Jérôme Rivière


Jérôme Rivière is a French politician, lawyer and entrepreneur serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. A member of the Union for a Popular Movement until 2007, he has been a member of the National Rally, previously known as the National Front, since 2017.

Biography

Education

Born in Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine, Rivière received a master's degree from the ISG business school and an MBA from the European University of America at the University of San Francisco.

Career

He served as the deputy chief of staff for the Minister of Defense from 1993 to 1995 and was elected to the Regional Council of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur where he served from 1998 to 2004.
Rivière represented the first constituency of Alpes-Maritimes in the French National Assembly from 2002 to 2007 as a member of the Union for a Popular Movement. He was also a member of the subsidiary groups The Free Right and the National Centre of Independents and Peasants. In 2007, he endorsed Philippe de Villiers, the leader of the Movement for France in the 2007 presidential election over his party's candidate, the eventual winner, Nicolas Sarkozy. As a result, he was excluded from the UMP and failed to receive the party's nomination for that year's legislative elections. He was defeated running as a right-wing independent in his constituency against the UMP's official candidate and eventual winner Éric Ciotti.
In 2009, the MPF-Libertas selected him to lead the list in the Île-de-France constituency ahead of the 2009 European elections. In November 2016, Rivière became the candidate backed by the National Front in the sixth constituency of Var for the 2017 legislative election, a race which he lost. He is Marine Le Pen's strategic advisor for defense policy and the international spokesperson for the National Rally. In May 2019, he was elected to the European Parliament. Rivière was subsequently elected President of the French delegation to the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament.