French hard-right leader Le Pen banned from presidential run following conviction

London: Marine Le Pen, the French hard-right leader and frontrunner to become the country’s next president, has vowed to “fight until the bitter end” after a court banned her from standing for office for five years for embezzling European Union funds.

In a ruling that potentially inflames the French political landscape, the court also sentenced Le Pen to four years in prison, with two years suspended and the other two to be served under a form of house arrest with an electronic bracelet. She was fined €100,000 ($172,784).

The decision means Le Pen, who had long been seen as a leading contender to succeed President Emmanuel Macron, will be excluded from the race when his term ends in 2027.

Marine Le Pen, leader of National Rally, leaves the court in Paris after the ruling.Credit: Bloomberg

The court found on Monday that Le Pen had played a central role in organising a so-called fake jobs system that allowed the illegal payments to be funnelled to party insiders. While she did not personally profit from the scheme, judges noted that it allowed a small group of senior party figures, including Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, to benefit from “a certain financial comfort”.

Le Pen told French broadcaster TF1 she would pursue an appeal process as “forcefully” as she could, claiming the court “sought to deliberately block me” from being the next president.

Insisting she was not demoralised, Le Pen said on Tuesday (AEDT) she felt “scandalised by the decision”.

“There are millions of French people who believe in me. I’ve been fighting for you for 30 years,” she said. “This feeling of injustice is an additional push to the fight that I fight for them [the voters].”

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen told French TV channel TF1 she would fight the court’s decision.Credit: AP

At the heart of the case was the misuse of €4.4 million in EU funds intended to pay assistants for members of the European Parliament.

Instead, the court found that Le Pen, who was a member of the European Parliament at the time, and 24 other officials from her National Rally party used the money to pay party staffers in France between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Le Pen and her co-defendants denied wrongdoing.

Dressed in a white blouse and blue jacket, she sat mostly stone-faced during the proceedings but shook her head in disapproval as the verdict was being read, according to reports. Upon hearing the immediate ban on her candidacy, she stood up and left the courtroom without addressing reporters.

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, meeting Marine Le Pen at the Elysee Palace in 2022.Credit: AP

The judge handed down guilty verdicts to eight other current or former members of her party who, like her, previously served as elected members in the European Parliament. Only one defendant was acquitted.

“There was no personal enrichment … but there was the enrichment of a party,” Judge Benedicte de Perthuis said, claiming it went against party financing rules.

“Let’s be clear: no one is on trial for doing politics, that’s not the issue. The issue was whether or not the contracts had been executed … It is necessary to ensure that elected officials do not benefit from preferential treatment.”

The 56-year-old Le Pen has been a looming presence in French politics over the past decade, capitalising on anti-immigration sentiment to become a force to be reckoned with. With the populist right on the rise in much of Europe, the three-time presidential candidate had hoped to finally secure power in the 2027 contest.

An opinion poll on the presidential election published on Sunday gave Le Pen 34 to 37 per cent of the vote, more than 10 points ahead of her nearest rival.

Her party has been at the forefront of debates on national identity, immigration and Islam’s place in French society. Her rhetoric has attracted millions of supporters, particularly for her hardline stance on secularism and the visibility of religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf.

During the nine-week trial in late 2024, she argued that ineligibility “would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate” and disenfranchise her supporters.

She will continue to serve as an MP for Pas-de-Calais in northern France, but will not be able to stand in legislative elections in the event of another dissolution of parliament in the near future.

Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s close ally and now her likely replacement in the 2027 French presidential election, condemned the verdict, accusing the judiciary of undermining democracy.

“Today it’s not only Marine Le Pen that has been unjustly condemned. It’s French democracy that’s being executed,” Bardella said in a statement.

Other figures also expressed their solidarity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a supporter of Le Pen, took to social media to declare, “Je suis Marine!“

US President Donald Trump said the ruling was “a very big deal”.

“She was banned from running for five years and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country. It sounds very much like this country,” he said referring to the United States.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said that “more and more European capitals are going down the path of trampling democratic norms”.

with AP

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