Marine Le Pen verdict throws far-right party into chaos two years before election

The Guardian

31-03-2025

It is a political earthquake that is almost certain to end Marine Le Pen's ambitions for the 2027 presidential election and throws her far-right party into chaos just as it was setting its sights on taking power in France.
Barred from running for political office for five years with immediate effect after being convicted of embezzling European funds for her party, Le Pen's political future is now thrown into doubt. She will most likely not be able to mount a fourth campaign for the presidency in two years' time.
The conviction of Le Pen and 24 other party members for embezzlement of European parliament funds is a huge blow to a far-right party that has long tried to present itself as the honest, squeaky-clean alternative to old-school politicians with their hands in the till.
'Head high, clean hands' was once a slogan of the far-right, anti-immigration Front National – now renamed the National Rally – to distance itself from what it called greedy traditional politicians' crooked ways. Le Pen's punishment – which she had earlier likened to a 'political death sentence' – is all the more personally damaging because she began her political career styling herself as anti-corruption crusader, saying in a TV debate in 2004: 'Everyone has taken money from the till except the Front National … The French are sick of seeing politicians embezzling money. It's scandalous.'
The party president, Jordan Bardella, 29, who is popular but inexperienced, could now become a replacement figure for the presidential race, but nothing is certain. As the party met for crisis talks on Monday, he said French democracy had been 'executed' by the 'unjust' verdict.
Le Pen and fellow party workers have been found guilty of serious charges: the systematic embezzlement of European taxpayer funds.
The court found that between 2004 and 2016, the anti-immigration party set up an extensive system of fraud in which they took money intended solely for European parliament assistants to instead pay staff who worked for the party at its head office in France – including a bodyguard and private secretary. The scam cost the European taxpayer – which includes French taxpayers – at least €4m (£3.35m).
The French state prosecutor had told the court that Le Pen's party treated the European parliament like a 'cash cow' and set up a centralised, highly organised 'war machine' to embezzle European funds, which they used to illegally finance the cash-strapped party 'in violation of all basic rules'.
During the two-month trial, the court heard how the embezzlement system was brazen. In an email to Marine Le Pen, one party worker, who was supposed to have been employed as a parliamentary assistant for four months, wrote: 'I'd like to see the European parliament and that would also allow me to meet the member of the European parliament I'm attached to.'
He had apparently never been to the European parliament, where he was supposed to work. Another supposed parliamentary assistant made only one phone call to his member of European parliament in 11 months, and there were no documents showing any work took place.
The party showed 'contempt for public funds that came from the pockets of their own voters', a French state prosecutor had told the court during the trial.
But it is likely that the core of Le Pen's electorate will rally behind her. The verdict and sentence could even boost political support for the far right. Le Pen was not accused of personally lining her pockets, but of channelling the money to the party. She has routinely called the case a political attack on her, saying judges wanted her 'political death'.
The guilty verdict and strong sentence, barring her from running for office with immediate effect, serves her victimisation narrative that there is an elite out to get her and her party and stop her political career.
Senior party figures said, before the verdicts, that convictions could actually increase support for the National Rally in France. Certainly, the US's Donald Trump has shown you can keep political support even with a criminal conviction.
For more than a decade, Le Pen has tried to make her far-right, anti-immigration party appear mainstream and respectable to a wider electorate. That endeavour is now damaged, even if she positions herself as a victim.
Le Pen's ideas – including increasing police numbers and banning the Muslim headscarf in all public places – have steadily gained support among the French public, and the National Rally party emerged as the single largest party in parliament after the 2024 snap parliamentary elections, even if a left alliance and tactical voting held them back.
The question now is how the 50-year-old party prepares for the 2027 presidential race if it must run for the first time without a Le Pen as a candidate – without Marine, or her late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.