The leader of France’s National Rally (RN) party, Marine Le Pen, told supporters she would not give up despite being found guilty of embezzling European Union (EU) funds and banned from running for office, but large-scale protests against the move did not materialize Sunday.
The RN called on its supporters to mobilize in Place Vauban in Paris, near the historic Les Invalides, to “defend freedom, save democracy, and support Marine!”
Protesters waved tricolor flags, with a CNN team on the ground seeing what appeared to be a few thousand in attendance to protest Le Pen’s barring from the 2027 election.
Speaking to the crowd on Sunday, Le Pen reiterated her stance on the ruling being politically motivated. “This is not a judicial decision, it’s a political decision,” she said.
The protests were met with rival rallies by left-wing parties and groups on the opposite side of Paris. The organizers, Les Écologistes and the France Unbowed parties, said thousands of people were in attendance at the counter-protest, where a large banner read, “Let’s not let the far right get away with it!”
Le Pen, who was the frontrunner for France’s next presidential election in two years, was convicted by a Paris court on Monday for using more than €4.5 million ($4.38 million) of EU money to pay her party’s political staff from 2004 to 2016, while falsely claiming they were working as assistants to its members of the European Parliament.
The court handed Le Pen a four-year prison sentence with two years suspended, to be served under house arrest, and a €100,000 ($108,000) fine.
The presiding judge in the case, Bénédicte de Perthuis, said the politician’s actions amounted to a “serious and lasting attack on the rules of democratic life in Europe, but especially in France.”
Le Pen slammed the ruling as a purely “political decision” in a television interview and claimed the “rule of law (had been) completely violated.”
The decision has dealt a severe blow to Le Pen’s ambitions to win the Élysée Palace at her fourth attempt in 2027, when current President Emmanuel Macron will be unable to seek a third consecutive term.
The politically explosive ruling drew condemnation from her right-wing allies in Europe and across the Atlantic. US President Donald Trump threw his support behind the RN leader on Friday, calling the court ruling a “Witch Hunt” and writing on Truth Social, “FREE MARINE LE PEN.”
Some of Le Pen’s rivals even voiced concern over the implications of the sentence, with Prime Minister Francois Bayrou saying he was “troubled” while current French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin posted on X in November that it would be “profoundly shocking” if she were to be barred from elections.
Le Pen said she would appeal the ban, with the Paris Court of Appeal offering a potential lifeline by allowing for a decision to be made by June 2026. If she were to win her appeal, she could still run in the presidential elections the following year.
CNN’s Saskya Vandoorne, Pierre Bairin and Todd Symons contributed reporting.
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