Marine Le Pen: A Brief Summary of Her Career
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Marine Le Pen may have succeeded her father as National Front leader, but that certainly doesn’t mean that the job was handed to her without a lot of hard work. In 1991, she completed a law degree from the University of Panthéon-Assas and then went on to do an advanced degree in criminal law in 1992.
For six years after the completion of her degree, she worked as an attorney and in 1998, she joined the National Front as the director of the party’s legal affairs. The National Front is the main opposition to France’s right-wing political parties and it was founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen (her father). In 2003, she became Vice President of the Party and in 2004, won a seat in the European Parliament.
She succeeded her father as Party Leader in 2011 and in the 2012 French elections, she won 18% of the public vote – a record for the Party. In the following years, more and more people in France became Eurosceptic and as a result in 2014, Le Pen made National Front history as the Party placed first in a national election.
The terrorist attacks on the 13th of November in 2015 which killed 130 people and wounded 350 naturally made people question the current French Government and President (Socialist Francois Hollande) and the measures they were putting in place to protect the French people. Le Pen blamed the immigration policy which allows anyone from anywhere into France and the growth of radical Islam. Consequently, more and more people leaned towards the National Front, as it seemed the only Party to want to defend the French people from these kind of attacks in future.
It’s almost guaranteed that the National Front are going to grow even more in the future. The party hailed Brexit a success and it wants the same for France and even if Le Pen cannot lead France out of the EU during her career, she will definitely be creating more obstacles for mainstream political parties in France.