Marine Le
Pen appeal trial ends with presidential race at stake
Judges’
verdict on embezzlement challenge will determine whether far-right leader can
stand in 2027 election
Angelique
Chrisafis in Paris
Wed 11
Feb 2026 17.41 CET
Defence
lawyers for Marine Le Pen have told a Paris appeals court she did not
orchestrate a system to misuse European parliament funds, at the close of an
embezzlement trial that will determine whether the far-right leader can run in
the 2027 French presidential election.
Le Pen’s
lawyer, Sandra Chirac Kollarik, told the court on Wednesday: “At no moment did
Marine Le Pen imagine that she broke the rules.” She added: “Never in her life
would she have deliberately accepted making a false contract.”
Le Pen,
57, has denied organising a fake jobs scheme to embezzle European parliament
funds. She told the court any job contracts for European parliament assistants
were transparent and “we don’t have the feeling of having committed the
slightest crime”.
The
leader of the anti-immigration National Rally (RN) had been one of the top
contenders for next year’s presidential election until last March, when her
conviction in the fake jobs trial led to her being barred from running for
public office.
Judges in
that trial ruled Le Pen had been “at the heart” of a carefully organised system
of embezzlement of European parliament funds from 2004 to 2016.
They
banned her from running for office for five years, effective immediately, and
handed out a four-year prison sentence, with two of those years suspended and
two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. They also ordered
her to pay a €100,000 fine.
Le Pen,
who is trained as a lawyer, appealed. During the appeal trial she has sought to
overturn the verdict and sentence, denying wrongdoing and insisting she wanted
to run again for president.
The
verdict and sentence – to be delivered on 7 July – will determine her political
future and whether she can make a fourth presidential attempt next year. If
not, she would be replaced by her protege and party president, 30-year-old
Jordan Bardella.
Last
week, state prosecutors asked appeal court judges to maintain the five-year
election ban on Le Pen. If the judges grant that request, she would probably
not be able to run in France’s 2027 presidential election.
State
prosecutors told the appeal court that Le Pen had been at the heart of a
“thought-out”, “centralised” and almost “industrial” system to embezzle
European parliament funds.
They said
taxpayer money allocated to members of the European parliament to pay their
assistants based in Strasbourg or Brussels had been siphoned off by the party
from 2004 to 2016, to pay its own workers in France, in violation of the
parliament’s rules.
The staff
in France had no connection to work undertaken at the European parliament,
prosecutors said. The loss to European funds was estimated at €4.8m (£4.2m).
The party, called Front National at the time, made substantial savings through
the system, prosecutors said.
One state
prosecutor, Thierry Ramonatxo, criticised Le Pen for making public attacks on
judges after last year’s verdict, when she said a “tyranny of judges” wanted to
stop her running in a presidential race that she could otherwise win.
Ramonatxo
said judges simply applied the law that had been voted for by the people’s
representatives in parliament. He said Le Pen had “made a choice to attack
judges on the political stage rather than to reflect upon what she had been
reproached for”.
The
judges will retire to consider their verdict over several months.
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