2023, Le Pen was ordered to stand trial after she was charged with paying National Rally party officials through funds earmarked for European Parliament assistants.[155] 27 others, including her father Jean Marie, will serve as her co-defendants.[156]