Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from seeking public office for five years and sentenced to a four-year jail term in an embezzlement case involving misuse of European Union funds, a French court ruled on Monday, March 31.
Le Pen and several other members of the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) were found guilty of misappropriating at least €4 million in EU funds. The court concluded that the funds, earmarked for hiring assistants in the European Parliament, were instead used to staff the far-right party. Prosecutors cited several cases in which workers listed as EU assistants admitted they had never set foot in Brussels or Strasbourg, nor contributed to EU policy in other ways.
The jail sentence, to be served under electronic surveillance, and the related financial fine will be carried out only if the verdict is upheld after an appeal. However, the ban on seeking public office will take effect immediately, the court announced.
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The ruling will likely prevent Le Pen from running in the 2027 presidential election, where she had been widely perceived as a lead candidate. Her RN peers, including Member of the European Parliament Jordan Bardella, denounced the ruling as politically motivated. Le Pen herself described the outcome as a case of “political death.”
While the ruling undoubtedly deals a blow to the RN, many analysts caution that it will not necessarily translate into an electoral setback. Some suggest that even if the party runs a less prominent candidate, such as Bardella, it could score points by portraying Le Pen and the RN as victims of a legal campaign orchestrated by the political elite.
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Left and progressive parties responded to the court’s decision by acknowledging the seriousness of the offense. Several pointed out that embezzlement convictions completely shatter the RN’s slogan – “Heads high, hands clean” – yet emphasized that the far right will not be defeated through legal proceedings alone. “Never forget that they remain just miserable fascist thugs,” Raphaël Arnault, a left parliamentarian, wrote on X. “Our goal, sentencing or not, must be to flatten them at every election.”
Similarly, Arnault’s party, France Unbowed (La France Insoumise), issued a statement reaffirming the need to counter the rise of the far right by building concrete alternatives and organizing among the people. “We are fighting it [the RN] at the ballot box and in the streets, through the popular mobilization of the French people, as we were able to do in the 2024 legislative elections,” the party stated. “Tomorrow, we’ll beat them at the ballot box again, whoever their candidate may be.”
