The annual congress of France’s far-right National Front party has drawn to a close in Lyon.<br /><br />Over the weekend, the party re-elected its leader Marine Le Pen with a 100 percent mandate although she was the only candidate. It also confirmed closer ties with Russia, and Marine Le Pen’s 24-year-old niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen was voted onto the party’s central committee.<br /><br />Opinion polls suggest Le Pen will reach a second round run-off in the 2017 French presidential election as he father Jean-Marie did in 2002.<br /><br />“Our ideas have become part of the public discourse. Our propositions are at the centre of political discussions, our dynamism is in all the conversations. At such a point, my dear friends, there is no longer any doubt in anyone’s minds that we will be in the second round the 2017 presidential election,” Marine Le Pen declared.<br /><br />Euronews correspondent in Lyon Anne Devineaux says there were few confrontations of ideas at the Congress, but a plebiscite for Marine Le Pen. Sh adds that the undisputed leader of the National Front wants to be the head of a “de-demonized” party and believes more than ever she is in a position to win the 2017 presidential election.
