Political commotion over Marine Le Pen’s conviction

A French court has convicted the far-right leader of France’s National Rally, Marine Le Pen, 56, for embezzling European Union funds to pay for her party staff, sentenced her to four years in prison – two of which have been suspended, two are to be served through electronic means – and more importantly declared her ineligible to fight elections for five years, thus eliminating her candidacy in the 2027 presidential election.

The lawyers of Le Pen have said that they would appeal the conviction. What is interesting is the intense reaction to the news in France and in Europe. Opponents and supporters of Le Pen were out on the streets, and right-wing leaders from the Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, and Italy came out in her support.

Many of the right-wing leaders see the verdict as an attempt to thwart the right-wing leader from becoming the president of France. They have no doubt that she would have won the 2027 election. She was a runner-up in the 2017 and 2022 elections, which the centrist Emmanuel Macron had won.

The support for her reflects the changing political atmosphere in Europe, where anti-immigration right-wing parties are on the rise, and winning elections. Anticipating the conviction verdict as it were, Le Pen wrote a defiant note on X, the social media portal, saying the conviction would have “no influence on our ability to defend the French people, and to censure the government (in a vote of no confidence) if necessary.” National Rally president Jordan Bardella said, “Today it is not only Marine Le Pen who was unjustly convicted: It was French democracy that was killed.”

Some of the other French parties did not express elation over Le Pen’s conviction. While the French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel just said that the verdict must be respected, France Unbowed, a party of the far-left, was more emphatic in not getting excited about the verdict. The party statement said, “The facts that have been revealed are particularly serious...As for the rest, France Unbowed has never expected to use the courts as a way to get rid of the National Rally. We fight them at the ballot box, and in the streets, with the mobilisation of the French people, as we did during the 2024 legislative elections. We will fight again tomorrow in the polls, whoever is their candidate.” National Rally said that Bardella will be the presidential candidate in 2027.

American President Donald Trump’s right-hand man and supporter of far-right European parties Elon Musk said, “When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents. This is their standard playbook throughout the world.” French Prime Minister Francois Barrou said earlier this year that Musk is a “threat to democracies.” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said of the verdict: “Well, indeed, more and more European capitals are going down the path of trampling over democratic norms. Of course, we do not want to interfere in France’s internal affairs, we have never done so, and this is France’s internal affair. But in general, our observations of European capitals shows that they are not at all reluctant to go beyond democracy during the political process.”

There is little doubt that the far-right parties are not only on the rise in Europe, but their leaders have become confident that they will come to power through popular support. And that is the reason many of them claim to be democrats because they are gaining more support than ever before in the elections because many of the European economies are going through crunch time, and many Europeans believe in the right-wing rhetoric that it is because of immigrants.