French far-right leader Marine Le Pen predicted for months that judges would not dare to immediately ban her from running for office if she was convicted for embezzling EU funds. On Monday, they did just that.
A criminal court in Paris handed down the most severe sentence possible to the three-time presidential candidate: an immediate five-year ban on standing for office, a four-year prison sentence and a €100,000 fine.
The prohibition was dreaded by Le Pen and her Rassemblement National party since it will very likely prevent her from contesting the 2027 presidential election, although she has said she will appeal against the decision.
Has the court ended Le Pen’s political career?
Not completely, although her legal routes to try to overturn the immediate five-year ban on standing for office appear limited.
Rodolphe Bosselut, Le Pen’s lawyer, said on Monday that his client could not go before a court to seek to persuade it to quickly set aside the ban.
“No way exists to challenge the immediate ban,” he added. “Marine Le Pen, despite the fact she is appealing, cannot go before any institution or court to seek to get the immediacy of the ban suspended.”
The ban is the key issue for Le Pen’s political career, rather than the prison sentence or the fine, because under the French legal system a person is considered innocent until all their appeals are exhausted. Two years of the sentence could be served under surveillance wearing an ankle bracelet, while the two further years are suspended.
Had the ban not applied straight away, Le Pen could have pressed on, hoping the appeal would either go in her favour or be decided after the 2027 election. If she won that vote, she would secure legal immunity for the duration of the presidential term.
In any event, Le Pen will not disappear from the political stage. Even with a conviction, she can continue as a member of France’s National Assembly, where she leads the RN, the largest single opposition party with 123 MPs.
Only if there was another snap parliamentary election — something that cannot be ruled out given the tumultuous state of French politics — would she be barred from running for office.
How did she react?
Le Pen struck a defiant tone on Monday night, confirming she would appeal against the court’s ruling and not give up on her presidential ambitions.
“I didn’t think that the judges would go so far as to oppose our democratic process and interfere in the choice of the French people like this,” Le Pen told TF1 television. “There are millions of French people who believe in me, who trust me, and I want to tell them ‘I’ve been fighting for you for 30 years . . . and I’ll keep doing it, all the way to the end’.”
In her roughly three-decade political career, Le Pen has expanded the far right’s appeal by seeking to “detoxify” the RN’s image from its racist and xenophobic past and winning over working-class and rural voters. She notably expelled her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, from the movement that he founded more than 50 years ago — the Front National — to advocate for a hard line on immigration.
Her efforts have largely paid off, with steady growth in the RN’s vote share to about one-third of the electorate. Even rivals admit she has been a canny political operator, so it would be unwise to count her out just yet.
That progress could be derailed by the court’s finding that a system of fake contracts and jobs helped the RN siphon off about €4.4mn of EU funds by using parliamentary assistants in Brussels to work for the party in France. It imposed an immediate ban her on seeking office, a sentence that was harsher than many analysts had expected.
What happens to her party?
The RN has been plunged into an unprecedented crisis. It has long been run as a top-down organisation, with Le Pen as the ultimate decision maker on every strategic issue or significant electoral tactic.
She is surrounded by a tight circle of allies, including her deputy Jordan Bardella, who is the party chief and a member of the European parliament.
Bardella has run the RN since 2022, and has recently been criticised internally for not building out the party sufficiently at a local level or professionalising its operations. Although few dare complain publicly, some RN officials say he is more focused on maximising his own popularity via a high-profile book tour and regular videos on TikTok.
Le Pen declared last year that she and Bardella formed “a ticket”, meaning he would be her prime minister if she were elected president. The pair have always maintained there is no rivalry between them, nor policy divisions, but they have differed on business and economic policy. The court ruling will test their bond and whether, with Le Pen weakened, cracks would emerge in the facade of unity.
The court also sentenced the party itself to a €2mn fine, half of which is due now and half only if it commits further violations. That will diminish its war chest for future elections.
Who could stand for RN in the 2027 election instead?
Bardella, 29, would be the most obvious alternative RN presidential candidate. Although young and without a university degree, he has been immersed in politics since Le Pen plucked him from the northern Paris suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis in 2019 to be a local councillor.
“Jordan Bardella is an incredible asset to the movement, and I’ve been saying that for a long time,” Le Pen said on Monday. “I hope we won’t have to call on that asset unless it’s truly necessary.”
Bardella is a polished communicator on TV and social media. But has sometimes lost his footing during political debates or under tough questioning from the media, when he has shown a lack of knowledge about policy details or international issues. His personal ratings in opinion polls are at present higher than Le Pen’s, but not when people are asked about their preferred RN presidential candidate.
Within the RN, not everyone is convinced of Bardella as a plan B, questioning whether he could win the 2027 election and also whether he is capable of doing the job of president.
Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group consultancy, said Bardella could face “a revolt” within the RN’s different factions if he seeks to take the mantle of presidential candidate from Le Pen.
“He should not be written off but his chances of taking the far right to victory in 2027 would, in our view, be significantly less than Le Pen’s.”
One radical option is available to the RN: flipping the ticket so Bardella would be president and Le Pen would be his prime minister. Asked about such a scenario, she said: “I’m not in that frame of mind, and I’m not ready to submit to such a denial of democracy so easily.”
Where does this leave French politics?
The court’s surprise ruling has in effect fired the starting gun on the race to succeed President Emmanuel Macron in 2027. Although contenders were already manoeuvring, the prospect of the far right without Le Pen as its candidate will profoundly change the political landscape.
Le Pen was considered a shoo-in to make the run-off in the presidential election since she has a reliable base of supporters. Attention has focused on who would be opposite to her.
If she is out, one beneficiary would be centre-right candidate Edouard Philippe, a former prime minister under Macron, since he will have less competition for the conservative vote. Leftwing candidates would hope that they could woo back working-class voters who had switched to the RN.
Some of Le Pen’s rivals have spoken out since the court verdict to condemn her potential exclusion. They have used the same populist language as the RN, condemning the judges for over-reaching despite the fact they were applying legislation written by lawmakers.
Laurent Wauquiez, head of the conservative Les Républicains, who holds presidential ambitions, said the ruling was “unhealthy” for French democracy. “Political debates must be decided at the ballot box, by the French people,” he said on social media platform X.
Former president François Hollande, a potential candidate from the centre left, was more measured. “The only reaction we should have is to respect the independence of the judiciary,” he said on BFMTV.
Data visualisation by Steven Bernard and Martin Stabe
