Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice. He tweets at @Mij_Europe.
On March 31, a political earthquake shook France: Far-right opposition politician Marine Le Pen was found guilty of embezzling €474,000 from the EU by employing four fake assistants in the European Parliament between 2009 and 2017, as well as of complicity in a wider scheme to embezzle €1.8 million in the same way.
She was sentenced to four years in jail — two of them suspended and two to be served by wearing an electronic monitor. She was also fined €100,000 and banned from standing for public office for five years, with immediate effect.
This wasn’t a “political” trial or verdict, but Le Pen will seek to turn it into one. And she may very well succeed.
At a rally last weekend, Le Pen told her supporters she was a martyr. She argued that her “human and democratic rights” had been trampled, and invoked two names that have never previously been associated with her anti-immigrant, pro-Russia movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Alexei Navalny.
In effect, Le Pen is arguing that it would be an affront to French democracy if voters are barred from casting their ballots for a front-runner in the 2027 presidential election. And she will find many people — in France and elsewhere — who will believe her accusation that the establishment is seeking her “political death.”
President Emmanuel Macron and his government also fear what a ban on Le Pen would mean for political stability.
Of course, Le Pen isn’t the only high-profile French politician to be banned from seeking public office in recent years. But her case is unprecedented and potentially inflammatory. Opinion polls consistently suggest she’s a strong contender to reach the Elysée Palace in her fourth attempt — although that’s far from a certainty.
So, what will Le Pen do now?
Last week, she sought to refer her five-year ban from electoral politics to the European Court of Human Rights, and requested a review by France’s constitutional watchdog, the Constitutional Council. Le Pen had previously excoriated both institutions for their alleged meddling in French democracy, and yet it is now those very courts that may throw her the lifeline she needs.
Since the European court cannot intervene until Le Pen has exhausted all her possibilities for appeal in France, however, her best — and really only — hope of overturning the electoral ban is by what’s known as a “priority question” to the Constitutional Council.
This question won’t address Le Pen’s innocence or guilt. Instead, it will seek to ask whether the Paris criminal court had a right to deny voters the chance to support the presidential front-runner while she’s still appealing against conviction and is, therefore, innocent in the eyes of the law.
For its part, the appeals court has three months to decide whether to send the priority question to France’s highest appeals court — the Cour de Cassation — which, in turn, has three months to reject the request or send it to the Constitutional Council. The council then has another three months to make its decision.
Meanwhile, after pressure from the government, the Paris Court of Appeal has agreed to give Le Pen an “early” trial date and promised a decision by next summer.
All this means the populist French firebrand does, indeed, have a realistic chance of overturning her electoral ban before the March 2027 deadline to file her candidacy for the presidential race.
Le Pen’s chances of completely reversing her conviction and prison sentence are small, as the evidence against her is overwhelming. But if the appeals court reverses the lower court’s decision to make her five-year electoral ban immediate (while still confirming her conviction), the prohibition could be suspended until all her other appeals — which will likely last at least two years — are exhausted, allowing her to run for president.
So, Le Pen’s political fate has not been fully decided. She might be down, but she is definitely not out — yet.
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