Marine Le Pen, French lawyer and politician
Marion Anne Perrine "Marine" Le Pen (French: [maʁin lə pɛn]; born 5 August 1968), sometimes referred to by her initials MLP, is a French lawyer and politician who has been President of the National Rally (previously the National Front) since 2011. She has been the member of the National Assembly for the 11th constituency of Pas-de-Calais since 2017.
She is the youngest daughter of former party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and the aunt of former FN MP Marion Maréchal. Le Pen joined the FN in 1986. She was elected as a regional councillor of Nord-Pas-de-Calais (1998–2004; 2010–2015), Île-de-France (2004–2010) and Hauts-de-France (2015–2021), a Member of European Parliament (2004–2017), as well as a municipal councillor of Hénin-Beaumont (2008–2011). She won the leadership of the FN in 2011, with 67.6% of the vote, defeating Bruno Gollnisch and succeeding her father, who had been president of the party since he founded it in 1972. In 2012, she placed third in the presidential election with 17.9% of the vote, behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. She launched a second bid for the presidency at the 2017 election. She finished second in the first round of the election with 21.3% of the vote and faced Emmanuel Macron of centrist party En Marche! in the second round of voting. On 7 May 2017, she conceded after receiving approximately 33.9% of the vote in the second round. In 2020, she announced her third candidacy for the presidency in the 2022 election.
Described as more moderate than her father, Le Pen has led a movement of "de-demonisation of the National Front" to soften its image, based on renovated positions and renewed teams, as well as expelling controversial members accused of racism, antisemitism, or Pétainism. She expelled her father from the party in August 2015, after he made new controversial statements. She has also relaxed some political positions of the party, advocating for civil unions for same-sex couples instead of her party's previous opposition to legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, accepting unconditional abortion and withdrawing the death penalty from her platform. A vocal opponent of the United States and NATO, she has pledged to remove France from their spheres of influence. She was a supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin and had closer cooperation with Russia before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.Le Pen was featured by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011 and 2015. In 2016, she was ranked by Politico as the second-most influential MEP in the European Parliament, after President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.