Who is Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of Le Pen’s party who beat Macron
Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen’s party, won the European elections in France, and French President Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of Parliament and new elections. We are republishing the portrait of the party president, Jordan Bardella, born in 1995, which Corriere della Sera had published at the time of his nomination, in November 2022.
We will take the place of Emmanuel Macron”, says Jordan Bardella confidently from the stage of the Rassemblement National congress, which has just elected him as the new president of the party. Thanks to the support of Marine Le Pen, on Saturday 5 November Bardella obtained 84% of the votes, a huge majority, against the other candidate Louis Aliot, mayor of Perpignan (in the south of France) and former partner of Marine Le Pen herself.
Bardella is the first leader of the party born five decades ago not to bear the founder’s name Le Penand at just 27 years of age he showed himself determined to achieve the objective of gaining power by making the Rassemblement National a “government party, beyond the left-right divide”.
Born in the suburbs of Paris, in Drancy, in his speech Bardella thanked France for having welcomed his family of Italian origin, and his mother Luisa “who was struggling to make it to the end of the month”. His parents separated when he was little. His father, Olivier Bardella, born in France to Italian parents, runs a small vending machine business in the town of Montmorency, in the Val d’Oise. The mother, Luisa Bertelli, who arrived in France from Turin in 1963, is a public employee specializing in nursery schools. The president of the Rassemblement National grew up with her, living with her father on Wednesdays (often a day without school in France) and at weekends. Bardella claims his Italian origins together with French patriotism, setting himself as an example of successful integration. After graduating from the economic-social high school at the private Jean-Baptiste-de-La-Salle high school in Saint-Denis, Bardella studied geography at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, then interrupted his studies to dedicate himself to politics. She lives as a couple with Nolwenn Olivier, Marine Le Pen’s niece as she is the daughter of Marie-Caroline Le Pen (Marine’s older sister). Which attracted some criticism and suspicions of favoritism due to his family association with the movement’s leader.
As soon as he was elected president of the Rassemblement National, Jordan Bardella had to face the protest of Steeve Briois, the mayor of Hénin-Beaumont who supported the other candidate Louis Aliot. Excluded from the party’s executive office, Briois called for a “purge” of his opponents. Briois considers himself the expression of one of the two souls of the party, the “social” one which has as its priority purchasing power and the defense of the economic conditions of the popular classes; according to him, Bardella instead represents the “identitarian” soul, more focused on the defense of traditional French values threatened by foreigners. Bardella has time on his side and an overwhelming consensus in the party’s bodies. It will be up to him, in the coming months and years, to reconcile the two souls and not to frustrate, as Briois fears, years of efforts to normalize a party that has tried to move from the far right to positions “neither right nor left”.
The distribution of roles with Marine Le Pen, who chose, promoted and helped him, is clear: Bardella has the leadership of the party, she has control of the 89 deputies in the National Assembly – a huge novelty in the history of the Front/Rassemblement – and her role as a probable future candidate for the Elysée. In an interview with Courier, Marine Le Pen openly evoked the possibility of running again: «Having already run three presidential campaigns, I said a priori that I would not run a fourth, barring exceptional events. If I were in a position to win, I would fight to fulfill my duty.” The attempt to take over from Emmanuel Macron in 2027 should fall to her again. Unless Jordan Bardella forges ahead. Which, four and a half years after the vote, cannot be completely ruled out.
