Is A New Napoleon Going To Be Elected For The European Parliament?

He wants to "give the power back to the nations"

A distant great-grandson of Napoleon I, Joachim Murat, will run in the European elections on a sovereignist list from France, he announced on Friday in a press release.

The facts

Joachim Murat, aged 50, presents himself as a descendant of the Marshal of the Empire and King of Naples Joachim Murat (1767-1815), who was the brother-in-law of Napoleon I through his marriage to his sister, Caroline Bonaparte.

The ancestor of the current politician was one of the generals with whom Napoleon Bonaparte led the campaigns in Italy and Egypt. In 1800 Joachim Murat married one of Bonaparte’s sisters, Caroline, and after the proclamation of Napoleon as emperor, he was appointed Marshal of the Empire.

In 1808, his brother-in-law installed him on the throne of the kingdom of Naples, but Murat did not manage to survive the collapse of the Napoleonic empire for too long. In 1815, he was captured by the Austrian army and executed by firing squad.

The arguments

His descendant, also named Joachim, will be in third position on the “We the People” list, led by Georges Kuzmanovic, former spokesman for La France Insoumise (Unruly France, extreme left), a French party that he left in 2018 to found his Republique Souveraine (Sovereign Republic) movement.

According to Murat, the list will also include Philippe Gregoire, farmer and president of SAMU Social Agricole, an association that defends farmers in difficulty, and French writer Olivier Delorme.

Former paratrooper officer, Joachim Murat presents himself as “passionate about France and its social model, which can no longer bear its planned destruction by the supporters of federalist Europe”. For him, “it is time to give power back to nations and peoples, in the face of an oppressive European bureaucracy and a political elite that has betrayed the fundamental principles of democracy, sovereignty and freedom”.