French National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has been banned from standing at the next election after being found guilty of embezzlement.
Presiding Judge Bénédicte de Perthuis has sentenced Le Pen, 56, to a five-year ban from politics. She has also been sentenced to four years in prison with two under an electronic bracelet and a £84,000 fine.
Prosecutors wanted Le Pen to face a five-year ban from public office as well as a five-year jail sentence.
Before hearing the duration of her ban – which will see the hard-right leader banned from running in the 2027 presidential race – Le Pen stormed out of the Paris court. She will not be able to appeal the ruling.
It comes after the politician and dozens of party officials were fund guilty this morning of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to instead pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, violating the 27-nation bloc’s regulations.
Perthuis, said Le Pen’s actions amounted to a ‘serious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe, but especially in France.’
In a hard-hitting judgement, magistrates also accused Le Pen of ‘undermining democracy’.
They wrote: ‘Marine Le Pen has been at the heart of this illegal system since 2009. The events have seriously and lastingly undermined the rules of democracy. This is an enrichment of the party, a circumvention of the rules governing political party financing, and therefore a circumvention of democracy.’
Le Pen and other co-defendants denied wrongdoing during the nine-week trial that took place in late 2024, and she claims that was being put on trial as a ‘political target’. The defendants also claimed the money had been used legitimately.
President of the parliamentary group of the French far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, Marine Le Pen (R), walks ahead of co-defendant French member of European Parliament Catherine Griset (C) as they exit the Paris courtroom
Pen (L) arrives her lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut at the Paris courthouse for her trial verdict on suspicion of embezzlement of European public funds, in Paris, on March 31
Marine Le Pen has been banned from entering presidential elections after being found guilty of embezzlement
Le Pen has been found guilty of misappropriating around £397,000, in particular for the contracts of her bodyguard, Thierry Légier, and her former parliamentary attaché and ex-sister-in-law, Catherine Griset
The presidential hopeful has been found guilty of misappropriating around £397,000, in particular for the contracts of her bodyguard, Thierry Légier, and her former parliamentary attaché and ex-sister-in-law, Catherine Griset.
Griset has been handled a one-year suspended prison sentence and a two-year electoral ban, but details of Le Pen’s ban are yet to be confirmed.
Louis Aliot, former number two of the National Rally, has been sentenced to 18 months in jail, with ten months suspended. The remainder will be under an electronic bracelet.
He has also been slapped with a three year ban but no provisional one ‘to preserve the freedom of voters who chose their mayor’, the judge has said.
Perthuis said the ineligibility to run for public office should begin straightaway and not be suspended. Le Pen has described such a scenario as ‘political death’.
The MEPs and 12 assistants found guilty signed ‘fictitious contracts’ and there was indeed a ‘system’ within the party, said Perthuis.
‘It has been established that all these people were in fact working for the party, that their MEP had not entrusted them with any tasks’ and that they ‘moved from one MEP to another’, she continued.
‘It was not a question of pooling the work of the assistants but rather of pooling the MPs’ envelopes.
‘Let’s be clear: no one is on trial for playing politics, that’s not the point. The issue was whether or not the contracts were respected’, Perthuis added.
Following the ban against Le Pen running for president, political opponent Éric Coquerel, MP for radical Left party France Unbowed told French news channel LCI: ‘I don’t agree that things that should be decided by the ballot box are decided by the courts.
‘It will only paint the National Rally as a victim’.
The Kremlin on Monday also slammed the French court’s ruling to bar Pen from running for office over a fake jobs scheme.
‘More and more European capitals are going down the path of violating democratic norms,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a briefing when asked about the decision.
Displaying public support to Le Pen, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban posted on X: ‘Je suis Marine!’, translating to I am Marine!, following her recent ban from French politics.
Le Pen appeared to be anticipating a guilty verdict, telling the panel of three judges earlier: ‘I feel we didn’t succeed in convincing you.’
During the nine-week trial that took place in late 2024, she argued that ineligibility ‘would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate’ and disenfranchise her supporters.
The sentences of Le Pen and eight other MEP’s will be reported individually later today, French media have stated
Le Pen appeared to be anticipating a guilty verdict, telling the panel of three judges earlier: ‘I feel we didn’t succeed in convincing you’
Prosecutors wanted Le Pen to face an immediate five-year ban from public office – which would stop her from running to replace Emmanuel Macron in 2027 – if found guilty, as well as a five-year jail sentence
Jordan Bardella speaks during a conference on antisemitism in Jerusalem on March 27, 2025
‘There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,’ she told the panel of three judges.
Following her trial last year, current French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin posted on X that it would be ‘profoundly shocking’ if Le Pen were to be barred from elections.
She also denied she had committed ‘the slightest irregularity’.
Her young lieutenant and protege Jordan Bardella, 29, who is the RN party chief, was not among the accused in the trial and is also seen as a potential presidential contender should Marine Le Pen fall.
In a documentary broadcast by BFMTV late on Sunday, Le Pen for the first time gave her blessing to Bardella becoming president.
‘Of course he has the capacity to become president of the republic,’ she said.
In a key decision on Friday, the Constitutional Council ruled that a period of ineligibility with immediate effect is in line with the French Constitution.
But it also stressed that it’s up to the judges to assess the consequences of imposing such a ban right away and make sure the ruling is ‘proportionate’ and takes into consideration ‘the preservation of voters’ freedom.’
The Constitutional Council rendered its ruling in a separate case that has no direct link with Le Pen’s.
Yet its conclusions have been scrutinized as they provide legal guidance that judges are likely to take into consideration.
The Constitutional Council also underlined that the court can decide to not impose any period of ineligibility immediately. In that case, the ban would be suspended pending appeal.
For over a decade, Le Pen has worked at making her party more mainstream, dulling its extremist edge to broaden its appeal to voters.
After coming third in the 2012 presidential polls, Marine Le Pen made the run-off in 2017 and 2022 but was beaten by Emmanuel Macron on both occasions.
Yet 2027 could be a different opportunity, with Macron not allowed to stand again.
Jean-Marie Le Pen gestures during a political meeting at the Palais Omnisports de Paris Bercy (POPB), in Paris, on June 2, 1988
Macron (pictured March 27) will not be able to stand again in 2027, an opportunity for RN
Le Pen’s life has been marked by the legacy of her openly racist father, a veteran of the long war in Algeria that ultimately led to the former French colony’s independence.
Le Pen in 2011 took over leadership of the National Front (FN) from her father Jean-Marie, who co-founded France’s main postwar far-right movement.
Distancing it from the legacy of her father, who openly made anti-Semitic and racist statements, she renamed the party the National Rally (RN) and embarked on a policy she dubbed ‘dediabolisation’ (‘de-demonisation’).
The work bore fruit in the snap legislative polls last summer, with the RN emerging as the largest single party in the National Assembly, although without the outright majority it had targeted.
That gave Le Pen unprecedented power over French politics, which she used by backing a no-confidence vote that toppled the government of prime minister Michel Barnier later in the year.
Critics accuse the party of still being inherently racist, taking too long to distance itself from Russia and resorting to corrupt tactics to ease its strained finances, allegations Le Pen denies.
But playing on people’s day-to-day concerns about immigration and the cost of living, Le Pen is now seen as having her best chance to win the French presidency in 2027 after three unsuccessful attempts.
