There is perhaps no politician in Europe today who embodies the continent’s far-right more than Marine Le Pen. Her thrice-unsuccessful presidential runs on a staunch anti-immigration platform have positioned Le Pen as one of the elder statesmen in Europe’s rightward political lurch for more than a decade, alongside similar figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Germany’s Alice Weidel. But after years of working to make France a more restrictive place culturally and economically, Le Pen’s political fortunes may have finally run out: On March 31, a French court convicted her of embezzling millions in European Parliament funds, sentencing Le Pen not only to several years of prison time but also barring her from running for political office for the next five years.
Reportedly muttering “incredible” as she stormed out of the courtroom before her sentence was fully announced, Le Pen now finds herself in political exile while the movement she once led scrambles to persevere in her absence. Though she has vowed to appeal her conviction, Le Pen’s political future is now wholly unclear, as is the future of her National Rally Party, and French domestic politics as a whole.
Le Pen’s conviction and sentence is “setting off a democratic crisis in France” and could “usher in a period of renewed political turmoil” if Le Pen chooses to attack the sitting French government, or if public anger “spills over into the streets,” The New York Times said. The verdict is a “political earthquake” that has succeeded in “upending France’s political order” and thrust her political party “into limbo,” The Wall Street Journal said.
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Already, many of Europe’s leading right-wing figures have “quickly rallied to her defense after the decision,” said CNN, including the Kremlin, which described her conviction as “trampling on democratic norms.” Le Pen’s punishment is like a “bad film” and a “declaration of war by Brussels,” said Italian nationalist Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini on X. It’s not merely Le Pen herself being punished, but “French democracy that is being executed,” said Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s protege and current president of the National Rally. “Je suis Marine!” said Hungarian authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on X. Le Pen’s sentence will “backfire, like the legal attacks against President Trump,” said Elon Musk on X.
Le Pen’s court-imposed ineligibility to run for office could lead to a “major internal rift” within her National Rally Party, said Mujtaba Rahman, the managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group, to The Washington Post. While the party’s various factions “all fall in behind Le Pen,” her replacement Bardella may be a “lot less effective in corralling” the party to “remain disciplined and united and to cohere around one view.”
What next?
It could be “18 months to two years before Le Pen gets her appeal hearing,” the BBC said, given the French judicial system’s “overloaded” calendar. In addition to her candidacy ban, Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison, with two years suspended and the other two potentially “served under a form of house arrest,” the Times said.
Crucially, should she decide to, Le Pen will be able to “perform her retaliation at the Assemblée Nationale” where she sits as an MP in a seat “not immediately threatened” by the ban on future runs for office, said Le Monde. In the days leading up to her conviction, Le Pen’s National Rally Party “suddenly stepped up its threats” to “topple” Prime Minister Francois Bayrou’s government in what “appeared to be a deliberate diversion” from her then-looming sentencing. Meanwhile, as Le Pen’s party contemplates a replacement for her in the 2027 elections, it risks “losing the momentum it had built up” in recent years, all while even further-right groups look to “capitalize on their main adversary’s downfall.”
