Minister: Polisutredningar tar inte paus under valet

François Charles Amand Fillon (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃.swa ʃaʁl amɑ̃ fi.jɔ̃]; born 4 March 1954) is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France from 2007 to 2012 under President Nicolas Sarkozy. He is the current nominee of the Republicans (previously known as the Union for a Popular Movement), the country's largest centre-right political party, for the 2017 presidential election. Fillon became Jean-Pierre Raffarin's Minister of Labour in 2002 and undertook controversial reforms of the 35-hour working week law and of the French retirement system. In 2004, as Minister of National Education he proposed the much debated Fillon law on Education. In 2005, Fillon was elected Senator for the Sarthe Département. His role as a political advisor in Nicolas Sarkozy's successful race for President led to his becoming Prime Minister. Fillon resigned upon Sarkozy's defeat by François Hollande in the 2012 presidential elections. Running on a platform described as conservative, Fillon entered the 2016 Republican presidential primary. He seemed a likely third as late as a week before the first round of voting, held on 20 November. He finally placed first in the first round, defeating Alain Juppé in the primary run-off a week later. Following his victory in the primary, Fillon has been seen as the frontrunner for the 2017 presidential election against Marine Le Pen (FN), Emmanuel Macron (EM) and Benoît Hamon (PS).

Marion Anne Perrine Le Pen, known as Marine Le Pen (French pronunciation: ​[ma.ʁin lə.pɛn]; born 5 August 1968), is a French attorney and politician. She is the president of the National Front (FN), a political party in France. She is the youngest daughter of long-time FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and the aunt of FN MP Marion Maréchal-Le Pen. Le Pen joined the National Front in 1986 and has been elected as a regional councillor (1998–present), a Member of European Parliament (2004–present), and a municipal councillor in Hénin-Beaumont (2008-2011). She was a candidate for the leadership of the FN in 2011 and won with 67.65% (11,546 votes) of the vote, defeating her opponent Bruno Gollnisch and succeeding her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, president of the party for nearly forty years. She then became the second president of the party. In 2012, she placed third in the presidential election with 17.90% of the vote, behind François Hollande and Nicolas Sarkozy. She launched a second presidential bid for the upcoming election, scheduled for April 2017. Described as more democratic and republican than her nationalist father, Le Pen has led a movement of "de-demonization of the Front National" to detoxify it and soften its image, based on renovated positions and renewed teams, also expelling controversial members accused of racism, antisemitism, or pétainism. She finally expelled her father from the party on 20 August 2015 after new controversial statements. She has also relaxed some political positions of the party, advocating for civil unions for same-sex couples instead of her party's previous opposition to legal recognition of same-sex partnerships, accepting unconditional abortion and withdrawing the death penalty from her platform. Le Pen was ranked among the most influential people in 2011 and 2015 by the Time 100. In 2016, she was ranked as second-most influential MEP in the European Parliament by Politico, just behind the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.