FRANCE

Party: National Rally/Rassemblement National (RN) 

(formerly National Front, 1972- to 2018)

Parliamentary Party Leader: Marine Le Pen

President: Jordan Bardella

Leader Type: Le Pen is a nationalist populist who has had considerable success at softening and rebranding the party’s fascist image over the last decade, while retaining the RN’s core hard-right, working class-focused ideology, winning over even many former Communists in the process. Her recent choice of the young, charismatic, and social media-savvy Jordan Bardella as deputy leader has inspired the enthusiastic support of many French youth and helped bring the party from the margins to the mainstream. 

% National Vote: Le Pen received 40% of the national vote in the second-round runoff of the 2022 presidential election, losing to Emmanuel Macron. In early March 2024, Le Pen led President Macron by 13 points in national opinion surveys looking ahead to the next French presidential election in 2027. The RN took 32% of the vote in the second round of the 2024 French legislative elections. 

Position in Government: The RN has never been part of a French national government, nor secured the presidency or prime ministership. Party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the second round of the presidential elections in 2002; Marine did the same in 2017 and 2022. Despite repeatedly being denied victory in second (final) round voting over several decades, the party has steadily gained in power in both the National Assembly and European Parliament. In 2024, the RN gained a decisive first-round victory in the June-July legislative elections and was widely expected to finally take power. But Macron held snap elections, and French voters rallied to deny the RN a second-round parliamentary victory, despite RN dominating with 32% of the total vote. The last-minute shutdown of the populist far-right was due to a strategic ballot move by centrist and leftist parties who united to form The New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire) and won the most seats in France’s National Assembly, followed by Macron’s centrist Renaissance alliance, then Le Pen’s RN. The RN currently holds 125/577 seats in the French parliament. 

Platform: National sovereignty, anti-Islam, traditional French values, economic protection of workers, and anti-immigration policies including calling for big cuts in legal immigration, and stricter control of illegal immigration. It opposes French military action in Africa, and today supports EU reform, after many years of anti-EU rhetoric. The party’s roots go back to associates of the fascist Vichy regime during WWII. The party was founded by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, long criticized as a Holocaust denier, antisemite, and Islamophobe.

European Parliament: Following strong results in the 2024 European legislative elections (31% of French voters, taking 30 of 81 French EP seats), Bardella was tapped to be the president of the Patriots for Europe coalition of far-right parties, reflecting the RN’s growing power in the EU.