Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Rally (RN), uttered the word “incredible” as she stormed out of a Paris courtroom on Monday morning. She abruptly left the court as the judge was issuing his ruling that she would be barred from running for office for five years after being found guilty of embezzlement of EU funds, which almost certainly ruled her out from standing in the 2027 French presidential election.
She was handed a four-year prison sentence, with two of those years waived and two to be served outside jail with an electronic tracking bracelet. She was also ordered to pay a €100,000 (£84,000) fine.
Le Pen and 24 party members, including nine former members of the European parliament and their 12 parliamentary assistants, were found guilty of being involved in a scheme lasting many years to embezzle European parliament funds by using money earmarked for European parliament assistants to pay party workers in France instead.
The so-called fake jobs system covered parliamentary assistant contracts between 2004, causing losses of €4.5mn (£3.8mn) to European taxpayer funds. Assistants paid by the European parliament must work directly on Strasbourg parliamentary matters, which the judges found had not been the case. The ban on Le Pen running for office was real and immediate. The four-year prison sentence—of which two will be suspended—will be on hold pending appeal.
The judges’ decision—backed by more than 150 pages of legal justifications after a nine-week trial—was necessary because nobody was entitled to “immunity in violation of the rule of law”, the head judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said.
Massive upheaval
The judgement has nonetheless provoked massive political upheaval in France, as Le Pen was in the midst of mounting a fourth campaign to become French president on behalf of her anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party. The ruling has certainly placed the RN’s party leaders in a difficult position—especially as there remains a slim possibility that Le Pen can still run as a candidate in the 2027 poll.
Le Pen’s response to the judgement was to launch an immediate appeal against what she denounced as a “political” decision, accusing the judge of committing a "violation of the state of law".
There is a strong possibility that the appeal could be accelerated and take place at the end of this year or early 2026, with a verdict being announced in the spring. In the event that the appeal hearing overturned or revised the initial judgement, then Le Pen’s sentence could either be reduced or removed altogether, an outcome that would mean she could still run.
Alternatively, if the judgement were to be upheld, that would open the door for Jordan Bardella— the party president who is only 29 years old—to be named as the candidate who will run in Le Pen's place.
Speaking after the verdict, Le Pen remained defiant. "There are millions of French people who believe in me,” she declared. “For 30 years, I have been fighting against injustice. It is what I shall continue to do right to the end." For the moment, she will be able to retain her current post as a member of the French parliament for Pas-de-Calais.
'Very big deal'
The judgement has also provoked a fierce international response. US President Donald Trump said the conviction was a “very big deal”, adding, “I know all about it, and a lot of people thought she wasn’t going to be convicted of anything."
“But she was banned for running for five years, and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country, that sounds very much like this country,” he told reporters at the White House, in an apparent reference to legal cases that Trump himself faced before he took office.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk, Tesla’s billionaire owner, who has backed far-right activists in Germany and plays a key role in Trump’s administration, claimed the sentence against Le Pen could “backfire”, in the same way that the legal attacks against Trump had failed.
Early life and career
The political crisis caused by the judgement certainly presents a major challenge for Le Pen, who has devoted most of her life to building her own political career after being born in 1968 into a family already on the fringes of French politics. In 1972, her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the National Front party, which critics claimed was racist, anti-Semitic and nostalgic over France’s lost empire.
The young Marine was just eight years old when a bomb destroyed the family’s apartment in Paris in what was widely seen as an assassination attempt on her father. No one was seriously hurt, but the blast scarred her for life. She has since said it gave her a lasting sense that her family was hated and that they would never be treated like other people.
As a young woman, she studied law and became a defence attorney. But after entering politics, she quickly became impatient, so much so that in 2011, she succeeded in seizing control of the party from her father.
In 2015, she even moved to expel her father from the party he had created after one of his characteristic Holocaust-denying tirades. Le Pen then renamed the party the National Rally. She talked less about race and more about the French way of life. She warned of “civilisational threats,” called for bans on headscarves and promised to put French families first.
Her personal popularity increased after she positioned herself as a champion of the LGBTQ community, filling her inner circle with openly gay aides while avoiding public protests against same-sex marriage and positioning herself as a protector of sexual minorities against “Islamist danger.” Critics called it “pinkwashing”, but a surprising number of gay voters—especially younger ones—began backing her. Many saw in her, strength, clarity and the promise of order.
Presidential runs
Le Pen has run for president three times so far—in 2012, 2017 and 2022. Each time, she received a bigger chunk of the vote. In her final campaign, she was confident, calm and media savvy, emphasising her role as a single mother, posing with her six cats and repeating her calls for “national priority.”
Behind her, a coterie of far-right leaders publicly backed her: Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders.
Certainly, Le Pen’s heady mix of cultural nationalism and social media fluency has proved to be highly effective, to the extent that when Le Pen lost in 2022, she did so having provided the far right with its highest-ever tally in a French presidential election by winning more than 13 million votes.
With French President Emmanuel Macron ineligible to contest the country’s next presidential election in 2027, Le Pen would undoubtedly be a formidable contender for the president were it not for her ban.
Therefore, the decision to ban her from running for office could have serious repercussions for the future of her far-right movement, especially if Macron ignores calls for him to intervene and overturn the ban. But given the resilience Le Pen and her followers have demonstrated when faced with other setbacks, it would be foolhardy in the extreme to write her political obituary just yet.
