French politician Marine Le Pen is the most famous and potentially the most consequential New Right leader in Europe. Having reformed her father’s antisemitic National Front party and rebranded it as Rassemblement National, Le Pen was due to be its presidential candidate in two years’ time—an election that, until recently, she was expected to win.

Such a result would have profound implications for the future of the European Union. Since the EU’s inception, French and German leaders have pursued ever-closer economic and political integration on the continent. Marine Le Pen, on the other hand believes that politics is rooted—and must remain sovereign—in the nation state. During a December 2024 interview with the Spanish daily El País, she hammered this point home: “I am deeply Eurosceptic. I am not against Europe, but I consider the way it currently operates to be anti-democratic, anti-national, and completely contrary to the sovereignty of nations.” 

Le Pen is also committed to cutting immigration, particularly Islamic immigration, and her rhetoric on this topic has occasionally landed her in trouble. In 2015, she was prosecuted for (and then acquitted of) “incitement to discrimination over people’s religious beliefs” after she compared Muslims praying in public to the Nazi occupation of France.  During a debate with President Macron before the last election, she confirmed that she would seek to ban Islamic headscarves in all public spaces.