Europe| Bar one
Marine Le Pen’s ban polarises France
Pending her appeal, it also opens up the presidential election
Members of the RN party distribute leaflets in support of Marine Le Pen in Henin-Beaumont
Photograph: Reuters
For thebetter part of a decade Marine Le Pen has worked methodically to transform an extremist, xenophobic fringe movement into a more respectable nationalist party ready to govern. The French hard-right leader had a reasonable chance of winning the highest office in 2027, after three unsuccessful presidential bids. The Paris court ruling on March 31st, however, which barred Ms Le Pen from running for elected office for five years, has upended both her chances and her strategy. Channelling her inner Donald Trump, the visibly furious leader of the National Rally (RN) party declared that “the system has taken out the nuclear bomb…because we are on the verge of winning power…We will not allow the French people to have the presidential election stolen from them.”
The court ruling came as a political thunderbolt. The surprise was not that it found Ms Le Pen guilty, along with eight other current or former members of the European Parliament and 12 former assistants. The meticulous 152-page ruling found the accused had misused public funds to the tune of €4.1m ($4.4m), but did not point to any personal enrichment. It did place Ms Le Pen “at the heart” of a system which, between 2004 and 2016, used funds from the EU’s assembly to finance her national party. One parliamentary assistant, said the judges, had never lived in Brussels. Ms Le Pen was also given a €100,000 fine and a prison sentence of four years, two of them suspended and two to be carried out by the use of an electronic bracelet. She denies any wrongdoing.
What really shook the RNleader was the immediate application of the ban, even pending her appeal. The public prosecutors had requested this, but the judges were not obliged to agree. It does not stop Ms Le Pen from continuing to sit as an opposition member of parliament. But, unless overturned on appeal, it will make it impossible for her to run for the presidency at the next election.
The Court of Appeal has now said that it aims to have a decision on Ms Le Pen’s appeal ready by the summer of 2026. This offers a narrow chance for her to rescue her presidential bid. She is also lodging an appeal to the constitutional council, France’s highest constitutional body, for a suspension of the ruling on the grounds of respecting the freedom of the electorate. But as a French constitutional lawyer says, “the timetable is very tight; it is not at all evident that she can get back in the game.”
Furious party figures have seized the chance to portray Ms Le Pen as a victim of a system bent on keeping her from power. Jordan Bardella, the RN’s official president and her 29-year-old protégé, posted on X that “French democracy has been executed.” Ms Le Pen declared that the “rule of law has been totally violated” and that the judges were applying practices “which one thought confined to authoritarian regimes”. She received messages of support from such regimes, including from a Kremlin spokesperson and from Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who posted “Je suis Marine!”
This anti-system message will ring true with her core voters, who have applauded over the years as she depicts herself as the champion of the people battling the Paris elite. A poll by Elabe found that 89% of her supporters considered the ruling to be designed to bar her from running. The party is organising a “peaceful” show of support for Ms Le Pen in Paris on April 6th.
For more recent supporters though, who have been drawn to the scrubbed-up version of the RN with its snappily dressed parliamentarians, the effect could be different. Unlike the party’s adherents, a majority (57%) of all those polled judged the ruling reasonable. Politicians from President Emmanuel Macron’s broad centre have a fresh spring in their step. “She’s playing the Trump card, but I’m not sure how well that will go down here,” says Roland Lescure, a deputy from Mr Macron’s party. In another poll 79% had an unfavourable opinion of Mr Trump.
All of this leaves the RNin some disarray. It was unprepared for the ruling, and scrambled to organise an emergency meeting in response. Ms Le Pen insists that she remains the presidential candidate, and the party is not publicly discussing a back-up plan. If it leaves it too late, though, and her ban is confirmed on appeal, its prospects will be damaged. Mr Bardella is popular, smooth and boasts a 2m-strong TikTok following; but he has little experience, and none outside politics. The party had been preparing him as a potential future prime minister, not a president.
Pending Ms Le Pen’s appeal, the presidential election now looks far more open than it did before the court ruling. Mr Macron cannot constitutionally run for a third consecutive term. There is no single front-runner from the political centre to replace him, but there are plenty of aspirants. Polls give Edouard Philippe, one of his former prime ministers, a slight edge. Gabriel Attal, another ex-prime minister, also fancies his chances. A more open race will intensify rivalry between them, as well as with hopefuls on the left and centre-right. Polls may now begin to sort them more clearly.
Yet this week’s ruling is also likely to stir up France’s polarised politics. Ms Le Pen is not about to lead, or even encourage, a physical siege of the National Assembly: it is Mr Trump’s messaging, not his methods, that appeal. Yet her full-frontal assault on the judicial system borrows vocabulary from the American populist in ways that could put off wider recruits to her cause, while also making her indignant base more determined than ever. ■
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