French far-right icon Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for office after a Paris criminal court found her guilty of embezzlement on Monday.
The ruling, which centres on the misuse of European Union funds by her party, likely ends Le Pen’s plans to compete in the 2027 presidential election.
As Le Pen was the front-runner in the election in which President Emmanuel Macron cannot stand again, the explosive ruling could upend French politics.
The judge sentenced Le Pen to four years in prison, two of them suspended and the other two with an electronic tag rather than in custody. Le Pen was also been given a €100,000 ($108,000) fine.
She was barred from seeking public office for five years, effective immediately.
While Le Pen, 56, can appeal, the lengthy legal process is unlikely to conclude before the election.
The main accusation was that Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party used money from the European Parliament to pay staff who were working for her political party, rather than for parliamentary assistants.
The judge also delivered guilty verdicts to eight other members of her party who, like Le Pen, served as lawmakers in the European Parliament. Additionally, 12 parliamentary assistants were found guilty.
National Rally leader: Court dealt blow to French democracy
Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old leader of the National Rally, described Le Pen’s sentence as a death knell for French democracy.
“Today, it is not only Marine Le Pen who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed,” Bardella wrote on X.
Before Monday’s ruling, the plan had been that if Le Pen won the presidential election and her party won the subsequent parliamentary election, Bardella would have become prime minister. Whether Bardella now intends to run for president is not yet known.
The Front National, founded by her late father Jean-Marie Le Pen, was rebranded as the National Rally in 2018 by Marine, who shifted the party’s focus away from extreme positions in an effort to broaden its appeal and make it electable to a wider segment of the population.
The efforts have paid off, with the party making major gains in last year’s European Parliament elections. A subsequent snap election for the French parliament also strengthened its hand, although it did not come out on top.
Support from Italy, Hungary and Russia
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán posted in French “Je suis Marine!” (I am Marine) on the platform X.
Orbán, an ally of Le Pen, leads the Fidesz party, which, alongside Le Pen’s RN, forms the core of the far-right faction Patriots for Europe, the third-largest group of lawmakers in the European Parliament.
In Italy, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called the court’s decisions a “declaration of war.”
Salvini, chairman of the right-wing League party, said the Paris court was trying to remove the far-right icon from French political life with its sentence, which barred her from running for office.
He drew comparisons to court rulings in countries like Romania, adding, “We will not be intimidated, we will not stop: full speed ahead, my friend!”
Moscow also weighed in: “Our observations in European capitals show that there is no hesitation in overstepping the boundaries of democracy in the political process,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Le Pen has always rejected accusations
In the scandal surrounding the sham employment of EU staff, Le Pen consistently denied the allegations. “I don’t feel I have committed the slightest irregularity, the slightest illegality,” she said during the trial.
“It is my political death that is being sought,” Le Pen also said.
A total of 28 defendants were accused in the case, which is said to involve a sum of almost €7 million ($7.3 million).
Le Pen paid back €330,000 to the European Parliament in 2023. However, her party emphasized that this was not an admission of misconduct.
The allegations, which relate to the years 2004 to 2016, have dogged Le Pen and her party for years.
The exact terms of her electronic monitoring remain unclear.
With regard to Le Pen’s sentence, the exact terms of her electronic monitoring remain unclear. It is common practice in France for such details to be determined only once a verdict is final.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, for instance, who was also recently sentenced to serve time under electronic monitoring in a separate trial, is currently confined to his home under a strict curfew.
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