Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right party, was handed a four-year prison sentence and banned from holding public office for five years by a French court Monday, in what could be the biggest setback for her political cause in a generation.
Until this week, Le Pen had looked like the likeliest winner in France’s next presidential election set for 2027, but she was found guilty Monday by a court of embezzling European Union funds.
When handing down its sentence, the court said the crimes committed by Le Pen, 56, warranted an immediate ban from public office, Reuters reported.
While Le Pen may yet successfully appeal the sentence — it will not be applied until she has exhausted all avenues of appeal — the four-year sentence, two years of it suspended, and the ban on seeking public office until the end of the decade will come as a massive blow to the French far right and may spell the end of her political career.
The Paris prosecutor had previously requested that if found guilty, Le Pen be barred from running for office and given a five-year prison sentence, along with a fine of 300,000 euros ($316,860). In its decision, the court handed Le Pen a fine of 100,000 euros.
The nine-week trial, which began in November after almost a decade of investigations, saw Le Pen and 24 other figures from her National Rally (RN) party accused of misusing more than 3 million euros ($3.3 million) of European Parliament funds to pay party staff between 2004 and 2016 in violation of E.U. regulations. All of those accused have denied the charges.
Delivering his ruling Monday, Judge Benedicte de Perthuis said Le Pen had been “at the heart” of the scheme. “It was established that all these people were actually working for the party, that their (EU) lawmaker had not given them any tasks,” he added, according to Reuters.
He said that the investigations also showed that “these were not administrative errors … but embezzlement within the framework of a system put in place to reduce the party’s costs.”
Shortly after being convicted, Le Pen was seen abruptly leaving the Paris courtroom before her sentence was announced.
The ruling has the potential to reshape French politics, with Le Pen having spent decades turning her far-right vehicle into a mainstream and popular political force and herself into the favorite to win the country’s next presidential elections, set to be fought in 2027.
After taking over the leadership from her late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, she has transformed the RN, with its far-right nationalist roots, into the biggest single party in France’s parliament by making it more mainstream and popularizing it among younger and more blue-collar voters.
RN party president 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, who is expected to take Le Pen’s place if his mentor is forced to step down, said Monday that she had been “unjustly condemned,” adding that French democracy had been “executed,” Reuters said.
While RN won the largest number of votes in the first round of last year’s parliamentary elections, it failed to win a majority and remains outside of France’s governing coalition. Emmanuel Macron, the country’s centrist president, has since attempted to steer his country through months of razor-thin majorities, no-confidence votes and political uncertainty.
Macron has experienced a mild recovery in the polls during that time — partly due to the ripple effect of President Donald Trump’s first months back in office — but he cannot run for the presidency a third time due to term limits and any of his centrist successors risk losing to their ultraconservative rival.
A recent poll conducted by the French Institute of Public Opinion for the French broadcaster Sud Radio found that Le Pen would, with around 42% of the vote, easily win the first round of the next presidential election.
Le Pen at court in Paris on Monday.Alain Jocard / AFP – Getty Images
Even if she appeals the verdict, a “provisional execution” could see Le Pen, a three-time presidential contender and front-runner in the polls ahead of the 2027 vote, barred from running in the election.
Under the ban, Le Pen will not be removed from her seat in parliament until the end of her current term. She can also seek a last-minute reprieve from the French Constitutional Council, which is expected to hand a separate decision Friday on whether immediately barring elected officials from running for office is legal.
RN has accused prosecutors of seeking Le Pen’s “political death” to keep the popular far-right leader from seeking public office.
Le Pen said Saturday that she expected leniency from the judges, telling the French newspaper La Tribune Dimanche that “with provisional execution, the judges have the power of life or death over our movement … but I don’t think they’ll go that far.”
The trial has also whipped up fierce debate within France around on the subject of how much judges should be allowed to intervene in the country’s politics.
Across Europe, too, far-right leaders said the ruling showed democratic backsliding.
Hungary’s Viktor Orban posted on X saying “I am Marine!” Meanwhile, Deputy Italian Prime Minister Matteo Salvini described the ruling as a declaration of war by Brussels and called Le Pen his friend.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a media conference Monday that “European capitals show that they are not at all reluctant to go beyond democracy during the political process.”
Astha Rajvanshi
