| Led by Jean-Marie Le Pen
Having won through to the second round of the French presidential elections in May 2002, Le Pen scored 17.9 per cent of the vote. In the first round, Le Pen came second out of 16 candidates, with 16.9 per cent of the vote (4.8m voters). However, the dramatic results in the French presidential elections were not matched by sweeping gains for the FN in the June 2002 general election. The FN failed to gain a single seat. In the first-round of voting, the FN scored 11.1 per cent of the vote. In the second round, it scored 1.85 per cent of the vote which under the French electoral system translates into not a single electoral representative in parliament. In the June 2004 European parliamentary elections, the FN, in a list headed by Le Pen's daughter Marine, won 9.81 per cent of votes and now has ten seats. In March 2004's regional elections it scored an average of 13 per cent of the vote in the second round in the 19 regions in which it qualified to stand. In Alsace, Provence-Alpes-Cote D'Azur and Nord Pas-de-Calais it scored over 19 per cent. But unlike in the 1998 regional elections when centre-Right administrations made alliances with the FN, the Left has made sweeping gains and controls 19 out of 22 regional councils, thus keeping the FN out of local power-sharing despite its having expanded into new regions of the country. In cantonal elections, the FN vote dropped by 5 per cent compared with the 1998 results. The most well-known and well-established of the European extreme-Right parties, the FN suffered a debilitating split in 1999 when its former deputy leader, Bruno Mégret left to form the Mouvement National Républicain. Few would have predicted then that in May 2002 Le Pen would achieve the highest score ever recorded by the French extreme-Right in a presidential election. While Le Pen has been convicted of anti-Semitism on a number of occasions, the FN has successfully mounted legal challenges against those who describe it as fascist. Anti-Arab and anti-Semitic, the FN's campaigns for national preference have set the tone for other extreme-Right parties across Europe. It was the first to suggest a maternity bonus be awarded to the mothers of French babies and, at a regional level, has lobbied for cultural subsidies to be given to only French and not 'cosmopolitan' groups. Its campaign against globalisation is subtly linked to its critique of multiculturalism. |
| Led by Bruno Mégret
Political party formed after after a split with the FN in 1999, which centred around the personalities of Jean Marie Le Pen and the MNR's present leader Buno Mégret, who was formally the deputy leader of the FN and, prior to this, a member of the RPR. The MNR's 'hate targets' are largely the same as the FN's - it is a party that is anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism and anti-Islam. In the June 1999 European parliamentary elections, the MNR, with 3.29 per cent of the vote (575,940 votes), failed to break the five per cent threshold for sending representatives to Europe. It fared relatively well, though, in the March 2001 local, municipal and regional elections and, as such, cannot be easily dismissed. The MNR lost control of its remaining stronghold Vitrolles (Bouches-du-Rhône) in an election in October 2002. |