The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from competing for the presidency in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect.
The decision was a political earthquake for Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, who had hoped to mount a fourth campaign to become president.
The RN, the single largest party in the French parliament, reacted with fury, calling the sentence a travesty and an attack on democracy. The party was backed by some politicians on the traditional right.
The president of the RN, Jordan Bardella, 29, who could be seen as a replacement presidential candidate despite his relative inexperience, said: “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly condemned: it was French democracy that was killed.”
Judges handed Le Pen, 56, a five-year ban from running for public office with the added provision that it will take immediate effect and will apply despite the fact that she is appealing against the verdict.
Le Pen, who left the court before the hearing had finished, was also sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended and the other two to be served outside jail with an electronic bracelet. She was handed a €100,000 (£84,000) fine. 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.
Louis Aliot, the RN vice-president and mayor of Perpignan, who was also found guilty, said Le Pen’s sentence was an “intrusion” into the electoral process that would “leave an indelible stain on the history of our democracy”.
Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut said: “It’s a blow to democracy.” Laurent Jacobelli, an RN lawmaker and party spokesperson, said Le Pen was in a “fighting mood”.
Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, also accused the court’s judges of “thinking about themselves as above the … people” and claimed that Le Pen had only been condemned because she was “leading our side on the path to victory”.
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. 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”.
François-Xavier Bellamy, a member of the European parliament for Les Républicains, said: “Whatever you think of the RN and this case, today is a dark day for French democracy.”
International politicians on the populist right criticised the sentence, including the Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders. In an apparent display of solidarity, the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, declared: “I am Marine.”
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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 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 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. Before Monday’s ruling she had seen 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.
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.
