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National Rally Rassemblement National | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Abbreviation | RN |
| President | Jordan Bardella |
| Vice Presidents | |
| Parliamentary party leader | Marine Le Pen (National Assembly) |
| Founder | Jean-Marie Le Pen[1] |
| Founded | 5 October 1972 |
| Headquarters | 114 bis rue Michel-Ange 75016 Paris |
| Youth wing | Rassemblement national de la jeunesse |
| Security wing | Department for Protection and Security |
| Membership (2023) | 50,000[2][3] |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Right wing to far-right[A][6] |
| National affiliation | Rassemblement bleu Marine (2012–2017) |
| European affiliation | Identity and Democracy Party |
| European Parliament group | Identity and Democracy[nb 1] |
| Colours | Navy blue[nb 2] |
| National Assembly | 88 / 577 |
| Senate | 3 / 348 |
| European Parliament | 19 / 79 |
| Presidencies of Regional Councils | 0 / 17 |
| Regional Councillors | 252 / 1,758 |
| Presidencies of Departmental Councils | 0 / 101 |
| Departmental Councillors | 26 / 4,108 |
| Website | |
| rassemblementnational | |
^ A: The RN is considered part of the radical right, a subset of the far-right that does not oppose democracy.[8][9][10] | |
The National Rally (French: Rassemblement National, pronounced [ʁasɑ̃bləmɑ̃ nɑsjɔnal], RN), known as the National Front from 1972 to 2018 (French: Front National, pronounced [fʁɔ̃ nɑsjɔnal], FN), is a French nationalist and right-wing populist party in France.[11] It is the largest parliamentary opposition group in the National Assembly; it has seen its candidate reach the second round in the 2002, 2017 and 2022 presidential elections. It is an anti-immigration party, advocating significant cuts to legal immigration and protection of French identity,[12] as well as stricter control of illegal immigration. It also advocates for a 'more balanced' and 'independent' French foreign policy by opposing French military intervention in Africa and by distancing France from the American sphere of influence by leaving NATO's integrated command. It supports reform of the European Union (EU) and its related organisations. It also supports economic interventionism and protectionism, and zero tolerance of breaches of law and order.[13] The party has been accused of promoting xenophobia and antisemitism.[14]
The party was founded in 1972 to unify the French nationalist movement. Its political views are nationalist, nativist and anti-globalist. Jean-Marie Le Pen founded the party and was its leader until his resignation in 2011. While the party struggled as a marginal force for its first ten years, it has been a major force of French nationalism since 1984.[15] It has put forward a candidate at every presidential election but one since 1974. In 2002, Jean-Marie came second in the first round, but finished a distant second in the runoff to Jacques Chirac.[16] His daughter Marine Le Pen was elected to succeed him as party leader in 2012. She temporarily stepped down in 2017 in order to concentrate on her presidential candidacy; she resumed her presidency after the election.[17] She headed the party until 2021, when she temporarily resigned again. A year later, Jordan Bardella was elected as her successor.[18]
The party has seen an increase in its popularity and acceptance in French society in recent years. While her father was nicknamed the "Devil of the Republic" by mainstream media and sparked outrage for hate speech, including Holocaust denial and Islamophobia, Marine Le Pen pursued a policy of "de-demonisation" of the party by softening its image and trying to frame the party as being neither right nor left.[19] She endeavoured to extract it from its far-right roots, as well as censuring controversial members like her father, who was suspended and then expelled from the party in 2015.[20] Following her election as the leader of the party in 2011, the popularity of the FN grew.[21] By 2015, the FN had established itself as a major political party in France.[22][23] Sources traditionally labeled the party far-right.[24] However, some media outlets have started to refer to the party as "right-wing" or "nationalist right" instead, arguing that it has substantially moderated from its years under Jean-Marie Le Pen.[11]
At the FN congress of 2018, Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party Rassemblement national (National Rally),[25] and this was confirmed by a ballot of party members.[26] Formerly strongly Eurosceptic, the National Rally changed policies in 2019, deciding to campaign for a reform of the EU rather than leaving it and to keep the euro as the main currency of France (together with the CFP franc for some collectivities).[27] In 2021, Le Pen announced that she wanted to remain in the Schengen Area, citing "an attachment to the European spirit", but to reserve free movement to nationals of a European Economic Area country, excluding residents and visitors of another Schengen country.[28][29]
Le Pen reached the second round of the 2017 presidential election, receiving 33.9% of the votes in the run-off and losing to Emmanuel Macron. Again in the 2022 election, she faced Macron in the run-off, receiving 41.45% of the votes. In the 2022 parliamentary elections, the National Rally, increased the number of its MPs in the National Assembly from 7 to 89 seats.
Background
The party's ideological roots can be traced to both Poujadism, a populist, small business tax protest movement founded in 1953 by Pierre Poujade and right-wing dismay over the decision by French President Charles de Gaulle to abandon his promise of holding on to the colony of French Algeria, (many frontistes, including Le Pen, were part of an inner circle of returned servicemen known as Le cercle national des combattants).[30][31] During the 1965 presidential election, Le Pen unsuccessfully attempted to consolidate the right-wing vote around the right-wing presidential candidate Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour.[32] Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the French far-right consisted mainly of small extreme movements such as Occident, Groupe Union Défense (GUD), and the Ordre Nouveau (ON).[33]
Espousing France's Catholic and monarchist traditions, one of the primary progenitors of the party was the Action Française, founded at the end of the 19th century, and its descendants in the Restauration Nationale, a pro-monarchy group that supports the claim of the Count of Paris to the French throne.[34][35]
History
Early years
Foundation (1972–1973)
While the ON had competed in some local elections since 1970, at its second congress in June 1972 it decided to establish a new political party to contest the 1973 legislative elections.[36][37] The party was launched on 5 October 1972 under the name National Front for French Unity (Front national pour l'unité française), or Front National.[38] In order to create a broad movement, the ON sought to model the new party (as it earlier had sought to model itself) on the more established Italian Social Movement (MSI), which at the time appeared to establish a broad coalition for the Italian right. The FN adopted a French version of the MSI tricolour flame as its logo.[39][40][41] It wanted to unite the various French far-right currents, and brought together "nationals" of Le Pen's group and Roger Holeindre's Party of French Unity; "nationalists" from Pierre Bousquet's Militant movement or François Brigneau's and Alain Robert's Ordre Nouveau; the anti-Gaullist Georges Bidault's Justice and Liberty movement; as well as former Poujadists, Algerian War veterans, and some monarchists, among others.[38][42][43] Le Pen was chosen to be the first president of the party, as he was untainted with the militant public image of the ON and was a relatively moderate figure on the far-right.[44][45]
The National Front fared poorly in the 1973 legislative elections, receiving 0.5% of the national vote (although Le Pen won 5% in his Paris constituency).[46] In 1973 the party created a youth movement, the Front national de la jeunesse (National Front of the Youth, FNJ). The rhetoric used in the campaign stressed old far-right themes and was largely uninspiring to the electorate at the time.[47] Otherwise, its official program at this point was relatively moderate, differing little from the mainstream right.[48] Le Pen sought the "total fusion" of the currents in the party, and warned against crude activism.[49] The FNJ were banned from the party later that year.[50][47] The move towards the mainstream cost it many leading members and much of its militant base.[50]
In the 1974 presidential election, Le Pen failed to find a mobilising theme for his campaign.[51] Many of its major issues, such as anti-communism, were shared by most of the mainstream right.[52] Other FN issues included calls for increased French birth rates, immigration reduction (although this was downplayed), establishment of a professional army, abrogation of the Évian Accords, and generally the creation of a "French and European renaissance."[53] Despite being the only nationalist candidate, he failed to gain the support of a united far-right, as the various groups either rallied behind other candidates or called for voter abstention.[54] The campaign further lost ground when the Revolutionary Communist League published a denunciation of Le Pen's alleged involvement in torture during his time in Algeria.[54] In his first presidential election, Le Pen gained only 0.8% of the national vote.[54]
FN–PFN rivalry (1973–1981)
Following the 1974 election, the FN was obscured by the appearance of the Party of New Forces (PFN), founded by FN dissidents (largely from the ON).[55][56] Their competition weakened both parties throughout the 1970s.[55] Along with the growing influence of François Duprat and his "revolutionary nationalists", the FN gained several new groups of supporters in the late 1970s and early 1980s: Jean-Pierre Stirbois (1977) and his "solidarists", Bruno Gollnisch (1983), Bernard Antony (1984) and his Catholic fundamentalists, as well as Jean-Yves Le Gallou (1985) and the Nouvelle Droite.[57][58] Following the death of Duprat in a bomb attack in 1978, the revolutionary nationalists left the party, while Stirbois became Le Pen's deputy as his solidarists effectively ousted the neo-fascist tendency in the party leadership.[59] A radical group split off in 1980 and founded the French Nationalist Party, dismissing the FN as becoming too Zionist and Le Pen as the "puppet" of the Jews.[60] The far right was marginalised altogether in the 1978 legislative elections, although the PFN was better off.[61][62] For the first election for the European Parliament in 1979, the PFN had become part of an attempt to build a "Euro-Right" alliance of European far-right parties, and was in the end the only one of the two that contested the election.[63] It fielded Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour as its primary candidate, while Le Pen called for voter abstention.[64]
For the 1981 presidential election, both Le Pen and Pascal Gauchon of the PFN declared their intentions to run.[64] However, an increased requirement regarding obtaining signatures of support from elected officials had been introduced for the election, which left both Le Pen and Gauchon unable to stand for the election. In France, parties have to secure support from a specific number of elected officials, from a specific number of departments, in order to be eligible to run for election. In 1976, the number of required elected officials was increased fivefold from the 1974 presidential cycle, and the number of departments threefold.[64] The election was won by François Mitterrand of the Socialist Party (PS), which gave the political left national power for the first time in the Fifth Republic; he then dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap legislative election.[65] The PS attained its best ever result with an absolute majority in the 1981 legislative election.[66] This "socialist takeover" led to a radicalisation in centre-right, anti-communist, and anti-socialist voters.[67] With only three weeks to prepare its campaign, the FN fielded only a limited number of candidates and won only 0.2% of the national vote.[52] The PFN was even worse off, and the election marked the effective end of competition from the party.[52]
Jean-Marie Le Pen's leadership
Electoral breakthrough (1982–1988)
While the French party system had been dominated by polarisation and competition between the clear-cut ideological alternatives of two political blocs in the 1970s, the two blocs had largely moved towards the centre by the mid-1980s. This led many voters to perceive the blocs as more or less indistinguishable, particularly after the Socialists' "austerity turn" (tournant de la rigueur) of 1983,[68] in turn inducing them to seek out to new political alternatives.[69] By October 1982, Le Pen supported the prospect of deals with the mainstream right, provided that the FN did not have to soften its position on key issues.[70] In the 1983 municipal elections, the centre-right Rally for the Republic (RPR) and centrist Union for French Democracy (UDF) formed alliances with the FN in a number of towns.[70] The most notable result came in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, where Le Pen was elected to the local council with 11% of the vote.[70][71] Later by-elections kept media attention on the party, and it was for the first time allowed to pose as a viable component of the broader right.[72][73] In a by-election in Dreux in October, the FN won 17% of the vote.[70] With the choice of defeat to the political left or dealing with the FN, the local RPR and UDF agreed to form an alliance with the FN, creating national sensation, and together won the second round with 55% of the vote.[70][71] The events in Dreux were a monumental factor for the rise of the FN.[74]
Le Pen protested the media boycott against his party by sending letters to President Mitterrand in mid-1982.[72] After some exchanges of letters, Mitterrand instructed the heads of the main television channels to give equitable coverage to the FN.[72] In January 1984, the party made its first appearance in a monthly poll of political popularity, in which 9% of respondents held a "positive opinion" of the FN and some support for Le Pen.[72] The next month, Le Pen was for the first time invited onto a prime-time television interview programme, which he himself later deemed "the hour that changed everything".[72][75] The 1984 European elections in June came as a shock, as the FN won 11% of the vote and ten seats.[76] Notably, the election used proportional representation and was considered to have a low level of importance by the public, which played to the party's advantage.[77] The FN made inroads in both right-wing and left-wing constituencies, and finished second in a number of towns.[78] While many Socialists had arguably exploited the party in order to divide the right,[79] Mitterrand later conceded that he had underestimated Le Pen.[72] By July, 17% of opinion poll respondents held a positive opinion of the FN.[80]
By the early 1980s, the FN featured a mosaic of ideological tendencies and attracted figures who were previously resistant to the party.[80] The party managed to draw supporters from the mainstream right, including some high-profile defectors from the RPR, UDF, and the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP).[80] In the 1984 European elections, eleven of the 81 FN candidates came from these parties, and the party's list also included an Arab and a Jew (although in unwinnable positions).[80] Former collaborators were also accepted in the party, as Le Pen urged the need for "reconciliation", arguing that forty years after the war the only important question was whether or not "they wish to serve their country".[80] The FN won 8.7% overall support in the 1985 cantonal elections, and over 30% in some areas.[81]
For the 1986 legislative elections, the FN took advantage of a new proportional representation system that had been imposed by Mitterrand in order to moderate a foreseeable defeat for his PS.[81][82] In the election, the FN won 9.8% of the vote and 35 seats in the National Assembly.[81] Many of its seats could be filled by a new wave of respectable political operatives, notables, who had joined the party after its 1984 success.[83][84] The RPR won a majority with smaller centre-right parties, and thus avoided the need to deal with the FN.[81] Although it was unable to exercise any real political influence, the party could project an image of political legitimacy.[84][85] Several of its legislative proposals were extremely controversial and had a socially reactionary and xenophobic character, among them attempts to restore the death penalty, expel foreigners who "proportionally committed more crimes than the French", restrict naturalisation, introduce a "national preference" for employment, impose taxes on the hiring of foreigners by French companies, and privatise Agence France-Presse.[86] The party's time in the National Assembly effectively came to an end when Jacques Chirac reinstated the two-round system of majority voting for the next election.[87] In the regional elections held on the same day, it won 137 seats, and gained representation in 21 of the 22 French regional councils.[81] The RPR depended on FN support to win presidencies in some regional councils, and the FN won vice-presidential posts in four regions.[81]
Consolidation (1988–1997)
Le Pen's campaign for the upcoming presidential election unofficially began in the months following the 1986 election.[88] To promote his statesmanship credentials, he made trips to South East Asia, the United States, and Africa.[88] The management of the formal campaign, launched in April 1987, was entrusted to Bruno Mégret, one of the new notables.[88] With his entourage, Le Pen traversed France for the entire period and, helped by Mégret, employed an American-style campaign.[89] Le Pen's presidential campaign was highly successful; no candidates came close to rival his ability to excite audiences at rallies and boost ratings at television appearances.[88] Using a populist tone, Le Pen presented himself as the representative of the people against the "gang of four" (RPR, UDF, PS, Communist Party), while the central theme of his campaign was "national preference".[88] In the 1988 presidential election, Le Pen won an unprecedented 14.4% of the vote,[90] and double the votes from 1984.[91]
The FN was hurt in the snap 1988 legislative elections by the return two-ballot majority voting, by the limited campaign period, and by the departure of many notables.[85][92] In the election the party retained its 9.8% support from the previous legislative election, but was reduced to a single seat in the National Assembly.[92] Following some anti-Semitic comments made by Le Pen and the FN newspaper National Hebdo in the late 1980s, some valuable FN politicians left the party.[93][94] Other quarrels soon also left the party without its remaining member of the National Assembly.[95] In November 1988, general secretary Jean-Pierre Stirbois, who, together with his wife Marie-France, had been instrumental in the FN's early electoral successes, died in a car accident, leaving Bruno Mégret as the unrivalled de facto FN deputy leader.[88][95] The FN only got 5% in the 1988 cantonal elections, while the RPR announced it would reject any alliance with the FN, now including at local level.[96] In the 1989 European elections, the FN held on to its ten seats as it won 11.7% of the vote.[97]
In the wake of FN electoral success, the immigration debate, growing concerns over Islamic fundamentalism, and the fatwa against Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, the 1989 affaire du foulard was the first major test of the relations between the values of the French Republic and Islam.[98] Following the event, surveys found that French public opinion was largely negative towards Islam.[99] In a 1989 legislative by-election in Dreux, FN candidate Marie-France Stirbois, campaigning on an anti-Islamism platform, returned a symbolic FN presence to the National Assembly.[100] By the early 1990s, some mainstream politicians began employing anti-immigration rhetoric.[101] In the first round of the 1993 legislative elections the FN soared to 12.7% of the overall vote, but did not win a single seat due to the nature of the electoral system (if the election had used proportional representation, it would have won 64 seats).[102][103] In the 1995 presidential election, Le Pen rose slightly to 15% of the vote.[104]
The FN won an absolute majority (and thus the mayorship) in three cities in the 1995 municipal elections: Toulon, Marignane, and Orange.[105] (It had won a mayorship only once before, in the small town of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard in 1989.)[106] Le Pen then declared that his party would implement its "national preference" policy, with the risk of provoking the central government and being at odds with the laws of the Republic.[106] The FN pursued interventionist policies with regards to the new cultural complexion of their towns by directly influencing artistic events, cinema schedules, and library holdings, as well as cutting or halting subsidies for multicultural associations.[107] The party won Vitrolles, its fourth town, in a 1997 by-election, where similar policies were pursued.[108] Vitrolles' new mayor Catherine Mégret (who ran in place of her husband Bruno)[109] went further in one significant measure, introducing a special 5,000-franc allowance for babies born to at least one parent of French (or EU) nationality.[108] The measure was ruled illegal by a court, also giving her a suspended prison sentence, a fine, and a two-year ban from public office.[108]
Turmoil and split of the MNR (1997–2002)
In the 1997 legislative elections, the FN polled its best-ever result with 15.3% support in metropolitan France.[110][111] The result also showed that the party had become established enough to compete without its leader, who had decided not to run in order to focus on the 2002 presidential election.[112] Although it won only one seat in the National Assembly (Toulon),[113] it advanced to the second round in 132 constituencies.[114] The FN was arguably more influential now than it had been in 1986 with its 35 seats.[115] While Bruno Mégret and Bruno Gollnisch, favoured tactical cooperation with a weakened centre-right following the left's victory, Le Pen rejected any such compromise.[116] In the tenth FN national congress in 1997, Mégret stepped up his position in the party as its rising star and a potential leader following Le Pen.[117] Le Pen however refused to designate Mégret as his successor-elect, and instead made his wife Jany the leader of the FN list for the upcoming European election.[118]
Mégret and his faction left the FN in January 1999 and founded the National Republican Movement (MNR), effectively splitting the FN in half at most levels.[119][120] Many of those who joined the new MNR had joined the FN in the mid-1980s, in part from the Nouvelle Droite, with a vision of building bridges to the parliamentary right.[119] Many had also been particularly influential in intellectualising the FN's policies on immigration, identity and "national preference", and, following the split, Le Pen denounced them as "extremist" and "racist".[119] Support for the parties was almost equal in the 1999 European election, as the FN polled its lowest national score since 1984 with just 5.7%, and the MNR won 3.3%.[121] The effects of the split, and competition from more moderate nationalists, had left their combined support lower than the FN result in 1984.[122]
Presidential run-off (2002)
For the 2002 presidential election, opinion polls had predicted a run-off between incumbent President Chirac and PS candidate Lionel Jospin.[123][124] The shock was thus great when Le Pen unexpectedly outperformed Jospin (by 0.7%) in the first round, placing second and advancing to the runoff.[124] This resulted in the first presidential run-off since 1969 without a leftist candidate and the first ever with a candidate of the far-right.[125] To Le Pen's advantage, the election campaign had increasingly focused on law and order issues, helped by media attention on a number of violent incidents.[126] Jospin had also been weakened due to the competition between an exceptional number of leftist parties.[127] Nevertheless, Chirac did not even have to campaign in the second round, as widespread anti-Le Pen protests from the media and public opinion culminated on May Day, with an estimated 1.5 million demonstrators across France.[128] Chirac also refused to debate with Le Pen, and the traditional televised debate was cancelled.[129] In the end, Chirac won the presidential run-off with an unprecedented 82.2% of the vote and with 71% of his votes—according to polls—cast simply "to block Le Pen".[129] Following the presidential election, the main centre-right parties merged to form the broad-based Union for a Popular Movement (UMP).[130] The FN failed to hold on to Le Pen's support for the 2002 legislative elections, in which it got 11.3% of the vote.[131] It nevertheless outpolled Mégret's MNR, which won a mere 1.1% support, even though it had fielded the same number of candidates.[132]
Decline (2003–2010)
A new electoral system of two-round voting had been introduced for the 2004 regional elections, in part in an attempt to reduce the FN's influence in regional councils.[133] The FN won 15.1% of the vote in metropolitan France, almost the same as in 1998, but its number of councillors was almost halved due to the new electoral system.[134] For the 2004 European elections, too, a new system less favourable to the FN had been introduced.[135] The party regained some of its strength from 1999, earning 9.8% of the vote and seven seats.[135]
For the 2007 presidential election, Le Pen and Mégret agreed to join forces. Le Pen came fourth in the election with 11% of the vote, and the party won no seats in the legislative election of the same year. The party's 4.3% support was the lowest score since the 1981 election and only one candidate, Marine Le Pen in Pas de Calais, reached the runoff (where she was defeated by the Socialist incumbent). These electoral defeats partly accounted for the party's financial problems. Le Pen announced the sale of the FN headquarters in Saint-Cloud, Le Paquebot, and of his personal armoured car.[136] Twenty permanent employees of the FN were also dismissed in 2008.[137] In the 2010 regional elections the FN appeared to have re-emerged on the political scene after surprisingly winning almost 12% of the overall vote and 118 seats.[138]
Marine Le Pen's leadership
Revival of the FN (2011–2012)
Jean-Marie Le Pen announced in September 2008 that he would retire as FN president in 2010.[123] Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen and FN executive vice-president Bruno Gollnisch campaigned for the presidency to succeed Le Pen,[123] with Marine's candidacy backed by her father.[123] On 15 January 2011, it was announced that Marine Le Pen had received the two-thirds vote needed to become the new leader of the FN.[139][140] She sought to transform the FN into a mainstream party by softening its xenophobic image.[123][139][140] Opinion polls showed the party's popularity increase under Marine Le Pen, and in the 2011 cantonal elections the party won 15% of the overall vote (up from 4.5% in 2008). However, due to the French electoral system, the party only won 2 of the 2,026 seats up for election.[141]
At the end of 2011, the National Front withdrew from the far-right Alliance of European National Movements and joined the more moderate European Alliance of Freedom. In October 2013, Bruno Gollnisch and Jean-Marie Le Pen resigned from their position in the AENM.
For the 2012 presidential election, opinion polls showed Marine Le Pen as a serious challenger, with a few polls even suggesting that she could win the first round of the election.[142][143] In the event, Le Pen came third in the first round, scoring 17.9% – the best showing ever in a presidential election for the FN at that time.
In the 2012 legislative election, the National Front won two seats: Gilbert Collard and Marion Maréchal.[144][145][146]
In two polls about presidential favourites in April and May 2013,[147] Marine le Pen polled ahead of president François Hollande but behind Nicolas Sarkozy.[147]
Electoral successes (2012–2017)
In the municipal elections held on 23 and 30 March 2014, lists officially supported by National Front won mayoralties in 12 cities: Beaucaire, Cogolin, Fréjus, Hayange, Hénin-Beaumont, Le Luc, Le Pontet, Mantes-la-Ville, the 7th arrondissement of Marseille, Villers-Cotterêts, Béziers and Camaret-sur-Aigues. While some of these cities were in southern France (like Fréjus) which traditionally votes more for right-wing parties than the rest of the country, others were located in northern France, where Socialist Party was strong until 2010s. Following the municipal elections, the National Front had, in cities of over 1,000 inhabitants, 1,546 and 459 councilors at two different levels of local government.[148] The international media described the results as "historic",[149][150][151] and "impressive", although the International Business Times suggested that "hopes for real political power remain a fantasy" for the National Front.[152]
The National Front received 4,712,461 votes in the 2014 European Parliament election, finishing first with 24.86% of the vote and 24 of France's 74 seats.[153] This was said to be "the first time the anti-immigrant, anti-EU party had won a nationwide election in its four-decade history."[154] The party's success came as a shock in France and the EU.[155][156]
Presidential and parliamentary election, rebranding (2017–2022)
On 24 April 2017, a day after the first round of the presidential election, Marine Le Pen announced that she would temporarily step down as the party's leader in an attempt to unite voters.[17] In the second round of voting, Le Pen was defeated 66.1% to 33.9% by her rival Emmanuel Macron of En Marche![157]
During the following parliamentary elections, the FN received 13.02% of the vote, which represented a disappointment compared to the 13.07% of the 2012 elections. The party appeared to have suffered from the demobilisation of its voters from the previous vote. However, eight deputies were elected (six FN and two affiliated), the best number for the FN in a parliamentary election using a majoritarian electoral system since its creation (proportional representation was used in the 1986 elections). Marine Le Pen was elected to the National Assembly for the first time, and Gilbert Collard was re-elected. Ludovic Pajot became the youngest member of the French parliament at 23.
In late 2017, Florian Philippot split from FN and formed The Patriots, due to the FN weakening its position on leaving the EU and abandoning the Euro.[158]
At the conclusion of the party congress in Lille on 11 March 2018, Marine Le Pen proposed renaming the party to Rassemblement national (National Rally) while keeping the flame as its logo. The new name was put to a vote of party members.[25] Rassemblement national had already been used as the name of a French party, the Rassemblement National Français, led by the radical right lawyer Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour. His presidential campaign in 1965 was managed by Jean-Marie Le Pen.[159] The name had also been used by the FN previously, for its parliamentary group between 1986 and 1988. However, the name change faced opposition from an already-existing party named "Rassemblement national", whose president, Igor Kurek, described it as "Gaullist and republican right": the party had previously registered its name with the National Institute of Industrial Property in 2013.[160][161] On 1 June, Le Pen announced that the name change was approved by party adherents with 80.81% in favour.[26]
During that party congress, Steve Bannon, former advisor to Donald Trump before and after his election, gave what has been described as a "populist pep talk".[162] Bannon advised the party members to "Let them call you racist, let them call you xenophobes, let them call you nativists. Wear it like a badge of honor. Because every day, we get stronger and they get weaker. ... History is on our side and will bring us victory." Bannon's remarks brought the members to their feet.[163][164][165]
In January 2019, ex-Sarkozy minister Thierry Mariani and former conservative lawmaker Jean-Paul Garraud, left Les Republicains (LR), joining the National Rally.[166]
During a 2021 debate Marine Le Pen was called "soft" on Islam by the Minister of the Interior in Macron's government, Gérald Darmanin.[167] Marine Le Pen has also called for a "national unity government" that would include people such as Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, former LR officials, and souverainistes on the left, such as former economy minister Arnaud Montebourg.[168]
In the months before the 2021 French regional elections political commentators noted an increased moderation in the party in order to attract conservative voters,[169] as well as a new image of the party as a force of "la Droite populaire" or the Social Right.[170][171] The party fared badly in these elections.[172]
In the 2022 French presidential election, Le Pen again reached the second round with 23.15% of the votes. Nonetheless she was ultimately defeated by incumbent Macron, receiving 41.45% of the votes in the run-off.[173]
In the 2022 French legislative election, the party received 18.68% of the votes in the first round[174] and won 89 seats in the National Assembly in the second round,[175] an increase on the previous total of eight seats. Polling had indicated that the party would win only 15 to 45 seats. The 89 seats enabled National Rally to form a parliamentary group (for which 15 deputies are required) for the first time since 1986, when the national assembly was elected by proportional voting. The result made the party the third largest party in the assembly and the largest parliamentary opposition group.[176]
Jordan Bardella's leadership (from 2022)
Bardella was elected president of RN on 5 November 2022, ending Marine Le Pen's period as president of the party. Le Pen remained president of RN's parliamentary group.[18]
Political profile
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