Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National (RN), France’s main far-right party, was found guilty on Monday 31 March of misappropriating public funds in the case of her party’s European assistants. The courts brought to light a system which, from 2004 to 2016, enabled the RN (formerly the FN) to use more than €4 million in European funds for the party’s activities. Marine Le Pen was sentenced to four years imprisonment and five years ineligibility, which for the time being prevents her from standing in the 2027 presidential elections.
Internationally, this decision immediately provoked a reaction from the whole gallery of populist, reactionary and far-right heads of state, including Putin, Orban and Trump, who denounced it as a denial of democracy… In France, a similarly dangerous discourse is echoed by certain politicians and media (most of them far-right), who deplore a ‘political decision’ and a ‘tyranny of the judges’ that may signals the end of the rule of law in France… These are the same people who, until now, have been the first to criticise the ‘laxity of the judiciary’ and to call for the severest possible enforcement of sentences.
Marine Le Pen has decided to appeal and has obtained an acceleration of the timetable for a new decision in the summer of 2026, which is the only way to overturn her ineligibility before the presidential elections in 2027.
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