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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 (GN), later renamed Rassemblement National de la Jeunesse (RNJ).
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.[1]
Bardella was predominantly raised by his single mother, a kindergarten assistant, Luisa Bertelli-Mota, born in 1962 in Turin of Italian origin.[2][3][4] His father Olivier Bardella (born 1968 in Montreuil in Seine-Saint-Denis[5] of Italian and Franco-Algerian origin[6][7]) is a small-medium business owner specializing in beverage vending machines.[8][9]
Bardella's maternal family left the Italian industrial triangle in the 1960s. His paternal grandfather, Guerrino Bardella, born in 1944, originally from Alvito, Lazio,[10] arrived in Montreuil in 1960 and in 1963 married Réjane Mada, born in 1944 in La Ferté-sous-Jouarre. He works as a carpenter-cabinet maker.[11] Réjane Mada is the daughter of an Algerian from Kabylia,[12] Mohand Séghir Mada (1903-1974), born in Guendouz, in the commune of Aït R'zine, who came to France in the 1930s to work as a construction laborer in Villeurbanne, and his wife, Denise Annette Jaeck, a Parisian of Alsatian origin. Guerrino Bardella and Réjane Mada divorced when Bardella was one year old, and Guerrino settled in Casablanca, Morocco,[13] where he married a Moroccan woman named Hakima.[14][15]
Bardella grew up in a local council tower block in Drancy, "in the eighth floor of a drab high-rise tower."[16][17][18] 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.[19] 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.[20]
Bardella received a high school diploma with distinction in economics and social sciences at the semi-private Catholic lycée Jean-Baptiste-de-La-Salle.[21][22][23] Unlike many of France's presidents, who have attended the elite Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), including President Macron, Bardella studied geography at Paris-Sorbonne University but dropped out to focus on politics.[24][25]
Beginnings in the National Front (2012–2017)
In 2012, Bardella became a member of the National Front (FN) at age 16,[23] and has said he joined "more for Marine Le Pen than for the National Front".[26][27] 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.[28] From 16 February to 30 June 2015, Bardella worked as parliamentary assistant to FN Member of the European Parliament Jean-François Jalkh.[29] During this period, political observers began to consider him a leading figure on issues in the French banlieues within the FN.[30]
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.[31] 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.[32]
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."[33] He then became part of Marine Le Pen's campaign team in the 2017 presidential election, in which she finished second.[34] 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.[35][36]
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.[37][38][39] The next year, Le Pen also appointed him president of the Front National de la Jeunesse (FNJ), which later became Génération Nation (GN).
Bardella was named second vice-president of the RN on 16 June 2019, and first vice-president in 2021.[48] 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.[49][50] Journalist Richard Werly attributed the defeat to Bardella's "inability to find a convincing regional angle despite his familial connections [to the region]" and "lack of depth in a university-educated region, having abandoned his post-secondary studies."[51]
President of the National Rally (2022–present)
Bardella in the European Parliament in 2022
Bardella became acting president of the National Rally after Le Pen resigned to run in the 2022 French presidential election.[52] Bardella was elected president of the National Rally on 5 November 2022, beating Louis Aliot by 85% to 15% of party members who voted.[53][54]
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 (14.60%, 13 seats).[55]
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.[56] Bardella criticized the "punitive environmentalism" of the Macron government, which he argued was "criminalizing French people."[57] In May 2019, Bardella evoked but did not name the Great Replacement conspiracy theory during a televised debate.[58]
The global migrant crisis is Bardella's top priority besides climate. 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.[20] Shortly after the 2024 European parliament election, Bardella said he intended to abolish birthright citizenship.[60] It grants children of foreigners born and living in France French citizenship.[61] Bardella also wants to toughen border control to limit refugees' freedom of movement.
Environment
The party is moderate on climate issues. Bardella has stressed that environmental protection should not be left to the political left, but resorted to patriotism, confirming that it means the protection of the people and their environment.[62] With that statement he associates the climate crisis with the anti-immigrant stance of the RN, since he agrees with the left wing that the climate crisis will lead to an unstoppable global mass refugee crisis. Bardella and the RN base their immigration positions on the pursuit of political and ideological divisions, which must be exploited. They want to take advantage of the gap between urban and rural, or peripheral, spaces and attitudes.[63]
Social issues
Bardella has expressed personal opposition to same-sex marriage on the grounds that it will open the door to surrogacy or medically assisted reproduction.[64] Nevertheless, he has accepted that "for the majority of France, marriage for all is now a given" and stated his support for a citizens' initiative referendum on the topic in 2019. He has also said he will not campaign to abolish same-sex marriage as leader of the National Rally, arguing that debate on the matter is over and that France faces more pressing issues.[65] Bardella also advocates "cutting social services for people who illegally arrived in France" and legalizing cannabis for medical purposes.[66][67]
Political ties
According to Le Monde, Bardella can "boast of having woven closer ties" with former Italian Minister for Internal Affairs Matteo Salvini, whom he views as a role model. He is also believed to be close to Marine Le Pen's adviser Frédéric Chatillon, having at one point been in a relationship with his daughter.[68][69] At the same time, Bardella has said he is close to Le Pen.[70] In 2021, he posted statements of support for Génération Identitaire, a far-right organization the French government had dissolved for inciting racial hatred and violence, on Facebook. Facebook removed the posts and suspended certain features of his account.[71]
Personal life
Bardella was in a relationship with Nolwenn Olivier from 2020 to 2024, daughter of Marie-Caroline Le Pen, Marine's elder sister.[72] Before that, he had been in relationships with Kelly Betesh[73] and later with Kerridwen Chatillon, daughter of Frédéric Chatillon.[74]
Guerrino Bardella, Jordan Bardella's paternal grandfather, settled in Morocco (in Casablanca), where he has a 10-year residence permit, and married a Moroccan woman.[75]
After Ali Rabeh, a Muslim, was re-elected as mayor of Trappes in 2021, Bardella described the city as an "Islamic republic" on the radio station Europe 1. He then announced on 2 February 2022, that he was indicted for this statement, saying "I am disappointed that the French justice system pursues the same goal today as the Islamists, to silence those who denounce real issues and those who oppose the transformation of countless neighbourhoods in France."[77][78]
Suspicions regarding fake employment at the European Parliament
In 2019, Challenges revealed that Jordan Bardella had been a part-time parliamentary assistant of the Member of EU Parliament Jean-François Jalkh during 2015, and that he had been identified by the EU Parliament in 2017 as being part of the assistants linked to "irregular use of the parliamentary assistant compensation".[79][80]Le Canard enchaîné revealed later that he had been similarly suspected by the European Anti-Fraud Office, since 2016.[81]
