Jordan Bardella
Jordan Bardella is a French politician who has been the president of the National Rally since 2022, after serving as acting president from September 2021 to November 2022 and as vice-president from 2019 to 2022. Bardella has also served as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019, when he was the lead candidate for the RN in the European Parliament election, and has been a regional councillor of Île-de-France since 2015 but resigned from his mandate in 2025.
Before becoming acting president of the RN, Bardella served as vice-president from 2019 to 2021 and the party's spokesman from 2017 to 2019. From 2018 to 2021, he was also president of its youth wing, the Génération Nation, later renamed Rassemblement National de la Jeunesse.
In June–July 2024, Bardella led the RN-dominated coalition into the 2024 French legislative election which resulted in historic gains for the far-right though significantly below expectations. Shortly after the election, Bardella was elected as chairman of the new Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament.
Early life and education
Jordan Bardella was born on 13 September 1995 in the relatively underprivileged area of Drancy, Seine-Saint-Denis, northeast of Paris, as an only child.Bardella was predominantly raised by his single mother, a kindergarten assistant, Luisa Bertelli-Motta, born in 1962 in Turin, Piedmont. His father Olivier Bardella is a small-medium business owner specializing in beverage vending machines.
Bardella grew up in a local council tower block in Drancy, "in the eighth floor of a drab high-rise tower." Bardella claims that, "like many families who live in the neighbourhood", he was "confronted with violence at an early age" and saw how his "mum had difficulty making ends meet". His father was a business owner, living in the wealthier suburb of Montmorency, and Bardella spent weekends and Wednesdays there. Critics mention that his father had some wealth when Bardella focuses on the social difficulties he had to face growing up in France's poorest department, a social hotspot with the highest proportion of immigrants.
Bardella received a high school diploma with distinction in economics and social sciences at the semi-private Catholic lycée Jean-Baptiste-de-La-Salle. After failing the entrance exam for Sciences Po, Bardella studied geography at Paris-Sorbonne University but dropped out to focus on politics.
Beginnings in the National Front (2012–2017)
In 2012, Bardella became a member of the National Front at age 16, and has said he joined "more for Marine Le Pen than for the National Front". He then became the FN department secretary of Seine-Saint-Denis in 2014 at age 19, making him the party's youngest ever departmental official. From 16 February to 30 June 2015, Bardella worked as parliamentary assistant to FN Member of the European Parliament Jean-François Jalkh. During this period, political observers began to consider him a leading figure on issues in the French banlieues within the FN.Bardella ran in the 2015 departmental elections to represent the commune of Tremblay-en-France. He and his fellow candidate, Christine Prus, lost in the second round with 41% of the vote. In the 2015 regional elections, he was a candidate at the head of the FN list in Seine-Saint-Denis and was elected to the Regional Council of Île-de-France.
In January 2016, Bardella launched the organization Banlieues Patriotes. The group sought to "break with the politics of the city and reach out to voters in the forgotten territories of the Republic." He then became part of Marine Le Pen's campaign team in the 2017 presidential election, in which she finished second. Bardella was a candidate for Seine-Saint-Denis's 12th constituency in the legislative elections that year, and was eliminated in the first round with 15% of the vote.
Vice-President of the National Rally and Member of the European Parliament (2017–2021)
After the FN's defeat in the 2017 presidential election and the resignation of vice-president Florian Philippot, Bardella was appointed party spokesman alongside Sébastien Chenu and Julien Sanchez. The next year, Le Pen also appointed him president of the Front National de la Jeunesse, which later became Génération Nation.At age 23, Bardella was designated as the first candidate on the National Rally list for the 2019 European Parliament election in France. He was called a "puppet of Marine Le Pen" by Libération and seen as inexperienced by many voters. Nevertheless, the RN finished the election in first place with 23 seats and 23.3% of the popular vote, ahead of President Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche! Bardella thus became the second-youngest MEP in European Union history after Ilka Schröder of Germany, who was elected at 21. Along with the rest of the FN delegation, he sits with the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament. He is also a member of the European Parliament Committee on Petitions.
Bardella was named second vice-president of the RN on 16 June 2019, and first vice-president in 2021. He headed the RN list in the 2021 French regional elections in Île-de-France, receiving 13.8% of the vote in the first round and 10.8% in the second. By contrast, the right-wing list led by Valérie Pécresse won with 46% of the vote. Journalist Richard Werly attributed the defeat to Bardella's "inability to find a convincing regional angle despite his familial connections " and "lack of depth in a university-educated region, having abandoned his post-secondary studies." An opposition member, he resigned from his mandate in February 2025 in a context of high absenteeism rates.
President of the National Rally (2022–present)
Bardella became acting president of the National Rally after Le Pen resigned to run in the 2022 French presidential election. Bardella was elected president of the National Rally on 5 November 2022, beating Louis Aliot by 85% to 15% of party members who voted.He takes the lead of the third group in the European Parliament, Patriots for Europe, initiated by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. The latter gives the far-right group the objectives of positioning itself against "military support for Ukraine" and against "illegal immigration" and for the "traditional family" and "easing environmental constraints". One of the six vice-presidents of this group is the Italian politician Roberto Vannacci. Bardella also joined the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, which is described by Euractiv as "an opportunity to gain depth on international issues."
Bardella helped bring the RN to victory during the 2024 European Parliament election as the party achieved a score of 31.37%, gaining 30 seats, coming in first place in front of the presidential party-list led by Valérie Hayer.
In February 2025, Bardella cancelled a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference after Steve Bannon was accused of making a Nazi salute.
On 31 March, Marine Le Pen was found guilty of embezzling EU funds and sentenced to a four-year prison sentence, of which two years would be suspended, whilst also being barred from running in the 2027 French presidential election. As Bardella was not involved in the scandal, he quickly became the front-runner to be the RN candidate.
Political positions
During his campaign in the 2019 European elections, Bardella said that his generation's two political priorities are the migrant crisis and the environmental crisis, saying, "if humans are responsible for what seems to be climate change, our economic model depends on it." He also opposed French entry into new free trade treaties. Bardella criticized the "punitive environmentalism" of the Macron government, which he argued was "criminalizing French people." In May 2019, Bardella evoked but did not name the Great Replacement conspiracy theory during a televised debate.On 12 November 2023, he took part in the March for the Republic and Against Antisemitism in Paris in response to the rise in antisemitism since the start of the Gaza war.
Immigration
Bardella, like his party, focuses on migration. He says that immigration could lead to the extinction of France, the French identity, French sovereignty, and "France's soul". He also believes that the European Union further degrades these values, according to his demands at the EU's campaign meetings. Shortly after the 2024 European parliament election, Bardella said he intended to abolish birthright citizenship. It grants children of foreigners born and living in France French citizenship.Bardella adheres to the Great Replacement conspiracy theory. Le Monde reported that he promotes this theory during his speeches to activists, "using every possible circumlocution to avoid calling it 'the Great Replacement,' as the term was banned by Marine Le Pen." He also wanted to "cut off social assistance to people living in France illegally."
Economy
Jordan Bardella calls for an "economic program in favor of business and entrepreneurship" and criticizes France as "the European champion of taxes and duties." He thus calls for the abolition of the social solidarity contribution of companies, used to finance old-age insurance, and the contribution on the added value of companies. Two taxes which, according to Libération, mainly concern CAC 40 companies. He welcomes Emmanuel Macron's decision to reduce the corporate tax rate to 25%. He also supports the payment of the RSA conditional on 15 hours of compulsory activity, and returns, in June 2024, to the National Rally's promise to repeal the pension reform if it comes to power.According to Le Monde, Bardella's right-wing positioning on economic issues also corresponds to a division of roles with Marine Le Pen, the latter targeting primarily the working classes and him the upper middle classes and retirees. Unlike Le Pen, Bardella also favours pro-business and economic liberal policies, influenced by the economic agenda of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.