Is it fair to call Marine Le Pen a far-right figure in France?

Marine Le Pen sensationally announced her candidacy for the 2027 presidential election last week, following a ruling from the Paris appeals court over her conviction for embezzling €2.8 million of EU funds alongside several colleagues in the Rassemblement National.

The court upheld the 2025 ruling but reduced the sentences, clearing the way for Ms Le Pen to run and bring a further appeal to France’s highest judicial court. 

She will represent the ‘far-right’ Rassemblement National (RN) for the fourth consecutive presidential election cycle. 

This is despite suggestions that Jordan Bardella should have taken the reins for the party at the election.

Several recent polls have placed him as more popular than Ms Le Pen, and see her recent court case as detrimental to her popularity.

How should party be classified?

Debate continues to simmer however, on whether the party’s description as ‘far-right’ should continue to be used by politicians, the media, and the voting population.

The party has consistently argued in recent years that it should no longer be labelled as a ‘far-right’ (extrême-droite, used as ‘far-right’ in Anglophone media) political entity in France.

It argues it now represents the mainstream ‘right’ bloc in the French political sphere, both an attack against Les Républicains (the current iteration of France’s traditional right-wing party) and a genuine conviction that it is not a fringe group as other ‘far-right’ groups are.

Generally of course, this is a matter of personal interpretation. 

The party has undoubtedly undergone a strenuous detoxification process to break from the weighty shackles of the Front National (the former name of the party) and Jean-Marie Le Pen years, blighted by extremist ideology, racism, and anti-semitism. 

When Ms Le Pen was elected Front National president in 2011 she sought to ‘de-demonise’ the party in its entirety, including throwing her father and some of his staunchest and most controversial allies out.

During her presidency the Front National underwent a name change to the Rassemblement National (National Rally), a modernisation and rebranding strategy, and incorporated a far more professional communications team.

Now, the party machinery is as slick as any of its competitors.

The RN is also now a de facto mainstream party in French politics, and for at least a decade has been far more than a fringe force at national and European elections, gradually increasing its vote share in elections of all types.

Its victory in the 2024 European elections, and its performance in the 2024 legislative elections (it became the largest single-party bloc in the Assemblée nationale but the group lagged behind coalitions between the left/far-left and centre/centre-right) only reasserted this. 

Current opinion polls also point towards the party as well ahead of all its rivals in the 2027 race, coming out on top in essentially all hypothetical scenarios for the second round (if no single candidate received 50% of the vote during the first round of April 18, the top two go into a run-off on May 2). 

What about its policies?

In terms of its policies too, whether the group deserves to be called ‘far-right’ is again largely a matter of personal belief. 

The RN has softened on many of its most controversial stances since Ms Le Pen’s election in 2011, and continues to do so under current president Jordan Bardella.

In the 2002 presidential election where Jean-Marie Le Pen famously made the second round (leading to a ‘republican front’ of all other parties voting against him), his election manifesto included a total ban on immigration into France, returning the national currency to the Franc, and ending benefits for non-French citizens.

In cities where the town held its first mayorships in the 1990s (it now heads several towns following the 2026 municipal elections), policies including an end to inclusive school meals for Jewish and Muslim children and bans on libraries subscribing to left-wing newspapers were introduced.

Certain cornerstone social policies of the era remain – national preference for French citizens to obtain benefits, jobs, and social housing before immigrants being the most notable – but in other areas have been softened. 

The party no longer calls for France to leave the EU, but has adopted a Eurosceptic position and wants to change the bloc from the inside in comradeship with other politically similar groups in Europe. 

It wants to significantly cut back on both legal and illegal immigration, but does not want a blanket ban on immigration into France.

The party is yet to reveal its 2027 manifesto, but commentators are eager to see whether economic policies remain similar to previous years. 

The party is traditionally nationalist in its economic view, with protectionist, pro-French policies including nationalisation and protection of (French) workers’ rights. 

In recent years however, the party has cut policies such as direct wage increases for low-income workers (replaced with a variety of purchasing power measures), ended its supposed ‘anti-boss’ stance and preferential treatment for small businesses, and no longer widely supports tax increases on the wealthiest households.

Its stance on the retirement age in France is also unclear, and will only be made fully clear in its 2027 election manifesto.

A new wing of the party led by Mr Bardella, 30 is more free market in its approach however, looking towards neoliberalism while maintaining the party’s anti-immigration stance. 

The party wants to cut social spending in many areas, but protect benefits for certain French groups.

Ultimately, the RN has spent years flitting between positions on both ends of the economic spectrum as it looks to find the perfect mix for its programme (or, if you are a cynic, the set of policies to maximise vote share).

But are they ‘officially’ far-right? 

This all goes to show that a definitive label cannot be placed on a party that aims to transcend the long-held political spectrum of left- and right-wing.

In aiming to throw off the far-right label, it has spent years claiming it ‘is neither left nor right’.

Officially however, the group is labelled far-right in France, much to its chagrin. 

In 2023, the party lodged an appeal against the French government after the RN was listed as ‘extrême-droite’ for that year’s Senatorial elections in a circular by the Interior Ministry (a standard practice labelling all confirmed parties and party-aligned candidates prior to an election in France).

The party argued this was unfair when rival parties La France Insoumise and the French Communist Party were only labelled ‘left’ (gauche) and not far-left (extrême-gauche). It is worth noting that in 2026 the former was relabelled as far left. 

The RN row was taken all the way to the Conseil d'Etat (Council of State) who ruled that the classification was correct. This was not a foregone conclusion, as other candidates labelled as far-right have previously successfully campaigned for this to be changed.

At all elections since 2024, the RN has continued to be labelled as far-right, and this is expected to be the case in 2027. 

While media outlets are free to label parties as they wish, many international organisations tend to follow the official government labels. 

This is also our policy at The Connexion, which is why we continue to refer to the group as ‘far-right’.