Marine Le Pen

Politician

Education: Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas

Significance: As leader of France's far-right-wing National Rally (formerly National Front) political party, Marine Le Pen ran for president of France in 2012, 2017, and 2022. Though she lost each time, she succeeded in improving her party's standing in mainstream French politics. National Rally is widely seen as controversial for its right-wing extremism; high-profile party members, including Le Pen's own father, have been accused of racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism.

Background

Marine Le Pen was born Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen on August 5, 1968, just outside of Paris, France. She was the youngest of three daughters born to Pierrette Lalanne and Jean-Marie Le Pen. Her father gained a reputation as a controversial figure in French politics. He was a former soldier who helped form the National Front political party in 1972. At the time, the party included admitted fascists, former supporters of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and anti-immigrant nationalists. Jean-Marie himself was also a Holocaust denier.

As the leader of the party, Jean-Marie was often not at home. In fact, Le Pen and her sisters lived in a separate apartment from their parents and a full-time nanny cared for them. Jean-Marie and his wife would also go away for long periods without their children. This put a strain on familial relations.

Because of his political associations, Jean-Marie was often the target of brutal verbal attacks and even death threats. When Le Pen was only eight years old, her family's apartment in Paris was bombed. No one was hurt, but the people responsible were never apprehended. Other students and even teachers at school often harassed Le Pen and her sisters due to their father's political beliefs. Despite the distance in her relationship with her father, Le Pen often defended him to others.

When Le Pen was fifteen, her mother left the family, running off with her father's biographer. Soon, her parents' divorce was playing out in the tabloids. Because of the bitter divorce, Le Pen did not speak to her mother for about fifteen years. When she was a teen, she sometimes would go to party meetings and campaign with her father in an effort to spend more time with him.

Early Career

Le Pen attended Université Paris II Panthéon-Assas and graduated with a master's degree in law in 1991. After graduation she passed the bar exam and began practicing as a lawyer. She worked at law firms and spent six years working as a duty lawyer appointed by the state to help undocumented immigrants in deportation cases. This was somewhat ironic considering her associations with the National Front, which was considered xenophobic by most people. Still, Le Pen later argued that it was the nation's immigration policies, not the immigrants themselves, who were at fault in these cases.

In 1998 Le Pen became a legal adviser for the National Front. Soon after, she won election as regional councillor for Henin-Beaumont as a member of her father's party. She later became regional councillor for Hauts-de-France near the Belgium border.

In 2002 the National Front and Jean-Marie Le Pen made international headlines when he made it out of the first round of voting to compete in the second round in the general election for president. He faced off against then president Jacques Chirac. Jean-Marie lost the election by a landslide. However, Le Pen, who had been by her father's side during the election, had grabbed the spotlight.

In 2003 Le Pen became the vice president of the National Front. The following year she became a member of the European Parliament, where she was a leader among other anti–European Union politicians.

As Le Pen continued to rise through the political ranks, her relationship with her father deteriorated. In 2011 she became the leader of the National Front, mostly with Jean-Marie's blessing. In this capacity she ran for president in 2012. Le Pen sought to reinvent the National Front as a mainstream political party rather than a fringe group. To do this, she had to distance herself and her party from her father and the group's founding ideology. For instance, the year she took over as the party leader, Le Pen publicly condemned the Holocaust, which was an obvious break from her father. Although her presidential bid was unsuccessful, she did improve the popularity of the National Front, which did well in the 2014 elections.

Le Pen's father did not make it easy for her to steer the party closer to the political center. In 2015, Jean-Marie said in an interview that the Holocaust was just a detail of World War II (1939–1945). This forced Le Pen to have her father expelled from the National Front. Afterward, Jean-Marie publicly disowned her.

2017 and 2022 Elections

After coming in third in the 2012 French presidential elections, Le Pen prepared to run again in 2017. She remained firmly anti-immigration, and hoped to cut legal immigration significantly if elected president. She also disagreed with France's membership in the European Union (EU)—a hot topic at the time, given the United Kingdom's vote to withdraw from the EU, known as Brexit. Le Pen argued that she would take measures to protect French workers.

During the first round of voting in the 2017 election, Le Pen came in just about three points behind the overall leader, Emmanuel Macron of the centrist liberal party En Marche. The race made international headlines. If elected, Le Pen would have been the first female president of France. During the campaign, she was often compared to the new US president, Donald Trump, due to her anti-immigration beliefs.

In the end, Le Pen lost to Macron. However, she remained the leader of the National Front. She then won a seat in the French parliament, which forced her to resign from the European Parliament. Then, in June 2017, it was announced that Le Pen was under investigation for supposedly misusing European Parliament funds. She denied the charges, but in June 2018 an EU court ruling held that she had indeed misused funds and would have to repay them. Her appeal of the decision was dismissed in May 2019.

Meanwhile, in June 2018 the National Front changed its name to the National Rally (Rassemblement National) under Le Pen's leadership. Observers suggested the move was part of Le Pen's strategy to disassociate the party from its fascist roots. The National Rally performed well in the 2019 EU parliamentary elections, but struggled in the French legislative elections in 2021.

Le Pen continued to lead her party into the 2022 French presidential election. The first round of voting was held that April, and despite a low turnout, the results were similar to 2017, with Macron and Le Pen finishing first and second. Both advanced to the second round, where Le Pen again lost in a runoff, earning 41.5 percent of the vote compared to Macron's 58.5 percent. Despite the loss, both Le Pen and many commentators considered the election a considerable achievement for National Rally, as it was the party's best-ever result in a presidential election and indicated growing support for what had once been a fringe group.

In 2023, following an investigation that spanned seven years, French prosecutors recommended that at least twenty members of the National Rally party, including both Marine and Jean-Marie Le Pen, be charged with the alleged embezzlement of European Parliament funds after an examination of party finances between 2004 and 2016. National Rally, in a statement, dismissed the allegations as both erroneous and politically motivated. However, Le Pen and twenty-seven others were ordered to stand trial late in 2024 for the misuse of European Union funds. Despite this, Le Pen planned to run for president again in 2027. She came a step closer to living in the presidential palace in mid-2024 when her National Rally party defeated the leftist Popular Front. It was the first win for Le Pen's party. Although a setback, French President Emmanuel Macron vowed to remain in power until the next presidential election in 2027.

Impact

Le Pen's rise to political fame represented a significant change in European politics. Her performance during the 2017 and 2022 French presidential elections were widely discussed as part of a noticeable shift to the political right in the twenty-first century. In many countries, this also represented an increasing shift toward isolationism and nationalism. Le Pen earned attention for her personal popularity and political savvy, even as she was also often criticized for her extremist views.

Personal Life

Le Pen had three children with her first husband, Franck Chauffroy. Her daughter, Jehanne, was born in 1998, and twins Mathilde and Louis were born in 1999. Le Pen divorced Chauffroy in 2000 and married Éric Iorio in 2002. She and Iorio divorced in 2006.

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