Marine Le Pen faces political death as corruption verdict looms

The frontrunner to be the next president of France could be banned from standing if found guilty on Tuesday, triggering an earthquake in French politics.

Marine Le Pen arrives for the closing arguments hearing in her trial on suspicion of embezzlement of European public funds. Picture: AFP.

Marine Le Pen has been getting ever closer to the Élysée since taking charge of the French populist right National Rally from Jean-Marie, her late father, in 2011.

She changed its name — it was called the National Front in his day — made it less extreme, banished the racist and antisemitic language that was his hallmark and saw her ratings rise to the point where she is now the frontrunner for the 2027 presidential election.

Yet on Monday (local time) her chances of ­becoming France’s first female head of state risk crumbling when the Paris criminal court gives its verdict in a case concerning claims that Le Pen and 24 ­co-defendants linked to her party, including Yann, 61, her older sister, embezzled millions of euros from the European parliament. They all deny the charges.

The decision could reshape French politics, causing turmoil in the Rally and taking the 2027 presidential race into uncharted territory. Le Pen has said it could result in her “political death”.

As nervousness rises in the party, she has been adopting a wavering strategy. Sometimes, she has sounded like President Trump in her claims that politically motivated prosecutors are seeking to prevent her from becoming president in what would be a denial of democracy. At other times, she has tried to come across as unfazed. She told Le Figaro that she was “not thinking about the trial at all”.

She added: “I consider myself to be totally innocent. There, if I am found guilty I will use the rule of law to defend my innocence again.”

The prosecution case is that Le Pen and eight other former Rally MEPs took €4.5 million in taxpayers’ money to pay for parliamentary assistants who in fact did little or no work in the European parliament, instead being ­employed by the party.

Prosecutors described the alleged embezzlement as “partisan enrichment”, saying the Rally was able to “finance its growth, its influence and its propaganda for years” and that its leaders funded their “political careers at taxpayers’ expense”.

Summing up their case in ­November before the trial was suspended while judges considered their verdict, Louise Neyton and Nicolas Barret, the public prosecutors, came down particularly hard on Le Pen.

They said she should be found guilty of misappropriating public money and placed under house arrest for two years.

Marine Le Pen at the Paris criminal courthouse for her trial on suspicion of embezzlement of European public funds. Picture: AFP.

For a party that long proclaimed the populist slogan “tous pourris” (all ­rotten) when talking about mainstream politicians, Le Pen’s conviction would be politically embarrassing.

But her greatest worry is not that the judges will force her to wear an ankle bracelet, but that they will bar her from standing from office for five years, as Neyton and Barret also urged.

“The summing up is revolting,” Le Pen said at the time. “It is profoundly outrageous. [The prosecution office] is … going so far as to demand a sentence of political death with immediate effect for me.”

In practice, her survival could depend upon a legal technicality. French courts mostly allow defendants to appeal against a verdict before it is actually implemented. In such a scenario, Le Pen could string out the appeals for years in the hope that she could become head of state and enjoy presidential immunity before they ended, as Trump sought to do in the US.

Still, prosecutors called on the court to declare her ineligible with immediate effect. Such a ruling would presage an altogether more alarming outlook for Le Pen since she would only be able to stand in the presidential election if she appealed and won.

Given that the election is just two years away, the Rally would come under huge pressure to find another presidential candidate and to cast Le Pen into the wilderness.

Jordan Bardella, 29, Le Pen’s protégé and the party chairman, would be the obvious choice.

In public he has expressed almost unflinching support for his mentor. Yet he said in a television interview last autumn that “not having a criminal conviction is for me the No 1 rule if you want to be a member of parliament.”

When he was asked if the rule would apply to Le Pen, an MP herself, if she were found guilty, he tried to duck the question. “She is totally innocent,” he said. But it was difficult to avoid the ­notion that he had delivered a shot across her bows.

For Le Pen, 56, the court case represents an obstacle on what is otherwise a largely uncluttered road to the next presidential election, when President Macron, who defeated her in 2017 and 2022, will be barred from standing for a third term.

With no obvious centrist candidate to replace him, and populism on the rise throughout the world, Le Pen was credited with between 35 and 38 per cent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election in a poll by the IFOP institute in December. All her challengers were at least eight percentage points behind.

Although big, her lead is by no means sufficient to guarantee victory in 2027. Yet it means that she is likely to start her fourth presidential campaign as ­favourite, a position which she has never occupied before. She will be ­hoping judges do not knock her out of the contest before it even begins.

The Times