Marine Le Pen is the most prominent politician of the National Rally (RN), France's hard-right party, which leads polls by a wide margin. Her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, co-founded the party's extremist, antisemitic and xenophobic predecessor in 1972 with a former member of the Waffen-SS. She took over the movement from her father in 2011 and kicked him out of the party as part of a campaign to shed its toxic elements. Under Ms Le Pen's leadership the RN has been rebranded and scrubbed up. The number of RN seats in the 577-seat National Assembly has shot up from eight in 2017 to 123. A court has banned her from running for electoral office with immediate effect, over a European Parliament party-financing offence. The court of appeal is due to rule whether to uphold the ban; if it does, Jordan Bardella will stand in her place. The pair have agreed he would be the RN's presidential candidate in that event.
She denounced the ruling as a "political decision" and deplored the "tyranny of the judges." Donald Trump called it a "Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen". She says public-service broadcasting has "a clear problem with neutrality" and wants to largely privatise it.
She has said of the EU: "We do not want to leave the table. We want to finish the game and win, to take power in France and in Europe and give it back to the people." She opposes the EU-Mercosur trade agreement. She criticised the EU's trade deal with Mr Trump, calling it "a political, economic and moral fiasco". A narrow majority of RN supporters told pollsters they favoured a bigger defence budget.
During the 2025 political crisis over the resignation of prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, polling put the RN on top, the combined left a distant second and Emmanuel Macron's centrists badly trailing. Some analysts estimated the RN could secure 240-270 seats in a fresh election—short of an outright majority (289) but not far off.
In the 2026 mayoral elections the RN claims to have won 70 town halls, up from 13. However, Edouard Philippe emerged as a serious rival, polling neck-and-neck with Ms Le Pen and Mr Bardella on presidential favourability.
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