Marine Le
Pen attacks ban on French presidency run as a ‘political decision’
Far-right
leader, who was found guilty of embezzlement of European funds, says conviction
is a ‘denial of democracy’
Angelique
Chrisafis in Paris
Mon 31 Mar
2025 20.39 BST
The French
far-right leader Marine Le Pen has railed against a Paris court’s “political
decision” to bar her from competing for the presidency in 2027, attacking the
move to ban her from running for public office as “a denial of democracy”.
In a day of
high political drama, Le Pen was found guilty of embezzlement of European
parliament funds on a vast scale, a conviction for which she was also handed a
four-year prison sentence, with two of those years suspended and two to be
served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was also ordered to pay a
€100,000 (£84,000) fine.
A furious Le
Pen announced she would lodge an appeal against the ruling, as nationalist and
populist figures from around the world rushed to support her.
Donald Trump
said the conviction was a “very big deal”.
“I know all
about it, and a lot of people thought she wasn’t going to be convicted of
anything,” the US president told reporters at the White House. “But she was
banned for running for five years, and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds
like this country, that sounds very much like this country,” Trump said, in an
apparent reference to legal cases that Trump himself faced before he took
office.
Elon Musk,
Tesla’s billionaire owner, who has backed the far right in Germany and plays a
major role in Trump’s administration, said the sentence against Le Pen would
“backfire, like the legal attacks against president Trump”.
The judges’
decision, backed by more than 150 pages of legal justifications after a
nine-week trial, was necessary because nobody was entitled to “immunity in
violation of the rule of law”, the head judge, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said.
It was
nonetheless considered a political earthquake in France as Le Pen had hoped to
mount a fourth campaign to become president for her anti-immigration National
Rally (RN) party.
Speaking for
the first time in public about the verdict, Le Pen told TF1 television on
Monday night that she would “pursue whatever legal avenues” she could to
prevent herself from being “eliminated”. “I’m not going to submit to a denial
of democracy this easily,” she said.
Le Pen, who
was not found to have benefited personally from the embezzlement, insisted she
had done nothing wrong. “I am going to appeal because I am innocent,” she said.
“I’m not
going to let myself be eliminated like this. I’m going to pursue whatever legal
avenues I can,” she added.
The RN, the
single largest party in the French parliament, called the sentence a travesty.
The
president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, 29, who could be considered a replacement
presidential candidate despite his relative inexperience, said: “Today it is
not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned: French democracy was
killed.”
He urged
party supporters to “mobilise” peacefully to show “that the will of the people
is stronger”, starting a petition in support of Le Pen and a leafleting
campaign across the country to take place this weekend.
The ban on
running for public office, to last five years, was ordered to kick in with
immediate effect, meaning it will apply even though Le Pen, 56, is appealing
against the verdict.
Neither the
prison penalty nor fine will be applied until her appeals are exhausted, a
process that could take years.
In the front
row of the court, Le Pen showed no immediate reaction when the judge declared
her guilty. But she grew more agitated and shook her head in disagreement as
the judge said her party had illegally used European funds for its own benefit.
At one
point, Le Pen whispered: “Incredible.” She then abruptly left without warning,
before her sentence had been handed down.
Before
Monday’s ruling, she had considered the 2027 presidential race as her best
chance to gain more ground on an anti-immigration platform, while her opponents
attacked her party’s policy platform as racist, xenophobic and anti-Islam.
The French
Socialist party said in a statement that the “independence of the justice
system and the rule of law” must be respected by all. The former Socialist
president, François Hollande, said the judge’s decision was “based on law” for
“serious” allegations. But Laurent Wauquiez, of the traditional right Les
Républicains party, said it was a “very heavy and exceptional sentence” that
was “not very healthy in democracy”.
Mathieu
Lefèvre, a member of parliament for Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, told
BFMTV: “Marine Le Pen isn’t the victim of a political or judicial conspiracy.
She’s perhaps first the victim of herself and a system of embezzlement.”
Le Pen and
24 party members, including nine former members of the European parliament and
their 12 parliamentary assistants, were found guilty of a vast scheme over many
years to embezzle European parliament funds, by using money earmarked for
European parliament assistants to instead pay party workers in France.
The
so-called fake jobs system covered parliamentary assistant contracts between
2004 and 2016, and was unprecedented in scale and duration, causing losses of
€4.5m (£3.8m) to European taxpayer funds. Assistants paid by the European
parliament must work directly on Strasbourg parliamentary matters, which the
judges found had not been the case.
Le Pen will
be able to retain her current post as a member of the French parliament for
Pas-de-Calais, but will not be able to stand again in a future parliamentary
election for the duration of her ban on running for office.
Le Pen took
over the leadership of the Front National from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen,
in 2011 and began a drive to sanitise the party’s jackbooted, antisemitic
image.
She renamed
the party National Rally in 2018, wanting it to be viewed as a potential
governing force, not just a protest movement, and has run for president three
times, twice making it to the final run-off against Emmanuel Macron.
In 2022, Le
Pen provided the far right with its highest-ever tally in a French presidential
election, winning more than 13m votes.
An Ifop poll
published by the Journal du Dimanche newspaper this weekend found Le Pen could
have won 34-37% in the first round of the next presidential election and her
fate in the run-off second round would depend on whether all her opponents
united to vote against her.
The party
will now have to decide who would take her place in the next French
presidential race. Bardella, a member of the European parliament, is popular
among voters but is seen as having little experience.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário