Why Le Pen election ban concerns her arch-rivals
“Je suis Marine”, declared Hungary’s Viktor Orban today, as Le Pen’s European allies rushed to her defence following the bombshell verdict that the figurehead of France’s hard-right is banned from standing in the country’s next presidential election.
A Paris courthouse has dealt a mighty blow to the political career of the National Rally (RN) leader after she - alongside 24 party members, including 8 MEPs - was found guilty of embezzling EU funds, by channelling €2.9 million of EU money to their own party’s coffers.
While the court accepted that there had been no personal enrichment on the part of Le Pen or her co-accused, it found that the RN had breached the law by taking on EU parliamentary assistants in Brussels but having them work exclusively for the RN, despite using EU funds to pay them.
It was highly probable that Pen would be found guilty of misusing public funds. Yet the severity of the judge’s verdict has come as a widespread shock, for supporters and rivals alike.
She has been fined €100,000 and sentenced to four years in prison, of which two are suspended and two will be served at home with an electronic bracelet.
Crucially, the presidential hopeful has also been banned from politics for five years and, unusually, the judge ruled that, even though she is set to appeal the case, this period of ineligibility will kick in straight away. Meaning she won’t be able to stand in France´s 2027 election. An election in which, according to current polls, she is the frontrunner.
On the face of it, an ousting of the leading candidate may seem like a win for her political rivals.
But the other very real possibility is that it will only supercharge her supporters. That the court chose to impose the harshest possible sentence will no doubt be cited as further evidence of a politically biased justice system conspiring to keep the populist right out of power.
Parallels will be drawn with the cancellation of Romania’s election and the “kangaroo court” convictions against Donald Trump. If this had come several months earlier, we can be sure it would have featured as an another scathing example of Europe´s so-called democratic backslide in J.D Vance’s contentious Munich speech.
The familiar battle of narratives has already begun, with both sides accusing the other of undemocratic behaviour.
The judge accused Le Pen and the other defendants of subverting democracy in the process of misusing EU funds, while Jordan Bardella, who will take over from Le Pen to head the RN, reacted to the verdict by declaring: “Today, it is not just Marine Le Pen who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed”.
Perhaps one striking difference with the US and Romanian examples is that even many of Le Pen´s arch-enemies seem troubled by the verdict.
Hard-left leader, Jean-Luc Melenchon, and centrist PM, Francois Bayrou, have warned that an immediate ineligibility would be unfair and unwise, while the former leader of the centre-right Republicans, Eric Ciotti, released a particularly strong statement, declaring that the "democratic destiny of our nation [has been] confiscated by an outrageous judicial cabal".
Why are Le Pen´s political rivals concerned?
Perhaps in part out of fear that public anger at her exclusion from the election could end up boosting Bardella. Perhaps also because some of them have engaged in similar schemes. It´s worth remembering that Bayrou´s own MoDem party was charged last year with misusing European Parliament funds to pay for its own party work, though Bayrou was acquitted as there was insufficient evidence of his direct involvement.
And perhaps concern stems too from the precedent the ruling sets, that a court gets to decide who can and can’t run for head of state. Melenchon’s France Unbowed party insisted today that it´s "never expected to use the courts as a way to get rid of" the National Rally, adding “we fight them at the ballot box”.
Caitlin Allen
Deputy Editor
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