Between 2004 and 2016, Marine Le Pen was at the center of a scheme to divert European Union funds to pay party officials, falsely claiming that they worked as assistants to her party's MEPs. On March 31, a Paris court ruled, sentencing Le Pen and 23 other officials from her right-wing National Rally (RN) party to fines, prison sentences and political bans. The decision sent shockwaves through French politics, not least because of one part of Le Pen's sentence: an immediate five-year ban on running for public office. This includes the 2027 presidential election, in which she is the frontrunner.
The RN leader and her populist allies have denounced the ruling as a political stunt. That claim is false and undermines trust in the rule of law. There is no reason to believe that the ruling was made in an irregular manner. The evidence is abundant, the law is clear, and there are no serious allegations of bias on the part of the court. The independence of the court must be respected. Yet, while the ban on Marine Le Pen from running for president is legally sound, it risks undermining the legitimacy of the next election. It is the wrong compromise for France. If an appeals court can shorten the ban and allow her to campaign in 2027, it should do so.
Marine Le Pen’s ban from running raises two important questions. First, under what circumstances should a democracy disqualify a candidate? Le Pen’s sentence stems in part from a tough law that France passed in 2016 in response to a long-standing leniency toward corrupt politicians, including former President Jacques Chirac. The law allows for a ban on running for political office, effective immediately. Le Pen supported the reform, and it is indeed hypocritical of her to now claim that its penal provisions, when applied to her, are an attack on democracy.
Most countries have laws that allow for the banning of candidates, but mostly in cases of serious attacks on democracy itself. After the Maidan revolution, Ukraine banned officials from running for office under the corrupt, pro-Russian government of Viktor Yanukovych; after the civil war, the United States banned those who participated in the uprising from running. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was banned from running for office for trying to orchestrate a coup after losing the 2022 election. The crimes for which Le Pen was convicted are serious, but they do not fall into that category. The harsh punishment in this case limits the choice of citizens, who are capable of judging for themselves whom to vote for. By creating a mechanism that politicians can be seen to have appropriated for their own benefit, the law encourages conspiracy theories, especially if, as in Le Pen’s case, the banned politician belongs to a party founded on distrust of elites.
The second issue concerns the relationship between politics and the judiciary. The rule of law requires that politicians be treated like all other citizens. When it comes to determining guilt, this is straightforward. However, the idea that judgments should not take into account their consequences for politics or governance is wrong. Courts should, and already do, consider the wider context, including the impact on the legitimacy of institutions such as elections. In New York in January, Donald Trump was not sentenced to any punishment for the crimes of which he was convicted, because it was felt that the American people had the right to a president unencumbered by legal obstacles. In the case of Marine Le Pen, a French court took the opposite view, stating that the punishment was harsher precisely because of the harm she could cause if she held high office.
By creating a mechanism that politicians may be seen to have appropriated for their own benefit, the law encourages conspiracy theories, especially if, as in Le Pen's case, the banned politician belongs to a party founded on distrust of elites.
The danger of courts aggressively trying politicians is that both the law and the judiciary can come to be perceived as biased. The judiciary relies on citizens to accept verdicts they may not agree with. Elections are supposed to provide legitimacy to the new government. A survey conducted after Le Pen’s conviction showed that only 54 percent of French people believed she was treated like any other defendant, indicating fragile trust in the independence of the judiciary. Among National Rally voters, as many as 89 percent believed she was targeted for political reasons.
Supporters of the ruling argue that the distrust in the judiciary is largely the result of Le Pen and her party. The RN has for decades spread conspiracy theories that France is run by a shadowy, self-serving elite that uses its control of institutions to keep them out of power. Le Pen has received messages of support not only from the European far right (Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tweeted “Je suis Marine”), but also from the French radical left: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the France Inconquerable party, has said that presidents should be elected by the people, not by the courts.
Le Pen should indeed be eligible to run in 2027. Her appeal would normally take up to two years to reach trial, but the appeals court wisely announced that a decision would be made by the summer of 2026. The court should shorten her ban (the other defendants were given just a year), allowing her to rejoin the race before the presidential election. Eric Sciotti, a right-wing lawmaker linked to Marine Le Pen, is pushing for a law that would lift the automatic ban on running before the appeal is over; if that proposal were passed before the appeal is heard, Le Pen might be able to run. Prime Minister François Bayrou has said he is open to discussing the idea. In any case, Le Pen will not go unpunished: she will have to wear an electronic tag for two years (with an additional two years of probation), and pay a hefty fine. That is fair: the goal should be to punish the perpetrator, not French democracy.
Translation: A. Š.
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