Marine Le Pen has been found guilty of misappropriating European Parliament funds to support her political party in France. The sentence includes both hard “prison” time (2 years with an electronic bracelet) and, more seriously, 5 years during which she is not eligible to run for office. What is more, it will take effect immediately, even while appeals are pending, by explicit order of the court. The decision transforms the 2027 presidential race, in which Le Pen would have been a frontrunner.
Her number 2, Jordan Bardella, will seek to replace her, but he will very likely have challengers from within the party, starting with spokesman Sébastien Chenu. Le Pen may be able to accelerate the appeals process, which just might culminate in time to allow her to reinstate her candidacy, but there is no certainty of that. In the meantime, the court’s decision blasts open a whole new battlefield for 2027. With Le Pen sidelined, the contest among the remaining hopefuls, especially on the right, will intensify. The race to appeal to Le Pen voters will make for some ugly politics.
The RN, taking a leaf from Trump’s playbook, will of course attack the “weaponization” of the judicial system. And they will have a point, since many other politicians, including the current prime minister, François Bayrou, and former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is even now wearing an electronic bracelet of his own, have been accused of similar campaign finance violations. Sarkozy is on trial now for accepting money from Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, surely a worse offense than siphoning money out of the European Parliament, but Sarkozy was never disqualified from office, even though suspicions of occult financing date back to before his presidential campaign.
Still, recent experience in the US with election tampering teaches us that courts should not be dissuaded from enforcing the law simply because the accused is a popular politician. On the other hand, democratic deference demands that unelected judges should be wary of depriving voters of the opportunity to express their will freely. The dilemma is acute and likely to become worse unless France reforms its campaign finance laws. But reform is a double-edged sword, since expansion of legal financing sources can easily open the way to more direct influence of wealthy donors on the electoral process. Indirect influence through media owned by wealthy individuals such as Vincent Bolloré is already a problem that could become worse if such individuals are allowed to finance political campaigns.
2 Comments
I agree on all points. What is new is that, for the first time in France as far as I know, the law is enforced against a person who is a very likely head of State or of government. Until this trial, major leaders were whitewashed by either the courts, of the Conseil Constitutionnel, and sanctions were actually taken only against minor opponents (Cheminade), second-rank party staff or ministers (Cahuzac), or former leaders (Sarkozy). Which actually justifies the opinion that ” ‘le système’ protects itself against the rule of law, but does not protect its major opponents”.
I believe that the comparison with former President Sarkozy is wrong and only results from imperfect hindsight. At the time of the presidential campaign of 2007, when the campaign finance crimes took place, the public was totally unaware of them and for those of us who were watching closely – I should know, I was an official rep of his socialist opponent Ségolène Royal in a foreign country – we thought he had really a lot of money but that was not evidence and was nowhere near enough for initiating a judicial inquiry. Then N. Sarkozy was elected President and the French Constitution mandates that a President cannot be indicted during his term of office. It is easy to say now considering what we now know that justice was lenient with him but that is not the case: justice applied the law including the supreme law of our country and, in fact of course, is not being lenient with former President Sarkozy now.
As for MLP, my view is that she is truly finished. The delaying tactics that were employed to delay the trial for 10 years as well as complete denial of what was factual – material if you wish – evidence evidently did not prompt the court (3 judges, a woman presiding, who strictly applied the law) towards leniency. An appeal will be ruled on in mid 2026. Until then, the behavior of MLP will be important. If she continues with her current behavior which is attempting to intimidate the courts and continuing to deny the facts, she may well find that an even harsher sentence is possible. If she reforms her behavior, it will be seen by the public as an admission of guilt, and her sentence will possibly just be confirmed as it stands now.
Thus the question is who will inherit the party. It was always a family business and will likely remain so. People like Sebastien Chenu are not family members and will be expelled if they try to grab the party from family members such as Le Pen’s grand son or grand daughter. Of course those two are not the only family members as evidenced by the list of people sentenced alongside MLP (for instance a sister and a sister in law). With the Le Pens family is everything.
Many conservatives including the Prime Minister who faces judgment in the appeals court for similar crimes following an appeal by the public prosecutor of a first instance judgment in his favor – further evidence incidentally that justice is quite independent – are criticizing the judgment on two grounds, both wrong and worthy of contempt.
First they level the accusation of “red judges” because one third of judges belong to a union whose politics are clearly left. Well the fact that one third of judges’ politics would be left is hardly surprising and suspiciously close to the politics of one third of the public. One might even argue that the politics of two thirds of the judges are center right or conservative. So what? The only problem with this judges union is that its leaders were not especially smart and felt the need to decorate their union room with insulting remarks on a lot of conservatives which of course became known and they were condemned for these pranks worthy of adolescent medical or law students.
Second they accuse the law called Loi Sapin 2 of 2016 of being excessively harsh as supposedly evidenced by the sentence against MLP. This is of course false and is only due to a desire to attack Michel Sapin who was the socialist Minister of Justice during the socialist term of President Hollande. MLP’s crimes took place long before this law was implemented and the law that was applied to her case dates back to the early 1990s, which shows if need be that the judges applied well established law. Thus any attempt to eliminate the provisional execution of an ineligibility sentence would be understood by the public as an attempt to save MLP. This would really please the one third of the public who support her and really displease the two thirds of the electorate who do not support her. My message to members of parliament : which would you prefer with you, one third or two thirds? For proof of concept, see the results of the last parliament elections. Alternatively, look at current opinion polling regarding this whole disgraceful matter.