Maréchal will also be dropping the Le Pen in her name, after her aunt, Marine Le Pen’s second failure in a presidential election, Bloomberg reported.
This September, Maréchal will open her own graduate school to shape the politicians of the future. “We need to win back the influence and the elite in France and our youth – those who have a vision, roots and are patriotic – have to work to succeed and engage in the national debate,” she said ahead of European elections.
“Today we are seeing the intellectual re-arming of the European people,” Marechal said. “I want to be one of the actors, I want to be part of the next patriotic elite, but I am humble, this will take time.”
Called ISSEP, and located in Lyon, it promises students a curriculum “rooted in the nation’s values,” according its website.
The school has already enrolled 70 students and Marechal will be the school’s director. She declined to give details about the school’s funding, only stating that it receives support from private donors and small businesses.
Next year’s elections will be a contest between supporters of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the leftist pro-Soros establishment parties.
Europe’s future direction will be at stake since the next elected Parliament will have a key role in approving the European Commission, the EU’s executive.
Even though Maréchal is not on the ballot, she would like to see a change in direction with leaders such as Orban and Matteo Salvini in Italy, Jimmie Akesson in Sweden and Alexander Gauland in Germany, pulling ahead. She was France’s youngest lawmaker when elected to the National Assembly in 2012, aged only 22 at the time.
Voters regard Maréchal as a better candidate than Le Pen to run in the 2022 presidential election, an Elabe poll from June this year revealed. She is even more influential than the mainstream Republicans leader, Laurent Wauquiez.
Maréchal has been meeting with Vincenzo Sofo, a member of Salvini’s League party, who also runs the influential Il Talebano blog. Salvini will be invited to speak at the school soon.
The French President meanwhile has seen his popularity tumble. He has been working tirelessly in recent months to regain momentum from conservatives with visits to Denmark, Finland, Spain and Portugal to campaign for May elections in the European Parliament.
“I won’t retreat in front of the nationalists and those preaching hatred,” Macron said in Copenhagen on Wednesday. “If they want to see me as their main opponent, they’re right.”
But Maréchal has shrugged off Macron’s efforts to become at least her her “main opponent”. The French president has nothing to offer Europe, she says. “Macron is an anomaly in this great historic movement that we are seeing in Europe now,” she said. “There is nothing new about him — he is from the same elite, of money and power. His ideology is liquid, it’s scraps and bits of the failed multicultural model.”