Marine Le Pen is barred from running for public office for five years, with the court also handing the far-right leader a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended and two years’ home detention, and a €100,000 fine.
The leader of the French far-right has been blocked from running to be the next president of France after being found guilty of syphoning off EU funding.
A court in Paris has handed a sentence barring Marine Le Pen from running for public office for five years. Emmanuel Macron’s term as president is up in 2027 and Le Pen had been seen as in with her best shot at the presidency.
The Tribunal de Paris found Le Pen, previously a member of the European Parliament, guilty, alongside more than 20 others, of embezzling millions of euros to the benefit of her far-right political party, National Rally.
Le Pen and eight of her fellow MEPs were found to have set up fake jobs in the European Parliament. That allowed the party to use EU funds to pay salaries of people who didn’t actually work on European affairs, but were in fact engaged to help the party back in France.
The judge said “embezzlement within the framework of a system [was] put in place to reduce the party’s costs”.
The court also handed Marine Le Pen a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended and two years’ home detention, and a €100,000 fine.
Le Pen can appeal. If she manages to overturn the case, she could yet make a political comeback.
Rising support for National Rally
After inheriting the National Front from her father, Marine Le Pen has spent years working to broaden appeal to voters, including shifting rhetoric away from the party’s fascist roots and by rebranding it as National Rally.
Instead she has focused on a populist anti-migrant, hard-right, Eurosceptic agenda.
Once a fringe party, by 2019 National Rally was polling neck and neck with Macron’s liberal-centre-right movement.
Since then, the meteoric rise of Le Pen’s prodigy, Jordan Bardella, has helped the party win popular support, particularly amongst younger voters.
Marine Le Pen’s conviction is a seismic moment in French politics.
She is almost certain to appeal the case. If she cannot get the ruling overturned it could prove to be the final blow for her personal political ambitions, although not the end of National Rally.
Unlike Macron, who has no natural successor, National Rally has one ready formed.
Le Pen has spent years readying Jordan Bardella, even stepping aside to allow him to head the party, at least in name, since 2022.
Last year he was put forward as the party’s nomination for prime minister. Instead he is now likely to be primed for a run for the most powerful job in French politics, the presidency.
After the verdict, he said: “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned. It was French democracy that was killed.”
Le Pen stood three times for president, getting closer each time, but never winning because the public always rallied around the centre candidate in the second round of voting.
Bardella could be in with the best chance of breaking through that barrier.
Since Macron cannot stand again, each of the centrist parties is likely to push its own candidate. Former centre-right prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has already said he will run, but a huddle of middle-ground politicians will make it harder for a clear name to break through.
By contrast, there is no one in National Rally besides Le Pen with the profile of Bardella.
But without Le Pen, there are risks for the far-right too.
“Trial made by politicians for politicians”
The French public’s reaction to today’s verdict, and how National Rally handles it, will be crucial.
Ahead of the verdict, Le Pen dismissed the case as a “trial made by politicians for politicians”, an attempt to frame it as a political show trial.
She left court this morning without comment and before the judge had even finished summing up.
If the perception prevails that the trial was a political stitch-up, her conviction could actually help rather than hinder Bardella. If she manages to overturn the sentence on appeal, that would also likely give her a boost.
If, however, the case increases distrust of National Rally and the party’s suitability to hold high office, it may be returned to the fringes.
The presidential election is still two years away, but it is almost like the campaign is already underway.
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