French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was banned from running for public office for five years after being convicted on Monday of embezzlement, a political watershed that rules her out of the 2027 presidential race unless she can win an appeal.
The French court’s ruling was a catastrophic setback for Le Pen, the National Rally (RN) party chief who has long been one of the most prominent figures in the European far right and who had been the front-runner in opinion polls for the 2027 contest.
The ruling could have wide-ranging repercussions on French politics as anger in the RN, which is the biggest party in parliament, could push the hung assembly deeper into disarray, also complicating things for the minority centre-right government.
Judge Benedicte de Perthuis said Le Pen had been “at the heart” of a scheme to misappropriate more than 4 million euros ($4.3 million) of EU funds and use them to pay the far-right party’s staff back home.
The lack of remorse by Le Pen and other defendants was among reasons that prompted the court to ban them for running for office with immediate effect, de Perthuis said.
Le Pen’s allies were quick to criticise the ruling as being politicised.
“Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly convicted: It was French democracy that was killed,” said Le Pen’s right-hand man, RN president Jordan Bardella.
RN lawmaker Robert Le Bourgeois told Reuters: “It’s not up to a politicised justice to say who can run in an election or not.”
But centrist lawmaker Sacha Houlie said on X: “At what point do we think that a judge will not apply the law? Is society so sick that it is offended by what is nothing more and nothing less than the rule of law?”
The judge also handed Le Pen a four-year prison sentence – two years of which are suspended and two years to be served under home detention. She received a 100,000-euro ($108,200) fine.
Le Pen, 56, will appeal, her lawyer said, and neither the prison sentence nor the fine will be applied until her appeals are exhausted. But the five-year ban from running for office starts immediately.
Le Pen has run three times for president and has said 2027 will be her final run for top office. Her hopes now lie on overturning Monday’s ruling at appeal before the election. Appeals in France can take months or even years.
REUTERS
