Joëlle Bergeron
Joëlle Bergeron (born 28 June 1949 in Charlieu, Loire) is a French politician and Member of the European Parliament (MEP). She became a card-carrying member of the National Front when it was created in 1972 [1] and at the end of the 1970s she was responsible for the party's Brittany section.[2] Her late husband Daniel Bergeron was a member of the Front National's Central Committee and a candidate for the party in national, regional and local elections [3] and after he died, she took his place as Front National candidate for the 2011 cantonal elections in Lorient, obtaining 15.39% of the vote in North Lorient, and later standing as candidate for the party in senatorial and National Assembly elections.[2] She was elected as a member of the National Front at the European election in May 2014, but was asked to stand down after she called for European immigrants to be given the right to vote.[4] She refused and instead resigned from the party two days after the election to sit as an independent MEP.[4]
On 18 June 2014 it was announced[5] that she was joining the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in the European Parliament, which is led by Nigel Farage of Britain's UK Independence Party.
In spite of her previous 42-year membership of the Front National and her longstanding organizational activities within it, the EFDD stated in announcing her admission to the group that she had "joined the National Front with great hopes but realised that their philosophy was very different", going on to add that she was an "Anglophile, with the desire for democratic self-determination and a respect among different nations"[5]