The good, the bad, and the ugly of Marine Le Pen's ruling

By: Beatrice E. Rangel - 01/04/2025

A French court has just ruled that the leader of the National Rally and the frontrunner in the polls for the 2027 presidential race is guilty of misusing European Parliament funds and has therefore suspended her right to run for public office for five years. This effectively removes the rising star of European politics from the presidential race while dealing a severe blow to the party her father founded and which she now leads.

Marine Le Pen has obviously labeled the decision as a political maneuver to prevent her from becoming president. And for many analysts, including myself, this suspicion weighs heavily on our view of the decision. Those of us who hold this view base our opinion on the harshness of the measure, given that the same court indicated in its ruling that Ms. Le Pen did not use the funds for personal gain but rather to subsidize the structure of her political party by paying salaries and wages to political operatives of the National Rally. In short, Ms. Le Pen was using the funds to pay part of her party's staff.

Reading the ruling, one cannot help but think of the uses that most politicians in less structured societies make of cooperation funds. And of course, in those latitudes, judges as strict as those who tried Mrs. Le Pen don't seem to exist. It's enough to recall the lack of a firm and definitive sentence against Cristina Kirchner in Argentina. Nor were Juan Carlos Varela tried in Panama, nor were President Petro's advisor Armando Benedetti or former Chief of Staff Laura Sarabia tried in Colombia, even though in both cases the investigations pointed to massive transfers of funds in suitcases.

So, despite the excessive rigor of the French court, one is reconciled with this democratic system when observing that there is monitoring of the use of funds, and that monitoring leads to the discovery of irregularities that are punishable by law, regardless of who the person is involved. This would be the positive aspect of the measure.

Another positive aspect is that the court ruling against Le Pen triggers a forced renewal of the National Rally's leadership, which the ruling against Le Pen triggers. Now the National Rally is forced to promote other generations to power. One of them, Jordan Bardella, could be the presidential candidate. Bardella, besides being immensely popular among young people thanks to his TikTok posts, lacks the burden that the surname Le Pen represents for some French people. Bardella could attract young elements of the center-right to the National Rally who until now have not wanted to identify with Le Pen.

The downside to this measure, however, is that the excessive severity of the sentence and the length of its delivery could lead those who follow Ms. Le Pen to believe it's a witch hunt against her. Their growing discontent could translate into violence, and violence could lead to traumatic elections.

The ugly thing about this measure is the timing of its adoption. By implementing it just two years before the French general election, it's impossible for people not to think it was purely electorally motivated. And if this is the case, French people's trust in their justice system could begin to erode.

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