Marine Le Pen's far-right RN party caught between panic and insurrection after her ban from 2027 election
On March 31st a court in Paris found far-right leader Marine Le Pen guilty of the embezzlement of European funds and banned her from public office for five years. This rules her out of standing at the 2027 presidential elections in France. She was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and given a 100,000-euro fine. Marine Le Pen's tough sentence has plunged her far-right Rassemblement National party into a state of panic, amid calls for an uprising, the condemnation of a “dictatorship of judges” and wider fears for the future, given that its natural candidate will now probably not be able to run in 2027. And while both the Right and far-right have fiercely attacked the judges, the radical-left La France Insoumise was the only leftwing party to oppose the principle of the political ban being enforced immediately without waiting for the outcome of any appeal. Youmni Kezzouf reports.
TheThe 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.
