Who is Marine Le Pen’s new chief of staff?

The RN is organizing its parliamentary return this weekend at the National Assembly, where Marine Le Pen is strengthening her close guard. She has recruited a new chief of staff: Ambroise de Rancourt, a 37-year-old graduate of the ENA who, in 2017, was an Insoumis activist.

Marine Le Pen’s new chief of staff is called Ambroise de Rancourt. He is a 37-year-old graduate of the ENA, with an atypical background since in 2017, he was an Insoumis activist. Before joining the ENA in 2019, Ambroise de Rancourt was a pianist for 15 years. But above all, he was a voter and even an activist for Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2017.

At the time, he was happy to criticize on the internet “the fascists of the FN”. But in the fall of 2017, he accused the rebellious leader in an open letter of “break with republican universalism”Hostile to the European Union, to liberalism, rejecting the left-right divide, Ambroise de Rancourt confides in voting RN for the first time in the 2019 European elections, by slipping a Jordan Bardella ballot into the ballot box.

When he was preparing for the ENA competition, Ambroise de Rancourt posted a lot of posts on Facebook. That’s where Jérôme Sainte-Marie, the former pollster and RN candidate in the last legislative elections, spotted him. During his studies, Ambroise de Rancourt therefore began to write notes for Marine Le Pen, “on education or agriculture”, he remembers, before a first meeting in 2021. He continues to work in the shadows for Marine Le Pen, while working for the Ministry of the Armed Forces. It was after the failed legislative elections of July 2024 that Marine Le Pen asked him to come and work officially with her. “We need strong profiles like him”explains a close friend of the woman who wants to run for the Élysée again.

Ambroise de Rancourt will therefore officially be Marine Le Pen’s chief of staff in the Assembly from November 1st. He sees himself as “Prime Minister of the State Marine Le Pen”. He will supervise his collaborators, write his speeches and expand the network of the RN boss in the Assembly. The ENA graduate wants to introduce her to other senior civil servants, but also to actors from the cultural world. Ambroise de Rancourt also sets himself the goal of “professionalize the deputies”. “We need to go from three MPs who regularly appear in the media to 20”he confides.

This is not the first time that Marine Le Pen has drawn on the left to strengthen her inner circle. There was the previous Florian Philippot, also a graduate of the ENA and a sovereignist, who voted for Jean-Pierre Chevènement in 2002. Florian Philippot had worked on the strategy of de-demonizing the FN for the 2012 presidential election. He even became vice-president of the party, until the split at the end of 2017. “It’s not the same profile at all, Philippot had to be managed, here it’s de Rancourt who will manage”explains a close friend of Marine Le Pen. “He is very good, far from Philippian vanity”claws a Le Pen leader. Ambroise de Rancourt nevertheless wanted to reassure Marine Le Pen: for him, there is no question of taking the spotlight, nor of standing for election.