French far-right leader and member of parliament Marine Le Pen, President of the French far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National - RN) party parliamentary group, attends the questions to the government session at the National Assembly in Paris, on April 1.Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
Until a French court this week banned her from running for office, Marine Le Pen was considered a shoo-in to finish in the top spot in the first round of France’s next presidential election. Her conviction on embezzlement charges and unusually harsh sentence have rocked French politics and left her rivals fearing that the ban will only end up boosting support for Ms. Le Pen’s far-right National Rally.
Ms. Le Pen was among several National Rally politicians who stood accused of misappropriating European Parliament funds to pay staffers who worked on behalf of her party between 2004 and 2016. During her trial last fall, she insisted she had done nothing wrong and that the EP rules did not explicitly prohibit the practice.
A French judge not only rejected her defence, but in a devastating ruling handed down on Monday, imposed one of the harshest possible sentences on Ms. Le Pen – a four-year prison term, half of which was suspended, with the other half to be served under house arrest. Ms. Le Pen’s lack of contrition also led the judge to invoke the “risk of recidivism” to ban her from running for office for five years, to take effect immediately.
The ruling would prevent Ms. Le Pen from running for president in 2027 – that is, unless she can persuade a court of appeals to overturn the decision, obtain a pardon from President Emmanuel Macron, or get the French National Assembly to change the 2016 law that allows such bans in the first place. All three options are long shots.
Ms. Le Pen, who has seized on voter anxiety over immigration and economic insecurity to outdistance her rivals in the polls, denounced the ruling as a “political decision” aimed at disenfranchising her millions of supporters. The National Rally finished first in France’s 2024 legislative elections, winning 8.8 million votes, or 32 per cent of the popular vote.
No wonder centrist French Prime Minister François Bayrou said he was “troubled” by the ability of judges to provisionally ban politicians from running for office. Under Monday’s ruling, the ban on Ms. Le Pen applies even though she has appealed the decision. In France’s judicial system, most sentences are suspended while an appeal is being heard.
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Ms. Le Pen’s far-right allies are claiming that she is the victim of political persecution and even “a judicial coup d’état.” Europe’s right-wing populists – from Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini in Italy to Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands – have all condemned the court ruling as an attempt to block the will of French voters.
“She was banned for five years and she was the leading candidate,” mused U.S. President Donald Trump, convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records in advance of last year’s U.S. election. “That sounds very much like this country.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce expressed the same sentiment, adding: “Exclusion of people from the political process is particularly concerning given the aggressive and corrupt lawfare waged against President Trump here in the United States.”
Ms. Le Pen’s political rivals fear that the ruling will energize her supporters in the same way Mr. Trump’s judicial woes mobilized his own. France could face new legislative elections as early as this summer if Mr. Bayrou’s fragile government falls on a confidence vote. Though Ms. Le Pen would be prevented from running to retain her National Assembly seat, her party would stand to increase its plurality. It might even form a government.
Until Monday, however, Ms. Le Pen had been staking everything on the next presidential race. After finishing second to Mr. Macron in 2017 and 2022, she has consistently led the polls in advance of the 2027 race, with more than a third of voters saying they would support her on the first ballot. (France’s president is elected every five years under a two-round electoral system, with the top two first-round finishers squaring off on a second ballot.)
A French appeals court said on Tuesday that it would hold an expedited hearing and render a decision on Ms. Le Pen’s appeal by mid-2026. The move was a tacit acknowledgment of the political explosiveness of the situation. Appeals usually take several years in France. Even so, there is no guarantee the court would lift the ban.
Indeed, if the ban is upheld, Le Pen protégé and National Rally president Jordan Bardella would likely become the party’s presidential candidate. Though he is even more popular than Ms. Le Pen, that might not translate into ballot-box support. He will be only 31 in 2027 – too young in the eyes of many voters to control France’s nuclear codes.
France’s presidential race has just been blown up, and it will be a while before the pieces fall into place.