Marine Le Pen’s niece starts own party: What it means for French far-right

The niece of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has founded her own political party aimed at becoming a new force in the country’s growing right-wing bloc.

In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro on Monday, Marion Marechal, 34, announced the launch of Identite-Libertes (Identity-Freedoms) – or IDL – of which she is president.

“I decided to launch a political movement to contribute to the victory of the national camp,” she told the French newspaper, referring to the right-wing alliance of parties which came close to seizing a majority in the recent French elections after coming first among the main three political alliances in the first round of voting on June 30.

The central and leftist blocs joined forces and selectively withdrew candidates in several areas to ensure the right wing could not win a majority in the second round, resulting in a hamstrung National Assembly with each political alliance taking about a third of the vote.

National Rally, the far-right party originally called National Front and founded by Marechal’s grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, itself bagged more than 31 percent of the vote in the National Assembly elections at the end of June, becoming France’s largest party by vote share.

While ideologically separate from National Rally, Marechal said IDL will work as an ally and support Le Pen’s presidential bid in the 2027 election.

“My objective is to work at a coalition alongside Marine Le Pen, Jordan Bardella and Eric Ciotti,” Marechal said. Bardella is the current president of the National Rally (Le Pen was president from 2011 to 2021), while Ciotti is the leader of France’s right-wing Republicans party.

Marion Marechal, aged 5 (third from left), holds the hands of her grandfather, the French far right-wing and nationalist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen at the annual demonstration of the political party he founded, the National Front (Front National – FN), and his wife, Jany, in Paris on May 1, 1995. On the far right are her mother, Yann Le Pen, and her adoptive father, Samuel Marechal. Marine Le Pen is to the right of her father [Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty Images]

Who is Marion Marechal?

Marion Jeanne Caroline Marechal is the granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front – now renamed the National Rally – and also Marine Le Pen’s father. Marechal married Italian politician Vincenzo Sofo in 2021 and the couple have one daughter, Clotilde. Marechal also has an older daughter from her first marriage to French businessman Matthieu Decosse which ended in 2016.

Marechal was initially a member of the National Rally party. She became the youngest member of the National Assembly in French history when she was elected as a member of the National Rally in 2012 at the age of 22.

In 2017, she did not seek re-election, however, and also resigned as a regional councillor, before returning to politics in 2022 to join the ranks of Eric Zemmour’s far-right party, Reconquete.

In a break from her family, in 2018 Marechal announced she was changing her name from Marion Marechal-Le Pen, dropping the surname of her grandfather Jean-Marie, known for inflammatory views on immigration and the Holocaust. She now uses only the surname of her adopted father, Samuel, who was also a member of the National Rally since his youth. He married Marechal’s mother, Yann Le Pen – sister of Marine.

In the June 2024 legislative election, Marechal headed Reconquete’s list for the European Parliament. Zemmour gave her the task of negotiating with the National Rally to form a single list of candidates for election, but she accused him of placing too many preconditions on any potential alliance and hampering it.

Marechal was elected to the European Parliament on June 9, 2024 and joined the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, a centre-right political group within the parliament. Days later, Zemmour accused Marechal of “betrayal” and expelled her from the party on June 12. Marechal said she would serve as an independent.

Marion Marechal, then the lead candidate for the French far-right party Reconquete at June’s European Parliament elections (R), and her husband, Italian politician Vincenzo Sofo (L), at the party’s European election campaign launch meeting at the Dome de Paris – Palais des Sports in Paris on March 10, 2024 [Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images]

What does her new party stand for?

The name of the party – Identité-Libertés (Identity-Freedoms) – sums up its two main policy “pillars”. On the one hand, the party says it aims to defend French identity from immigration and what it calls “Islamisation” as well as to promote France’s Christian heritage. On the other, it seeks to protect freedom of expression and free enterprise.

Marechal said the IDL would break away from the “mental socialism” that drives fiscal policies in France.

It would also be “anti-woke”, the term “woke” coming from African-American vernacular to describe someone who is aware of social inequalities such as racial injustice, sexism and denial of LGBTQ rights.

Marechal told Le Figaro her party would work to strengthen the right-wing bloc, drawing inspiration from other European success stories, namely Italy, where Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came to power as Italy’s first female prime minister as the head of a coalition of three right-wing parties in 2022.

Marechal said her split from Zemmour occurred when he made Le Pen’s National Rally and Ciotti’s Republicans party his main adversaries, while she wanted to strike an alliance that would strengthen the right-wing bloc to take on the left.

“To remain coherent, I could not follow [his] decision,” she said.

Despite her proclaimed support for her aunt, the two heirs to France’s far-right Le Pen dynasty have been long engaged in rivalry, particularly since Marine Le Pen expelled her father from the party in 2015 after he repeated his stance that the Holocaust was “a detail of history”. Marechal called the expulsion a “cruel betrayal”.

The two women have also disagreed over forming a stronger alliance between centrist parties and the right /far-right, which Marechal is in favour of but Le Pen has dismissed.

Does IDL pose a threat to the National Rally?

The new party has been formed at a time when Le Pen and other party officials go on trial for allegedly embezzling European Union funds. If found guilty, Le Pen and her co-defendants could face up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to 1 million euros ($1.1m) each.

Last month, as she arrived at the criminal tribunal in Paris, Le Pen told reporters she was confident it would be proved that no wrongdoing had taken place.

Observers do not believe the IDL will pose a major threat to the National Rally.

Posting on X, some of Zemmour’s supporters have predicted Marechal’s party will become a “satellite” of the National Rally. Others have warned of the risk of extreme fragmentation in the right-wing camp, which they fear may weaken their bloc if they remain unable to come together.

Daniel Stockemer, professor in the department of political studies at the University of Ottawa, told Al Jazeera he does not believe the IDL would be successful as a political formation.

“This attempt from Marion Marechal is more a sign of desperation,” Stockemer, whose research focuses on radical right-wing parties in Europe, said. “Founding a party by herself was the only option for her to stay active politically.”

The National Rally has so far “weathered all attempts to compromise its hegemony on the far right”, Stockemer added, adding he expected it to continue to do the same now.