Marion Maréchal-Le Pen

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen sued ‘L'Express’ for a "serious invasion of her privacy" when the magazine claimed that there was some dispute regarding the identity of her biological father. She won the case in April 2015.

She married Matthieu Decosse, a businessman and head of a hospitality company, on July 29, 2014. She first met him when he had stood for an election, but was unsuccessful. Their daughter Olympe was born in September 2014. However, they divorced in 2016.

On being questioned about her stance against homosexuals adopting babies, she said that she fought for children’s right to have a mother and a father because her biological father had abandoned her. So she knows what it is to lack a “normal” family.

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen was born on December 10, 1989 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France, to Yann Le Pen (mother) and Samuel Maréchal (father). However, there is a controversy if Samuel is her biological father. According to ‘L'Express,’ a French magazine, her biological father was Roger Auque, a journalist, who died in 2014.

She belongs to a family of politicians and had a privileged upbringing. In 1972, her maternal grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen, had founded the Front National party. Her father was the leader of Front National Youth movement (FNJ) from 1992-1999. Her aunt Marine Le Pen has been FN president since January 2011.

She became interested in politics when she was 15, and when she was 18, she became an FN member.

In the 2008 municipal elections, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen was the seventh candidate on the FN list. However, she was not elected as the FN list received only 6.29% votes. In the 2010 regional elections, she was in the second position on the FN list, yet she was not elected as the list did not achieve 10% votes.

She was doing masters in public business law from Panthéon-Assas University, but she gave up her studies to join politics full-time in 2012.

On April 25, 2012, her parliamentary candidacy in Vaucluse's 3rd constituency was confirmed. Her constituency includes the southern part of Carpentras. On June 17, 2012, she defeated the incumbent MP Jean-Michel Ferrand in the run-off, thus becoming the youngest citizen to enter the French Parliament, at the age of 22. She is the only FN member to serve in National Assembly since 1997.

In July, she became a member of FN's executive board, and made her first public speech. She was also one of the six youngest MPs of the assembly, and served as a secretary during the opening of the 14th legislature presided over by senior MP François Scellier.

She appeared as a fellow candidate on a municipal list at Sorgues, north of Avignon, in her constituency. She was in the tenth position on the list. In the first round of 2012 presidential elections, she polled 37.65%, and 44.36% in the run-off of the next legislative elections.

Marion Maréchal-Le Pen opposes same-sex marriage, as she believes that it would open the door to polygamy. She also participated in the mass demonstrations against same-sex marriage organized in by La Manif Pour Tous movement in 2013.

She says France is not an Islamic country, and Islam should not have the same place in public life as Christianity. She believes Muslims can be French if they follow the Christianity-shaped culture. She opposes djellaba clothing, wearing a veil, and cathedral-sized mosques.

She also opposes reinstatement of capital punishment, as she believes this would impose a difficult choice on the judges. She prefers the alternative of life imprisonment without parole. She has been described as someone who dresses and speaks in a modern way, but promotes social conservatism.