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 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.