After decades of being political pariahs, France’s far-right is closer than ever to forming a government after parliamentary elections, the first round of which begins on Sunday and the second on July 7.

Based on the latest polls, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Alarm (RN) party has further increased its share ahead of the first round of parliamentary elections and is likely to gather 37% of the vote, according to a poll published today in the newspaper Les Echos.

Here are some highlights of its run dominated by the Le Pen family for more than half a century.

1972: Former soldier Jean-Marie Le Pen founds the National Front, a fringe far-right party made up of Algerian war veterans and French collaborators of the Vichy regime.

1974: Le Pen is a candidate in the presidential election, but gets less than 1% of the vote. Two years later, his home in Paris is bombed. No perpetrator of the attack was ever found.

1981: Le Pen cannot secure a sufficient number of supporters to run in the presidential election, which Francois Mitterrand won. In the following years, Le Pen gradually attracted new supporters.

1986: The far-right party wins its first seats in the National Assembly.

1987: Le Pen makes disparaging statements about gays with AIDS, and numerous statements with racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic slurs, which have caused outrage that often put him at risk of legal proceedings against him. However, his support from some voters is growing.

1988: Le Pen wins 14.4% of the vote in the presidential election. The following year, the National Front wins more than 10% of the vote in the European elections. It also begins to target Islam and Muslim immigrants as one of its main political concerns.

1995: National Alert candidates win three municipalities in the southern French cities of Toulon, Orange and Marignan, demonstrating its growing electoral popularity.

2002: Le Pen runs for the presidency and wins 16.86% of the vote, enough to see him face Jacques Chirac in the second round of the presidential election. Making it to the second round is a shock in France and there is widespread revulsion that a far-right party managed to record such high numbers. Politicians from the right and the left are teaming up to prevent Le Pen from winning the second round. Chirac wins with over 80% of the vote in the second round.

2008: A court handed Le Pen a three-month suspended prison sentence and a €10,000 fine for saying the Nazi occupation of France was not “particularly inhumane”.

2011: Le Pen’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, becomes the new leader of the National Alarm after a period in which the party has underperformed in elections and faces mounting financial pressures.

2012: Marine Le Pen is running for the presidency for the first time, which was unsuccessful.

2014: The RN is experiencing a year of great electoral success, winning control of 11 municipalities and also taking first place in the European elections.

2015: Jean-Marie Le Pen is expelled from the party after he described the Holocaust as a “detail” of World War II. In the same year, his own daughter deletes him from the party.

2017: Marine Le Pen runs for the presidency again, but loses to Emmanuel Macron. After that defeat, he stepped up efforts to make the party more open to a wider electorate, seeking to distance it from its racist and anti-Semitic past. It also imposes on party MPs a more professional appearance, essential for their media appearances and social media presence. In 2018, the name of the party changes to National Rally (RN).

2022: Jordan Bardela, Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé, is chosen as the new president of the RN.

June 2024: Bardella leads the party in the European elections, shaking up Macron’s party, which after suffering a crushing defeat, is forced to call early parliamentary elections. Bardella is the RN’s prime ministerial candidate.