Prosecutors seek jail sentence for Marine Le Pen over EU jobs scandal

Paris: Paris prosecutors have requested a two-year prison sentence for far-right leader Marine Le Pen and an additional five-year period of ineligibility to run for office in a trial over the suspected embezzlement of European parliament funds.

The requests put her ability to participate in the 2027 presidential race at stake.

The National Rally party and 25 of its officials, including Le Pen, are accused of having used money intended for EU parliamentary work pay staff who were working for the party, known at the time as the National Front.

Marine Le Pen arrives for the trial over the suspected embezzlement of European parliament funds.Credit: AP

Prosecutors asked the court to declare Le Pen guilty and impose a €300,000 fine and three more years of suspended prison sentence. They requested the period of ineligibility be declared effective immediately, independent of whether Le Pen files an appeal or not.

The nine-week trial is scheduled to finish on November 27, with a verdict at a later date. Defence lawyers are to speak in the next couple of weeks.

Le Pen did not show any emotion in the courtroom as she listened to the prosecutors’ demands.

“It’s no surprise,” she told reporters. “I note that the prosecutors’ claims are extremely outrageous.”

Le Pen said she felt prosecutors were “only interested” in preventing her from running for president in 2027. “I understood that well,” she said.

The flags of the European Union member states outside the Louise Weiss building, the principle seat of the European parliament, in Strasbourg, France.Credit: Bloomberg

Le Pen was runner-up to President Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 and 2022 presidential elections, and her party’s electoral support has grown in recent years.

Prosecutors also requested a guilty verdict for all other co-defendants, including various sentences of up to one year in prison and a €2 million fine for the party.

Prosecutor Louise Neyton said the judicial investigation has shown that the alleged fraudulent acts “are unprecedented because of their scope, duration and because of their organised, automatic and systemic nature.” She denounced “the serious and lasting damage these facts and this behaviour have caused to the democratic game.”

Le Pen has focused all her energy in recent weeks fighting what she claims are unfair accusations.

From the outset of the long and complex trial, she has been a forceful presence, sitting in the front row, staying for long hours into the night and expressing her irritation at allegations she says are wrong.

A lawyer by training, she follows the proceedings with extreme attention, sometimes puffing her cheeks. She makes her disagreement known with forceful nods of the head and strides over to consult her lawyers, her heels loudly clicking on the courtroom’s wooden floors.

French President Emmanuel Macron beat Marine Le Pen to retain the presidency at the last election.Credit: AP

Le Pen has denied accusations she was at the head of “a system” meant to siphon off EU parliament money to the benefit of her party, which she led from 2011 to 2021. Speaking in court last week, she instead argued the missions of the aides were to be adapted to the MEPs’ various activities, including some highly political missions related to the party.

Parliamentary aide “is a status,” she said. “It says nothing about the job, nothing about the work required, from the secretary to the speechwriter, from the lawyer to the graphic designer, from the bodyguard to the MEP’s office employee.”

Le Pen’s co-defendants – most of whom owe her their political or professional careers – testified under her close watch.

Some of the aides provided embarrassed and confused explanations, faced with the lack of evidence their work was in relation to the EU parliament.

Often, they could hear her bringing precisions or rectifications even when it wasn’t her turn to address the court. Sometimes, she would punctuate a point they made with a loud “voilà” (“that’s it”).

Le Pen insisted the party “never had the slightest remonstrance from the Parliament” until a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European body, to French authorities about possible fraudulent use of EU funds by members of the National Front.

“Let’s go back in time. The rules either didn’t exist or were much more flexible,” she said.

Le Pen feared the court would draw wrong conclusions from the party’s ordinary practices she said were legitimate. “It’s unfair,” she repeated. “When one is convinced that tomato means cocaine, the whole grocery list becomes suspicious!”

The president of the court, Benedicte de Perthuis, said no matter what political issues may be at stake, the court was to stick to a legal reasoning.

“In the end, the only question that matters ... is to determine, based on the body of evidence, whether parliamentary aides worked for the MEP they were attached to or for the National Rally,” de Perthuis said.

Patrick Maisonneuve, lawyer for the European parliament, said the cost of the suspected embezzlement is estimated to €4.5 million. “In the past few weeks, it has appeared very clearly that the fraud is, I think, largely established,” he told reporters.

AP