Marine Le Pen: All information about the candidate for the French election
Created: 04/10/2022, 16:46
Marine Le Pen © Aurelien Morissard / IMAGO
Marine Le Pen is running as a candidate in the 2022 French elections - she is considered a serious opponent of President Emmanuel Macron.
Paris – Born on August 5, 1968 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Pierrette Lalanne and Jean-Marie Le Pen, who founded the far-right Front National (FN) party in 1972.
He held the office of chairman until January 16, 2011, until he handed it over to his daughter and was himself expelled from the party because of the trivialization of the Nazi gas chambers.
Right-wing populist Marine Le Pen is now running her third presidential campaign.
In 2017, she made it into the runoff against Emmanuel Macron and garnered 34 percent of the vote — more than her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the Front National, ever achieved.
In the 2022 French Presidential election, she is considered one of the fiercest opponents of incumbent Emmanuel Macron.
Marine Le Pen - her career
After graduating from Lycèe Florent Schmitt in Saint Cloud, Marine Le Pen studied law in Paris until 1990 and passed the criminal law exam a year later.
In 1992 she was admitted to the bar and worked as a lawyer in Paris until 1998.
In the early days of her professional life, she often represented illegal immigrants as a compulsory lawyer.
Your future career path:
Marine Le Pen became a Front National member in 1986 and has steadily climbed the party hierarchy ever since.
From 1998 she worked in the FN legal department, which she headed until 2003.
From 1998 to 2004 she was active in local politics in the northernmost region of France, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, as a member of the "Conseil général" ("General Council").
In 2000 she was included in the inner FN management circle, the "Bureau politique".
In 2003, one of the eight vice chair positions was elected.
In 2007, she became No. 3 and No. 2 respectively in the FN's rankings by being named Vice-President responsible for communications, training and public relations.
At the beginning of 2011, after her father Jean-Marie Le Pen announced his resignation, she prevailed against her opponent within the party, Bruno Gollnisch, who had been on trial as an alleged Holocaust denier, and was elected her father's successor.
In July 2021, she was confirmed in office as party leader at the Rassemblement National (RN) party conference.
On the other hand, she made her ambitions for the French presidency clear.
Marine Le Pen – her party activities
Since assuming the presidency of the FN, Marine Le Pen has been trying to "defuse" the Front National and give it a more bourgeois air.
Their goal is to make the party more moderate, to develop it from a right-wing extremist, anti-Semitic protest group into a nationalist people's party and thus make it electable for Jews and center-right-minded French people.
This also meant that she largely disempowered anti-Semitic politicians in her own ranks.
A strategy that is selectively effective: According to a survey in January 2022, only 40 percent of the French still see Le Pen, which the party renamed Rassemblement National (“National Union”) in 2018, as a representative of a “nationalist and xenophobic extreme right”.
Despite this, only 21 percent want them,
Marine Le Pen – the Rassemblement National
After taking over the leadership of the party, Marine Le Pen made great efforts to change the FN's public image and distance itself from right-wing extremist ideas.
It is true that the party, renamed “Rassembelement National”, remains on the right-hand side of the political spectrum.
However, the party defines itself as “neither right nor left” and as “patriotic”, “populist” and “sovereignist” and distances itself from openly right-wing extremist parties such as the German NPD.
Under Marine Le Pen, the official party line became a commitment to democracy and, also with regard to potential Jewish voters, a clear recognition of the Holocaust as a historical fact.
In particular, Marine Le Pen seeks to close ranks with those
who are on a confrontational course with the EU, such as Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
She calls for more sovereignty for France and speaks of imperialist visions from Brussels.
While her motto in the 2017 presidential election was still "Frexit!" Join projects when it suits them.
Pollsters no longer see Marine Le Pen as a threat to democracy, but as part of the country's political landscape.
(France’s exit from the EU; note), she is now taking a somewhat more moderate course: Her goal as President would be a Europe of nations in which countries only take part in joint projects if it suits them.
Pollsters no longer see Marine Le Pen as a threat to democracy, but as part of the country's political landscape.
(France’s exit from the EU; note), she is now taking a somewhat more moderate course: Her goal as President would be a Europe of nations in which countries only take part in joint projects if it suits them.
Pollsters no longer see Marine Le Pen as a threat to democracy, but as part of the country's political landscape.
Marine Le Pen – her ideas
Marine Le Pen is increasingly distancing herself from what her father said.
She wants to fight Islamism, but she doesn't attack Islam as a religion, which is no longer a rarity.
She is committed to the sovereignty of France vis-à-vis the European Union.
She has been a member of the European Parliament since 2004 and initially wanted her country to leave the euro and the EU (“Frexit”), as well as NATO.
Domestically, the mother of three demands that immigrants assimilate.
Foreigners in France are to be cut from social security benefits, and French citizenship is only to be granted for certain merits, but not based on the place of birth principle.
A referendum is to decide whether the death penalty should be reintroduced.
In the current election campaign, Marine Le Pen announced that
she wants - if elected - to protect the French against the "immigration glut" since uncontrolled immigration would turn parts of the country into non-France zones.
President Emmanuel Macron has run down the country financially, contributed to the division of society and is arrogant and depressing.
However, Marine Le Pen does not only act with sharp words: At the end of 2015 she tweeted several pictures of victims of the
Islamic State
(IS) terrorist militia widespread.
One of them showed the bloodied and decapitated body of US journalist
James Foley.
The French judiciary then initiated investigations.
In March 2017, the European Parliament lifted Marine Le Pen's immunity.
She was accused of distributing violent photos via Twitter, which can be punished with up to three years in prison or a fine of 75,000 euros.
In March she was acquitted.
The publication had an informative purpose, was part of a political protest and contributed to the public debate, according to a court in Nanterre.
Marine Le Pen – her private life
Her first marriage to FN businessman Franck Chauffroy produced three children, a daughter born in 1998 and twins born in 1999.
Her second husband's name was Eric Iorio and he was a party colleague - but the marriage lasted only four years and they divorced in 2006.
The new man at her side was called Louis Aliot, Mayor of Perpignon and Member of the French National Assembly since 2020.
Marine Le Pen was in a relationship with Aliot between 2009 and 2019.
The France election 2022 at Merkur.de
You can get the latest developments in the presidential elections in France on April 10 in the news ticker at
Merkur.de
.
If there is no clear result on the evening of the election, then the decision will be made in the run-off election on April 24th.
Current polls still see Macron ahead, but one candidate in particular seems to be getting closer before the 2022 French elections.