Reuters
PARIS – French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was banned from running for public office for five years after being convicted on Monday of embezzlement, a political watershed that effectively ruled her out of the 2027 presidential race.
The French court’s ruling was a catastrophic setback for Le Pen, the National Rally (RN) party chief who has long been one of the most prominent figures in the European far right and who has been the front-runner in opinion polls for the 2027 contest.
The judge convicting Le Pen of misappropriating EU funds also gave her a four-year prison sentence – two years of which are a suspended sentence and two which will be served under home detention. She received a 100,000-euro ($108,200) fine.
Le Pen, 56, will appeal, her lawyer said, and neither the prison sentence nor the fine would be applied until her appeals are exhausted. But the five-year ban from running for office kicks in immediately, via a so-called “provisional execution” measure requested by prosecutors.
Le Pen’s right-hand man, RN president Jordan Bardella, said: “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly convicted: It was French democracy that was killed”.
Le Pen has run three times for president and has said 2027 will be her final run for top office. Her only chance now to run would be if an appeals judge overturns Monday’s ruling before the ballot. Appeals in France can take months or even years.
Le Pen, who before Monday’s events had described prosecutors as seeking her “political death”, left the courtroom in Paris before judge Benedicte de Perthuis read out her sentence, and she had no immediate comment on the ruling. She was expected to appear in an interview with TF1 TV at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT).
Allies in France and far-right leaders from European countries including Italy, Spain and the Netherlands joined in condemning the ruling as judicial overreach.
Le Pen currently presides over the single biggest party in the National Assembly, and she will retain her parliamentary seat until her term ends – which will be in 2029, unless there are snap parliamentary elections before then.
‘FULL STEAM AHEAD’
Immediate political bans have become more common in France after the passage of toughened anti-corruption laws in 2016.
But Le Pen supporters in France and abroad accused judges of policing politics.
“We will not be intimidated, we will not stop: full steam ahead my friend!” Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and head of the far-right League, told Le Pen in a statement.
While some opponents in France applauded the ruling and said the independence of the judiciary must be respected, others, like Jean-Luc Melenchon, of the hard-left France Unbowed, said they would rather defeat Le Pen in the ballot box.
Bardella now looks set to become the party’s de facto candidate for the 2027 election.
Le Pen, the RN and two dozen party figures were found guilty of diverting more than 4 million euros ($4.33 million) of European Parliament funds.
The defendants were not accused of pocketing the money, but rather of using EU funds to the benefit of their party. They had argued the money was used legitimately and that the allegations had defined too narrowly what a parliamentary assistant does.
De Perthuis said Le Pen had been “at the heart” of the scheme. The judge said investigations in the case “showed that these were not administrative errors … but embezzlement within the framework of a system put in place to reduce the party’s costs”.
‘SEISMIC POLITICAL EVENT’
For years, Le Pen has sought to soften her image, tacking her party towards the political mainstream and striving to appear as a leader-in-waiting rather than a radical opponent of the establishment.
Arnaud Benedetti, a political analyst who has written a book on the RN, said the five-year ban on Le Pen was a key moment in French politics that would reverberate across parties and through the electorate.
“This is a seismic political event,” he said. “Inevitably, it’s going to reshuffle the pack, particularly on the right.”
While Bardella has helped expand the RN’s appeal among younger voters, experts said it was unclear whether he has the experience to win over the broader electorate the RN needs to secure victory in 2027.
“I am not sure that Jordan Bardella’s political proposition is mature enough to be able to compete credibly in the presidential election,” Benedetti said.
The court also found eight other people who were EU lawmakers for Le Pen’s party at the time and 12 parliamentary assistants guilty of embezzling EU funds.
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