Marine Le Pen was judged guilty of undue appropriation of public funds, a sentence that risks putting a tombstone on its presidential aspirations. The leader of the Rassemblement National was sentenced together with eight other MEPs by the Court of Paris, in a trial that had seen her and 23 other exponents of the party of the French radical right party. The sentences will be described individually, but they are not yet known.
Funds of the EU Parliament for the party
The pens and parliamentarians condemned with her would have used the funds of the European Parliament intended for assistants to pay people who actually did not work directly for them but for the party. The Court estimated that in all the total loss for the Brussels coffers was 2.9 million euros. The twelve assistants tried with them were also considered guilty of receiving stolen goods.
The defendants said that the money was legitimately used and that the accusations define the functions of a parliamentary assistant in a too restrictive way. But the judge Bénédicte de Perthuis instead established that “it was shown that all these people were actually working for the party and that their deputy (of the EU) had not given them any assignment”. In practice, deputies assumed people as assistants and these instead who worked for the party.
“The investigations also shown that they were not administrative errors, but undue appropriation as part of a system implemented to reduce the party costs,” added the judge. “We are clear: nobody is on trial for doing politics, this is not the point. The point is whether the contracts” by parliamentary assistants “have been performed or not,” said the magistrate.
Presidential election
The sentence is only of the first instance but it is still a boulder for French politics, given that the judges will have to decide whether to disqualify it from the race to the presidency that will be in 2027. This is because at the end of November, at the end of two months of trial, the accusation surprisingly asked Pen for a five -year sentence of inelegitability “with temporary execution”, that is, to be applied immediately, even in case of appeal.
If the judges follow this request, the 56 -year -old Le Pen will not be able to participate in the next presidential elections scheduled for two years, and in which it seems to be the favorite after three failed attempts. The accusation also asked for five years of imprisonment, of which two years converted into socially useful works, and a fine of 300 thousand euros.
Le Pen, who in any case will maintain his parliamentary polling station until the end of his mandate, has accused public ministries of looking for his “political death”, claiming that it is a conspiracy to keep the RN away from power, accuses that echoes the statements of the President of the United States Donald Trump on his legal problems.
“I read here and there that we are feverish. Personally they are not, but I can understand why we are: with the provisional execution, the judges have the right of life or death on our movement,” said the leader of the Rassemblement National to the newspaper The tribune dimanche. “I don’t think they’ll come so much,” he added, in one of his few public statements on this deadline.
Strict times also for the appeal
In case of appeal, which is practically obvious, the second trial will be held in at least a year, therefore with a sentence not before autumn 2026, a few months before the presidential elections. But if in this period the Pen will already be officially ineligible, this could stop its path towards the election.
According to an IFOP survey for the JDD published this weekend, if the presidential elections were held today, the leader of the Rassemblement National would be in a clear advantage in the first round, with a percentage of voting intentions between 34 and 37 percent depending on the candidates who will be faced.
