The far-right leader of the National Rally (RN) in France, Marine Le Pen, among the favourites to win next year’s presidential election, has been convicted along with other RN leaders, of embezzlement. The convictions have just been confirmed in the appeal court, but the ban on her standing in elections, imposed by a lower court, has been lifted. John Mullen explains.
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Millions stolen by Le Pen’s party
Last year, 24 leading members of the RN were convicted of embezzlement; the total sentences added up to 32 years of imprisonment, some of it suspended. Around €3 million (A$4.9 million) belonging to the European Parliament had been used to fund party workers around France and not for parliamentary activities in Brussels. Marine Le Pen organised the system of embezzlement.
The lower court sentenced Le Pen to four years imprisonment, half of it suspended. The two years which were not suspended would normally be served as a form of house arrest, with an electronic ankle bracelet to be worn at all times, and leaving home only when specifically authorised by a judge (eg for one’s job). She was also fined €100,000 and banned from holding public office or standing in elections for five years.
This week, the appeal court confirmed Le Pen’s guilt, but pronounced a lighter sentence: only three years imprisonment (two suspended, one with strict curfew and ankle tag). And only a 15-month ban of standing in an election.
Those 15 months are already over, and so Le Pen announced on national news on the evening of the verdict that she will be standing for president. The appeal court was influenced by the idea that voters, not judges, should decide who can be elected to high office.
However, it would be almost impossible to campaign with an ankle tag and curfew, which the appeal court decided was to be put in place in the coming weeks. Le Pen’s spectacular attempt at solving this problem is to make one last (entirely frivolous) appeal, which will delay the imposition of the sentence decided.
Le Pen intends to appeal to the Court of Cassation, France’s highest court for civil and criminal matters. The Court does not retry cases, but reviews whether the law has been correctly interpreted and applied. There is almost no chance that this court will find in her favour, but if the case was in appeal, her prison sentence would be postponed until after the decision, allowing her to stand for president in April–May 2027.
If the court were to accept the case and fully review its legal content, this would take a couple of years and her presidential campaign would not be hindered.
If, however, the court decided to dismiss the case as obviously not requiring a full legal review, the decision would no doubt be announced in early 2027. Le Pen will probably but not definitely have time to finish the presidential campaign before being confined to her home. If the nightmare comes true and she wins the election, presidential immunity would delay the sentence while she was in office.
Clean fascist hands?
The RN likes to present themselves as having clean hands; this verdict contradicts that idea. It is not easy to say how damaging this is for them.
No doubt many far-right voters think that taking money from the European parliament to fund the RN is just fine, and the RN are of course wheeling out their standard discourse about patriots being victimised.
In any case, the corruption convictions have been well-known for more than a year and have certainly not stopped the RN from broadening its support, in particular among women and among more well-off social groups, the populations where its vote was weakest.
This has all been pushed along both by a mass media tremendously generous to the far right, and by constant fabrication by Macron’s governments of crises to be blamed on Muslims or on immigrants.
The RN has, in addition, built a much stronger relationship with the main bosses’ organisation, the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF).
Sections of the left have often been indirectly complicit in the rise of the RN: several dozen personalities including national Socialist Party leaders publicly denounced the use on the left of the word “Islamophobia” in an open letter to the press last year.
At the French Communist Party conference last week, its leader, Fabien Roussel, attacked La France Insoumise (France in Revolt) leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon because of his involvement in campaigning against Islamophobia and for a free Palestine.
Could Le Pen win the presidential election?
We anticapitalists do not possess crystal balls. However, there have been antifascist victories in France recently.
In 2024, all opinion polls a month before the parliamentary elections said that the next Prime Minister would be from the RN, as it would have the highest number of MPs in a hung parliament.
The most impressive left and antifascist campaign for many decades pushed the far right back into third place concerning the number of seats in the House. This campaign included innumerable rallies, a mass push to get voters registered, systematic door-to-door canvassing and the involvement of myriad groups from civil society: from classical music professionals to university professors, organisations warned against voting for the far right.
Since then, antifascist mobilisation has been on the rise, but most rallies and demonstrations have been local affairs. There is sadly no consensus on the left on the need for a national network to stop Le Pen’s campaigning.
The latest court verdict has encouraged antifascists, though, and on July 8, Le Pen found that visiting a market in a town where she had a large electorate was impossible because of protesters chanting “criminal!”.
Concerning the election, everything is still to play for.
Recent months have confirmed that there are two lefts.
There are those close to the Socialist Party whose main enemy seems to be Mélenchon’s France Insoumise, and whose MPs have refused at every opportunity the chance to throw Macron’s right-wing minority government out by voting no-confidence.
And there is the radical left around the France Insoumise. We are expecting a long and dynamic electoral campaign with in-depth debate and discussions on all the key questions facing workers.
[John Mullen is a revolutionary socialist living near Paris and a supporter of the France Insoumise. His website is randombolshevik.org.]