Whatever happen in the second round of the French parliamentary elections, it will not change the fact that the "National Assembly" will remain an integral part of the French political landscape. And when talking about “National Assembly”, invariably everyone thinks of Marine Le Pen's father – Jean-Marie Le Pen, who co-founded the “National Front”, the predecessor movement of the “National Assembly”. France Press recalls that among the other co-founders are two former members of the Nazi unit “Waffen SS”. Publications such as “Mediapar“ and “France 24” recall that these were Pierre Emile Bousquet and Leon Gaultier. During the creation of the “National Front” in 1972, Jean-Marie Le Pen chose the same motif in the emblem of the movement – tricolor flame - which also appears in the emblem of the post-fascist Italian party “Italian Social Movement”, adds France Press.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was born in June 1928 in Trinites-sur-Mer, a village in Brittany. He is the son of a fisherman and a seamstress. His father died when his ship hit a mine in 1942. Jean-Marie Le Pen studied at a Jesuit high school in Vannes, graduated in law and political science in Paris. Over the years he was also a member of the Foreign Legion, serving on military missions in Indochina and Algeria. He was a member of trade union organizations, the "National Restoration" organization, which is royalist. From an early age, he stood out as a good speaker. He was first elected to the French Parliament in 1956 by the Union for the Protection of Merchants and Craftsmen.
Jean-Marie Le Pen is the leader of the “National Front” from 1972 to 2011. Then he was its honorary chairman in 2011 – 2015 As a party leader, he ran five times for the presidency of France – in 1974, 1988, 1995, 2002 and 2007. His best performance was in 2002 when he received 16.86% in the first round and advanced to the second round against Jacques Chirac. This was due to many reasons, among them the poor first-round performance of the Socialist candidate and prime minister at the time, Lionel Jospin, as well as the splitting of the vote between 15 candidates. Jean-Marie Le Pen's ranking in the second round saw the rest of the political spectrum unite against him in an unprecedented way and the result was a major defeat for him in the second round, in which his opponent Chirac received 82%, the largest result in history of the Fifth French Republic. Five years later, Jean-Marie Le Pen appeared in the presidential vote again, but came fourth. At the time, he was 78 years and 9 months old, making him the oldest presidential candidate in French history.
Over the years, Jean-Marie Le Pen has also been a municipal councilor in the 20th Paris arrondissement, a regional councilor in the Ile-de-France and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regions. In 1984, Jean-Marie Le Pen also won a seat in the European Parliament, where he was re-elected in subsequent elections, including those in 2014.
An inevitable part of Jean-Marie Le Pen's rhetoric are the topics of immigration, the protection of cultural traditions and values, law and order, and the fight against the high rate of unemployment in France. He is also an outspoken critic of the Lisbon Treaty to reform the EU. Jean-Marie Le Pen is known for his political longevity. He survives in politics despite the scandals, controversies and legal problems he has. His supporters call him because of this “The Last Samurai in Politics”, and his opponents – “Devil of the Republic“.
Among the more scandalous positions of Jean-Marie Le Pen is that of supporting the return of the death penalty in France. He also insists on forced isolation of those infected with the AIDS virus in facilities called spinatoriums. Jean-Marie Le Pen also accused Chirac of receiving money from Jewish organizations. He has repeatedly complained that there are too many “non-white players” among the French national football team. For Nicolas Sarkozy, who is of part Greek-Jewish and Hungarian descent, he says he is a foreigner. Jean-Marie Le Pen is also against the notion that man is at the root of climate change and equates climatology with communism. He also makes scandalous comments about homosexuals and parallels between homosexuality and pedophilia.
Jean-Marie Le Pen has also been convicted several times for anti-Semitic and xenophobic statements. He appealed those decisions and lengthy legal battles ensued. Jean-Marie Le Pen himself points out that there are people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds in his party when he is accused of racism and instilling racial hatred.
Jean-Marie Le Pen has also been tried on several occasions for statements in which he denies the Holocaust. In one of them, he claimed that the gas chambers in which the Jews were exterminated by the Nazis were a detail of the history of the Second World War. In his view, France's deportation of 76,000 Jews to Nazi concentration camps was a trivial matter. He also questions the fact that 6 million Jews were killed in World War II. For these positions of his, he was sentenced to pay 1.2 million French francs (183,200 euros) in the 1980s, "Mond" recalls. Subsequently, more cases were filed against him for similar statements. In 1997, the European Parliament lifted Jean-Marie Le Pen's immunity so that he could be tried by a German court for making a speech at a German rally in which he said that if one picked up a 1,000-page book on World War II, only two pages of them will talk about concentration camps, and gas chambers will be mentioned only in 10-15 lines. Jean-Marie Le Pen has been ordered to pay a fine again in this case.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was also tried for an attack on a socialist candidate during the parliamentary elections in 1997. He himself sued a number of publications because of their claims that during the war in Algeria he took part in torturing people there . Jean-Marie Le Pen's name was also implicated in an investigation into the misuse of European funds. In December last year, his name was cited among the names of 28 representatives of the far right, including Marine Le Pen, who were accused of using money intended for the salaries of MEPs to pay the salaries of associates of “ National Assembly“, who were not MEPs.
Because of his polemical statements and his legal troubles, Jean-Marie Le Pen has gradually been pushed out of his role as leader of the “National Front”. He ceded the leadership position to his daughter in 2011, and she subsequently stripped him of the post of honorary party chairman altogether due to the ongoing controversies surrounding him, which have hindered the party's course towards renewal and presenting itself in a more normal light in order to attract more voters. This deprivation of the honorary presidency was also accompanied by prolonged legal battles.
On a personal level, in the 1970s Jean-Marie Le Pen inherited a fortune from the industrialist Hubert Lambert, who is the son of cement entrepreneur Leon Lambert and a supporter of the “National Front”. In addition to the fortune, which at the time amounted to 30 million French francs, was the three-story mansion Montret, in Saint-Cloud, on the western outskirts of Paris. The property quickly became the headquarters of the Le Pen clan. It is composed of an impressive house of 430 square meters, to which there are additional buildings of 350 square meters and a park of 4,670 square meters. The Le Pen family is going through legal battles with Hubert Lambert's family to preserve this inheritance, recalls the publication “Pouvoir“.
In recent years, Jean-Marie Le Pen's health has deteriorated. He suffered a stroke and heart attack, and in April was placed under legal protection at the request of his family.
To give a more normal and inclusive look to the “National Front”, renamed in 2018 to the “National Assembly”, it is undoubtedly believed that Marine Le Pen, the youngest of the three daughters, contributed of Jean-Marie Le Pen from his first marriage. Marine Le Pen was born in 1968 and her full name is actually Marion Anne Perrin Le Pen. He graduated in law, but practiced this profession for a short time. Already in 1986, he joined the “National Front”. Over the years, she was a district councilor in the regions of Ile-de-France, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Haut-de-France, municipal councilor in Hennes-Beaumont, she was a French MP and MEP. He ran for president three times, coming third in 2012 with 17.9%, in 2017 he reached the second round against Emmanuel Macron, receiving 33.9% of the vote. After another five years, she is again in the second round again against Macron and receives 41.5%, while in the meantime she has ceded the leadership of the party to the young Jordan Bardela. In the parliamentary elections of 2022, which followed the presidential elections of the same year, Marine Le Pen was elected as an MP, and her party then managed to send nearly 90 MPs to the lower house of parliament (the National Assembly), thus presenting a pleasant surprise to her sympathizers, but an unpleasant surprise for sociologists and her opponents, predicting her only about 30 seats. After that, Marine Le Pen heads the parliamentary group.
Marine Le Pen has managed over the years to soften the tone of her far-right party, to present it as concerned about such problems of the French as immigration, inflation, the high cost of living, crime. Gradually the party “ National Assembly“ is becoming an alternative to President Emmanuel Macron's centrists, perceived as too distant from the real problems of the French. Marine Le Pen is perceived as a politician close to the people, and Macron as a president from among the rich, notes France Press. In every crisis that has marked Macron's presidency, Marine Le Pen has always been on the lookout for what to do to increase support for her party.
However, over the years, Marine Le Pen's party has always been accused of close ties with Russia. The reason for this is a loan that the party concluded with the First Russian-Czech Bank in the amount of more than 6 million euros in 2014. The bank went bankrupt in 2016 and the loan was bought by the Russian company “Aviazapchast“, recalls “France Info“ . Last year, Le Pen's party announced that it had paid the amount due and no longer owed any financial obligations to Russia. Because of this loan, the party was convinced that it was commanded by the Kremlin. Marine Le Pen has always pointed out that the demonization of her political power has caused French banks to refuse to lend to her, forcing her to resort to borrowing from a foreign financial institution. After the success of the “National Assembly” in the parliamentary elections in 2022, the party used the state subsidy already due to it in the amount of 10.1 million euros. But revelations emerged that the party had previously borrowed €10.7m for its 2022 campaign from Hungarian bank MKB, whose main shareholders include businessmen close to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's nationalist party. , reported Reuters.
Although the party is trying to distance itself from its former closeness with Russia, according to French media, a number of representatives of the “National Assembly” to this day they have maintained close ties with Russian politicians and have visited Russia in recent years.
On a personal note, Marine Le Pen has been married twice. In 1977, she married Frank Chaufrois, head of a company that worked for the “National Front”. From this marriage, Marine Le Pen has three children, which she gave birth to within 10 months – Jean, born in 1998 and twins Louis and Mathilde, born in 1999. In 2000, Marine Le Pen divorced. And two years later, she is already the wife of the former chief national secretary of the “National Front” Eric Yorio. They divorced in 2006. Then, from 2009 to 2019, Marine Le Pen was the partner of Louis Alio, Secretary General of the “National Front” and a leading figure in the “National Assembly”.
Marine Le Pen is known to be a fan of cats, she keeps several Bengal cats and even took a professional course in caring for these four-legged pets.
After Marine Le Pen, undoubtedly a big factor in the normalization of the appearance of the “National Assembly” is Jordan Bardella. Born in September 1995 in Drancy, on the outskirts of Paris, Bardella began his party career in the “National Front” still 17 years old. Over the years, he was a municipal councilor in Saint-Denis, then he was the speaker of the “National Assembly”. In 2019, Marine Le Pen chose him to head the party's list for the European elections, and it ranked ahead of Macron's centrists. So Bardella's career began to take off. He is also the spokesperson for Marine Le Pen's third presidential campaign. After two years ago she decided to step down as party leader and dedicate herself to the leadership of the parliamentary party group, Bardela officially heads the “National Assembly”. He is at the top of the list of “National Assembly” for the euro vote this June and was elected as an MEP. In this vote, the party received over 31%, ranking well ahead of Macron's coalition. Bardella is now tipped to become France's prime minister if his party wins a parliamentary majority in the second round of early elections on July 7, after it won more than 33 percent of the vote in the first round.
Bardella, who has completed only secondary education, contributes to the popularity of “National Assembly” after the young ones. He has been tasked with making more nuanced statements that portray his party as slightly more right-wing and more liberal, while Marine Le Pen's statements so far have been decidedly "neither left nor right," sources close to the tandem Le Pen-Bardela. Le Pen forgives Bardella and small deviations from the party line. For example, that he declares himself against a price ceiling in agriculture - something that the “National Assembly” defends, notes France Presse. The reason for this forgiveness is that, thanks to Bardella, pensioners, civil servants or representatives of the urban environment now decide to vote for a party to which they have traditionally been hostile in the past, notes AFP.
In his videos on the social network “TikTok“ Jordan Bardella, who otherwise stands out at official events with an impeccable appearance, prefers to appear in an informal setting, with some slight defects, which makes him likable and close to ordinary people. So he fits perfectly into Marine Le Pen's strategy to present the party in a more normal form.
The curious thing is that Bardella is a descendant of immigrants, recalls the internet publication “Lenternot”. His mother, Luisa Bertelli-Motta, was born near Turin in 1962, after which her entire family migrated a year later to France. In France, Bardella's mother is a teacher. Bardella's father, Olivier Bardella, is of Italian and Algerian-French descent. He has a small vending machine company. Jordan Bardella's paternal grandmother, according to the publication "Jean Afrique", is the daughter of an Algerian from Kabylia who lived in France in the 1930s and worked in the Lyon area in the textile industry and in industry. Bardella's paternal grandfather was Italian Guerino Bardella from the Lazio region, who arrived in France in the 1960s and worked as a carpenter in the Montreux area. Bardella always emphasizes his Italian roots and that his relatives, despite being immigrants, have integrated into French society. He completely forgets that one of Jean-Marie Le Pen's campaign posters in the 1980s read: “1 million unemployed in France, 1 million more immigrants” and that this election poster was aimed precisely at such migrants as Bardella's grandparents, "Lenternot" points out.
„National assembly“ however, he is not only associated with Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardela. When talking about this party in the memories of the French, the entire Clan Le Pen with all its divisions, reunions, twists and scandals comes to mind, notes France Presse.
Marine Le Pen has two sisters – Marie-Caroline Le Pen and Jan Le Pen.
Jan Le Pen was born in 1963. She is the second child from Jean-Marie Le Pen's first marriage. Unlike her sisters Marie-Caroline and Marine, she is very discreet. From an early age, she also dedicated herself to the work for the "National Front", recalls "Gala". She organized party rallies and other events, worked as a telephone operator at the party headquarters, and finally became an assistant to the head of the party's media relations department. Jan Le Pen had a brief relationship with journalist Roger Ock, from which her daughter Marion Marechal Le Pen was born. But Marion Marechal Le Pen was raised by Jan Le Pen's second partner – Samuel Mareschal, who acknowledges her as his child. Jan and Samuel have two more children – Romain and Tangy.
Marie-Caroline Le Pen is Jean-Marie Le Pen's first-born daughter from his first marriage. She was born in 1960. After graduating from high school, she quickly entered politics and her father entrusted her with important party missions. Acted first in the party's youth wing and created videotapes with party content. In parallel, he writes articles under a pseudonym for the magazine "Figaro Magazin". Over the years, she has also been a district councilor in Ile-de-France. According to people close to the Le Pen family, it was Marie-Caroline Le Pen, not Marine Le Pen, that Jean-Marie Le Pen was preparing for his successor in politics. But in 1998, Marie-Caroline decided to join party cadre Bruno Maigret, who left the “National Front” and creates a new formation in the right space. This distancing from the family party gave rise to a conflict with her relatives and Marie-Caroline had a strained relationship with them until 2007. A reconciliation ensued and Marie-Caroline helped her sister Marine Le Pen during various elections, while also personally running for parliament on several occasions. She has now qualified for the second round of the parliamentary elections in the 4th district in the department of Sart.
On a personal level, Marie-Caroline Le Pen has two children from her marriage with her second husband Philippe Olivier, who is an influential representative of the “National Front”, a regional councilor and MEP in the ninth European Parliament. She has another child from her first marriage. And she also has two stepchildren from her husband.
Marie-Caroline Le Pen and Philippe Olivier are specifically said to be among the representatives of the “National Assembly” who maintained close ties with Russia and visited Moscow and the annexed Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2018 and 2020, respectively.< /p>
Marion Maréchal Le Pen, born in 1989, is the niece of Marine Le Pen and the daughter of Jan Le Pen. Her full name is Marion Jean Caroline Le Pen. She was an MP from the “National Front” in the period 2012-2017, being at the time the youngest member of the lower house of the French Parliament. She was also a member of the regional council of the Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur region. In 2022, however, they joined Eric Zemur's party “Reconquista“. At the time, Zemour was a candidate for president and portrayed himself as a far-right alternative to Marine Le Pen. In the Euro vote on June 9 in France, Marion Maréchal Le Pen was elected along with four other party members as MEPs from the “Reconquista”. Then she called for unification in the far-right space around the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardela for the parliamentary elections and was expelled from the “Reconquista” together with three more newly elected MEPs and her cronies. According to some publications, Marion Marechal was tasked by Zemur with the task of negotiating with the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella for unification with the “Reconquista” before the early parliamentary elections. But Zemur set too many conditions for this unification, Marion Maréchal Le Pen told him to moderate his demands, and then he kicked her out of the party ranks. In response, Marion Marechal Le Pen called for a vote for the party of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardela, although she has not yet announced an official return to its ranks.
Marion Marechal Le Pen studied business law and business administration. On a personal level, she has two marriages. She was first married to businessman Mathieu Dekos, with whom she has one daughter, Olymp, born in 2014. The couple divorced two years later. Marion became engaged to the Italian politician Vincenzo Sofo in 2018 and they married in 2021. A year later, their daughter Clotilde was born. Sofo was a politician from Italy's far-right party “League”, but when it joined the broad government of Mario Draghi in Italy, he switched to the ranks of “Italian Brothers” of Giorgia Meloni, who at the time was in opposition to Draghi's cabinet.
To the Le Pen clan belongs 27-year-old Noluen Olivier, daughter of Marie-Caroline Le Pen and Philippe Olivier. Noluen has been a party activist since her youth, first handing out party leaflets and then working on Marine Le Pen's communications campaign. Noluen Olivier is said to have made Marine Le Pen open a “TikTok” account. and has played a major role in changing her wardrobe and look. Noluen Olivier otherwise prefers to be in the shadows, notes “Lenternot”. Since 2020, she has a romantic relationship with Jordan Bardella, which the two prefer not to advertise. Recently, however, there have been claims that they have split.
Jordan Bardella's critics say Noluen Olivier paved his way in the party and in front of Marine Le Pen, who now viewed him as an adopted son. Bardella himself responds to these criticisms by saying that Marine Le Pen targeted him for party leader before he started a relationship with Noluen in 2020. But at the time he had another girlfriend – Keridouin Chatillon, who is the daughter of Frédéric Chatillon, a communications expert and entrepreneur, and above all, a great friend of Marine Le Pen. It was Kerridouen who introduced Bardella to Marine Le Pen, critics of Bardella say.
Much is known about the children of Marine Le Pen's two sisters, but not about her own children. Her son Louis Chaufrois is only known to be a big rugby fan. His twin, Mathilde Chaufrois, is at the head of a company that supplies tents for "National Assembly" events. The eldest child of Marine Le Pen - Jean Chaufrois, is a specialist in theater costumes, write the editions “Gala“ and “Fam actual“. Marine Le Pen herself prefers to keep her children away from the spotlight.
The picture will not be complete if both wives of Jean-Marie Le Pen are not added here.
Jean-Marie Paschot, also known as Jeannie, is the second wife of Jean-Marie Le Pen. They got married in 1991. Jeannie was previously the wife of Belgian businessman Jean Garnier. She was born in 1932. Her father was a Greek painting dealer and her mother was of Dutch-French descent. Jeannie is a social person. He met Jean-Marie Le Pen through a mutual acquaintance. In 1999, Jean-Marie Le Pen considered having Jeanne at the head of the party list of the “National Front”, in case justice prevented him for some reason from leading it personally. Jeannie refused, but the fact that he intended to choose her rather than leading party cadre Bruno Maigret as leader of the list was then considered one of the reasons why Maigret later broke away from the party and founded his own formation by attracting for a while and Marie-Caroline Le Pen. Otherwise, Jeanne Le Pen is the head of the non-governmental organization "SOS Children of Iraq", which provides humanitarian aid to Iraqi children after the UN Security Council introduced an embargo against this country in 1995.
Jean-Marie Le Pen's first wife was Pierrette Lalanne. She is also the mother of his three daughters. She was born in 1935 and is the daughter of a wine merchant. Before marrying Jean-Marie Le Pen, she was the wife of actor Claude Giraud. Between her two marriages, she worked briefly as a model. He married Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1960 after they met at a gala event. In 1984, she fell in love with a journalist who came to interview her at the family estate in Saint-Cloud and left the family for him. A stormy divorce drama follows, during which Pierrette pulls out the “stained shirts” of her husband, spoke to the media about his fascist and Nazi positions and complained that he did not pay her alimony. Jean-Marie Le Pen then says that if she needs money, she should start working as a maid. After that, an angry Pierrette accepts an offer from “Playboy” and posed half-naked in a maid's uniform in 1997. All this shocked the entire Le Pen family, and Pierrette's daughters did not speak to her for years. Gradually, however, their relationship is getting better.
The Le Pen family is experiencing another shock and horror that they will remember for the rest of their lives, writes the edition "Gala". On the night of November 1-2, 1976, the cooperative on “Villa Poirier“ in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, where the family lived at the time, was rocked by an explosion. 5 kilograms of dynamite explode. 12 apartments were damaged. 6 people were injured, including a baby. The entire Le Pen family is unharmed. The blast is believed to have been aimed at Jean-Marie Le Pen. The perpetrators of the attack have never been found, but there are two versions. One is that he was motivated by the political positions of Jean-Marie Le Pen, and the other is in relation to the legacy left by Hubert Lambert to Le Pen.