The leader of France's far-right Rassemblement National (RN) MPs and three-time presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, was handed a heavy sentence on March 31st for embezzling public funds in a case involving the employment of assistants to the party's Euro MPs.
The Paris court sentenced her to four years in prison, two of which are suspended, a fine of 100,000 euros and, most crucially, five years of ineligibility for public office with immediate effect. In other words, she will not be able to stand in the 2027 presidential election. This represents a leap into the unknown for a party entirely built around Marine Le Pen and her expected presidential bid, which she had already started to dream would be successful.
Setting out the reasoning behind the ruling, presiding judge Bénédicte de Perthuis condemned a “system allowing the party to save money and be financed by European Parliament funds”. At the heart of this system, she added, “Marine Le Pen positioned herself with authority and determination”, displaying a “less-than-democratic view of political office and its obligations”.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
For months, the mere prospect of Marine Le Pen’s conviction had paralysed any strategic thinking within the party. The RN, which regularly boasts of having a “Matignon plan” - a reference to the prime minister of France's official residence - ready for a possible parliamentary dissolution, had insisted to anyone who would listen that the very notion of their “natural candidate” being barred from running did not exist. The result was that party spokespeople were left floundering by Monday's verdict, concerned that they had not been given any prepared responses for this eventuality.
The so-called 'dictatorship of judges'
“Marine Le Pen has proved her innocence and therefore she will not be convicted,” RN MP Sébastien Chenu recently assured viewers on BFM TV news channel, while party president Jordan Bardella declared: “She will not be ruled ineligible because she is entirely innocent of the accusations against her.” On Monday, Marine Le Pen did not even wait for the full sentence to be read before pointedly leaving the courtroom.
A week earlier, the RN leader had told Le Figaro newspaper that “if I were declared guilty I would use the rule of law to once again defend my innocence”. After the verdict dropped her lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, confirmed to reporters that she intended to appeal. The main figure in the case, meanwhile, went straight from the courtroom to RN headquarters for an emergency meeting before announcing that she would appear on television station TF1’s main 20 Heures news bulletin that same evening.
Until an appeal hearing takes place, which may not happen before the 2027 presidential election, Marine Le Pen will be unable to stand in any election. Even if the appeal hearing did take place before the election, the court of appeal would have to overturn the original ruling entirely and hand down a significantly lighter sentence. “Today, it's not only Marine Le Pen who has been unjustly convicted, but French democracy that has been executed,” fumed the party's president Jordan Bardella on X, in stark contrast to his party’s supposed “republican” credentials.
The obvious candidate to take over from the three-time presidential contender, the Euro MP had until now sworn he was not preparing for such an outcome while subtly cultivating political difference. Yesterday, however, he launched a full-scale attack on the judiciary. Following Bardella's lead, a number of elected representatives have gone as far as to seriously question whether the offence of embezzling public funds should even be a crime. Some have even likened France to a dictatorship.
Three legal mullahs have destroyed democracy. Faced with dictatorship, the people have a duty to rise up.
Amid the #JeSoutiensMarine ('I support Marine') visuals flooding their social media since last night, RN MPs and their allies have made more and ever-fiercer attacks on what they call “political justice”. Some have even called for an uprising. “We are under the dictatorship of judges,” declared Philippe Schreck, a far-right MP and lawyer by profession. “Three legal mullahs have destroyed democracy. Faced with dictatorship, the people have a duty to rise up,” he declared, referring to the trio of judges in the case.
This message, posted on X, was accompanied by an image identifying the presiding judge. Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, railed against “judges who believe they are above the sovereign people”, accusing them of having “executed in a courtroom the one they could never defeat at the ballot box”.
RN MP Matthias Renault has already begun to pile pressure on the next presidential election, claiming that France has “left democracy behind” and that the “legitimacy of the next presidential election is in doubt”. His colleague Maxime Amblard quickly echoed the sentiment, writing: “Any president elected in 2027 will only be legitimate if they are able to face Marine Le Pen.”
The impossible Plan B
The slogan of the RN's predecessor party the Front National (FN) - 'Clean hands and head held high' - has not aged well. The far-right party, once a fierce critic of corruption in politics, changed its tune the moment it itself became embroiled in scandals. Yet back in 2004, Marine Le Pen had raged: “Everyone has dipped their hands in the till except the Front National! And people think that’s normal? […] The French are sick of scandals, they're sick of seeing elected officials embezzling money.”
Nine years later, during the Cahuzac affair in which former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac was convicted over tax evasion, she even called for “a lifetime ban from office for anyone convicted of offences committed through or because of their mandate”. Yet by November 2024, just days after prosecutors had called at her trial for her to be declared ineligible for public office with immediate effect, she had completely reversed her stance. She denounced the prosecution's demand as a “shocking and deeply outrageous indictment” which was akin to a “political death sentence”.
Marine Le Pen has always refused to designate an official Plan B, instead centring her message on the judgement of her own “innocence”. In December 2024, she told Le Monde newspaper that Jordan Bardella had “absolutely no intention, nor even the desire” to replace her. “He is not preparing for that kind of responsibility,” she insisted. Yet the RN president now appears the natural fallback for the party in the next presidential race.
However, Bardella's promotional tour for his autobiography, his media omnipresence, and his push for a more liberal and Atlanticist party stance have ruffled feathers within the party, especially among Marine Le Pen’s closest allies. Inside and outside the far-right party, other ambitions, which until now have been firmly held back by the dominant presence of the three-time presidential candidate, could begin to surface.
“The party is extremely Bonapartist. Everything depends on the queen, everything revolves around her,” a Marine Le Pen lieutenant told Mediapart. “And contrary to what people might think, it’s not an efficient system.” It is a system that, between now and 2027, will face its toughest test yet.
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- The original French version of this article can be found here. The content of the first box, on the details of the verdict, is an abbreviated version of this article here. The content of the second box, on domestic political reaction to the verdict, is an abbreviated version of this article here.
English version by Michael Streeter