Marion Maréchal Le Pen

Family background

She was born on 10 December 1989 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Yvelines, Île-de-France.

Her grandfather Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was the honorary chairman of the FN prior to his expulsion in August 2015, founded this French nationalist party on 5 October 1972. Her aunt Marine Le Pen has been the president of the Front National since 16 January 2011. Her mother Yann Le Pen, Jean-Marie Le Pen's second daughter, does not carry out any official duties within the FN. Her father Samuel Maréchal had been the leader of the Front National Youth movement (FNJ) for seven years (1992–1999). She featured with her grandfather in a campaign poster at the age of two.

In a book entitled The Conquerors (Les Conquérantes) launched on 18 November 2013, the French journalist Christine Clerc (fr) revealed that Samuel Maréchal is not her biological father. On 7 November 2013, the French weekly news magazine L'Express disclosed the identity of her birth father, Roger Auque, a Mossad agent and investigative journalist who died in September 2014. On 8 November, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen officially announced that she had asked her lawyer to sue L'Express for a "serious invasion of her privacy".

Maréchal-Le Pen married businessman Matthieu Decosse on 29 July 2014, at the Saint-Cloud town hall. Their daughter was born that September. They divorced in 2016.

Academic studies

Until 2012, she was enrolled in Panthéon-Assas University's masters of public business law. On 14 November 2012, she wrote in an official statement that she had decided to put aside her studies in order to dedicate herself to her office.

Political career (2008–2013)

About her early interest in politics, she explained: "Contrary to what everyone thinks, in my family we didn’t talk about politics at home and we were free to make our own choices. I became interested in politics around 15 or 16 and in various approaches, not necessarily FN". As a teenager, she once went to a meeting addressed by Nicolas Sarkozy "out of curiosity" because he "intrigued" her. She added: "I very quickly came down to earth." At the age of 18, she became a member of the FN.

Early career (2008–2010)

In the 2008 municipal elections, she was a candidate in seventh position on the FN list in Saint-Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine. She was not elected since the FN list only got 6.29% with one municipal councillor elected from the first round.

In the 2010 regional elections, she figured in second position on the FN departmental list in the Yvelines, Île-de-France. Marie-Christine Arnautu's FN list, which polled 9.29% in the whole of Île-de-France in the first round, could not take part in the run-off given that a list must cross a threshold of 10% of the valid votes at a regional level. Because of the process of elimination, she was not elected in the Île-de-France's regional council.

Youngest MP in modern history (2012)

Her parliamentary candidacy in Vaucluse's 3rd constituency was publicly confirmed on 25 April 2012, in between the first round and run-off of the presidential election. After her candidacy was made official by the FN nomination committee, she then campaigned in this constituency which includes the southern part of Carpentras. In the first round of the presidential elections, Marine Le Pen had achieved her highest national performance in Vaucluse (27.03%) and most notably in this constituency (31.50%) where she outdistanced the UMP incumbent president Nicolas Sarkozy (27.60%).

In the run-off on 17 June 2012, she defeated the incumbent MP Jean-Michel Ferrand who had continuously sat in the National Assembly for twenty-six years (Rally for the Republic: 1986–2002, Union for a Popular Movement: 2002–2012). At the age of 22, she became the youngest citizen to enter the French Parliament in modern political history (Louis Antoine de Saint-Just was at 24 years old the former youngest MP in 1791).

She is the only member of the National Front since 1997 to serve in the National Assembly. A member of the FN from 1972 to 2005 and an MP for Vaucluse under the eighth legislature (1986–1988), Jacques Bompard, was also elected as an MP for Vaucluse's 4th constituency. Gilbert Collard, a member of the Rassemblement bleu Marine, a political association who supports Marine Le Pen, was also elected as an MP.

Rise within the FN (2012)

In early July 2012 she became a member of the National Front's executive board. On 23 September 2012, she made her first public speech in front of 1,000 participants at the FN summer school in La Baule-Escoublac.

Local politics: Sorgues (2013–2014)

During a press conference held on 30 October 2013, she officially announced her appearance as a fellow candidate on a municipal list at Sorgues, a town of 18,000 inhabitants located to the north of Avignon in the western part of her constituency. She decided to figure in tenth position on this local list led by Gérard Gérent, then an independent councillor belonging to the UMP municipal majority and a former deputy mayor of Sorgues.

In the first round of the 2012 presidential elections, Marine Le Pen had polled 36.02% at Sorgues whereas Marion Maréchal-Le Pen got there 37.65% in the first round and 44.36% in the run-off of the following legislative elections.

In the first round on 23 March 2014, the FN list led by Gérard Gérent, which was defeated by the one of the UMP incumbent mayor Thierry Lagneau, came second with 33.80% (2,861 votes) with the election of five municipal councillors and two community councillors. Consequently, she was not elected as a municipal councillor at Sorgues.

Regional candidacy in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (2015)

In April 2015, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen was chosen by her party to be the leading FN candidate in the southeastern region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur in that year's regional elections, after her grandfather was expelled for his remarks on the Holocaust. She did not support his expulsion. The elections came a month after an Islamist terror attack which killed 130 people in Paris. Maréchal-Le Pen reacted on television by declaring that "Today, we can see that immigration has become favorable terrain for the development of Islamism".

In the first round of voting, she won 40.55% of the vote, becoming one of six FN candidates to lead a region. Socialist candidate Christophe Castaner then withdrew, to avoid splitting the vote for The Republicans' mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi. In the second round of voting, no FN candidate won a region, with Maréchal-Le Pen losing to Estrosi by 54.78% to 45.22%. She got the best result for a National Front candidate, Marine Le Pen obtaining 42% in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie region.

Political views

Her political, cultural and foreign policy views reflect the general consensus of her party.

Social positions

She asserts that her party has supported the defense of the family for a very long time. Along with Gilbert Collard and other FN senior executives, she took part in the mass demonstrations against same-sex marriage organized in Paris by La Manif Pour Tous movement in the first half of the year 2013.

Maréchal-Le Pen believes that Muslims can only be French if they follow the Christian culture, saying that "In our country, we don’t wear djellaba clothing, we don’t wear a veil and we don’t impose cathedral-sized mosques".

She is opposed to the reinstatement of capital punishment: "In a private capacity, I am against the reinstatement of capital punishment, since this would impose an extremely difficult choice on judges. And whatever happens, the horrifying possibility of a miscarriage of justice is ever-present, no matter how minimally. I prefer the alternative of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole."

Academic Cécile Alduy described Maréchal-Le Pen as a "paradoxical character" who dresses and speaks in a modern way while promoting social conservatism. Conservative American former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin praised Maréchal-Le Pen for her societal beliefs, and compared her to Joan of Arc. Latest Counselor to the President and former executive chair of Breitbart News Steve Bannon also praised her, referring to her as "the new rising star"; afterwards Maréchal Le-Pen said on Twitter that she was willing to work with him.

Foreign policy and EU issues

She is a member of the parliamentary friendship groups France–Russia and France−Ivory Coast.

On 10 December 2012, she took part in an international parliamentary forum organized at Moscow by the State Duma. On 22 January 2013, she was present in the Reichstag at the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Élysée Treaty by French President Charles de Gaulle and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. In a written statement, she said that the treaty was originally based on the cooperation and partnership between two sovereign states and denounced the "forced march towards a German federal Europe".

On 29 September 2013, she attended a political event organized by the Vlaams Belang in Boom, near Antwerp. On this occasion, she explained: "It is important that a front of patriotic and Euro-critical parties form in sight of European elections, which is the case, and get some good results in order to lead resistance to Euro and globalism".

Parliamentary career

Along with Gilbert Collard, she introduced on 7 December 2012 a constitutional private member's bill concerning the appointment of the members of the Constitutional Council of France.

For the beginning of the fourteenth legislature, she cosigned four private member's bills including one constitutional forbidding marriage between same-sex persons and one organic which aims at enforcing the article 68 of the Constitution of France establishing a process of impeachment for the President of the Republic.

According to the rules of the National Assembly, an unregistered MP can question the government orally every eight sessions. She asked three oral questions for the beginning of the legislature: in 2013, to Manuel Valls, Minister of the Interior about the policy regarding Romani people and to Marisol Touraine, Minister of Health and Social Affairs about the fight against welfare fraud; in 2014, to Nicole Bricq, Minister for Foreign Trade about the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.

In a written parliamentary question addressed in May 2013 to Valérie Fourneyron, Minister of Sports, Youth Affairs, Popular Education and Community life, she drew her attention to the poor treatment rugby league receives in France from the government and the media, regretting the banning of this sport during the Vichy regime.

In April 2015, because of his intense anti-FN campaign in the departmental elections, Maréchal-Le Pen criticized the "cretinous contempt" ("mépris crétin") of Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls in parliament. Valls responded with a trembling hand and an apparent fury. After it had become a viral video, she explained it was a reference to Michel Onfray who has also called Valls a "crétin" when the Prime Minister has accused him of "losing his landmarks".

Political mandate

One of the six youngest MPs of the new assembly, she served on 26 June 2012 as a secretary during the opening of the fourteenth legislature presided over by the most senior MP François Scellier.

She has been a Non-Attached MP since 20 June 2012. Her bench (number 67) is located between the ones of Gilbert Collard (number 66, on her "right") and Jacques Bompard (number 68, on her "left"). The National Assembly has included eight unregistered MPs since 30 August 2013.