Marine Le Pen, the French far right leader, tried and failed three times to become president. Now, even if its popularity increases, it could be forbidden to take part in the elections to guide France if it is judged guilty of embezzlement on Monday.
Such a verdict, far from certain, was equated by the lady Le Pen with a penalty of “political death” and a “very violent attack on the will of the people”. It would mention a great political storm at a time when the fifth French Republic appeared more and more dysfunctional.
On the one hand there is the principle, given that Nicolas Barret, one of the ministries, has questioned it last year, that “we are not here in a political but legal arena, and the law applies to everyone”.
On the other hand, the fear is, expressed by some important politicians, that a ban would have undermined French democracy by feeding the suspicion that it is distorted against the growing forces of hard law.
“Madame Le Pen must be fought at the polls, not elsewhere,” wrote Gérald Dermanin, a former interior minister of the center-right, wrote on X in November. Now he is the Minister of Justice.
Mrs. Le Pen. 56, in recent years he has led his anti-immigrated party from his anti-Semitic roots to the political mainstream. The party, whose name has changed from the national front to the national event, is now the largest single party of the National Assembly with 123 seats.
Public ministries accused Mrs. Le Pen and other members of the national demonstration of embezzlement of approximately $ 4.8 million in European Union funds, essentially through jobs without show at the European Parliament for “assistants”, who were rarely there and worked as members of the party staff.
Mrs. Le Pen denied the accusations.
Her lawyers argued that the 2016 law on the basis of which she can be automatically prohibited by the office race was not yet underway at the time of the alleged regime and that the people involved were political assistants, not employees of the European Parliament. Mrs. Le Pen was a member of that assembly from 2004 to 2017.
The accusation, led by Mr. Barret and Louise Neyton, requested a five -year prison sentence for Mrs. Le Pen, with three of those suspended; a fine of 300,000 euros, or $ 325,000; and a five -year ban with an immediate effect on the race for public offices.
The goal of Mrs. Le Pen and her co-accused was “put in no uncertain terms, transform the European Parliament into their cash cow,” said Mrs. Neyton last year, supporting a serious sentence.
If imposed, the disqualification would exclude it from the presidential elections of 2027 in which President Emmanuel Macron, an centrist, cannot work because it is limited to the end. Mrs. Le Pen rained in the 2012, 2017 and 2022 elections, constantly increasing her voting share at 41.45 percent.
A verdict of ineligibility against Mrs. Le Pen could be appealed. But the appeal process is slow in France, and it is far from clear that a new process would take place before the 2027 elections or that the case of the accusation would have been canceled.
The national event was reluctant to speculate on the consequences of a possible prohibition. Mrs. Le Pen’s natural successor is Jordan Bardella, 29 years old, a protigé without chatter and unstoppable that Mrs. Le Pen said it would be her prime minister if he were president.
When he was asked in a recent television interview if he would have nominated the president, absent Mrs. Le Pen, Mr. Bardella pointed: “It will not be inadmissible, so I don’t ask myself the question”.
With the forces of anti-immigrant law that rises in Europe, now encouraged by the Trump administration, Mrs. Le Pen is widely considered a strong candidate, perhaps also the favorite, for the 2027 vote, if suitable.
Macron has not built a strong political party, so his departure will create a void that more than half a dozen men-trains to whom Mr. Dermanin and former prime minister Gabriel Attal-to are climbing to fill their presidential ambitions.
A chaotic parliamentary election of last year, four first ministers in the last 15 months and a parliament paralyzed by his divisions has given the impression of a fifth distressed republic to provide coherent governance.
The disqualification of Mrs. Le Pen would inevitably have intensified the criticisms of the main American officials, including vice -president JD Vance and Elon Musk, of an alleged campaign by European states to suffocate the far right and thus eliminates democracy in the name of the rescue.
Hungarian and Italian democracies have delivered the current leaders or descendants from the far right.
But obviously Europe has a visceral memory of how fragile democratic institutions are and like the extreme right authoritarian movements have not destroyed them not long ago, falling a bloodbath.
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the national front and the father of Mrs. Le Pen, repeatedly defined the holocaust as a “detail” of history. In the end he expelled him from the party. Le Pen died at the beginning of this year.
If the verdict goes against Mrs. Le Pen, the presidential elections of 2027 would be the first in almost 40 years that have not had a pen on the vote.
Aurélien Breeden has contributed to relationships.