Le Pen ruling: lawfare European style

This isn’t just about Le Pen. Nor is it about left or right. It’s about a desperate establishment willing to use any tool at its disposal to stem the “populist” threat

On March 31, 2025, a French court convicted Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN) party, alongside 23 others, of misappropriation of public funds and sentenced her to a four-year prison term (two years suspended, two to be served under house arrest with an electronic tag) and fined €100,000.

Crucially, she was also banned from running for public office for five years, effective immediately, which could potentially bar her from running in the 2027 French presidential election — for which she is currently leading the polls by a large margin — unless she successfully appeals before then.

She might still have a chance after a court of appeal said it would issue a decision on her by summer next year. But the ruling has nonetheless caused a political firestorm, for obvious reasons. Many have argued that this is a classic case of lawfare — the use of legal action to hinder a political opponent — and there is a quite a bit of evidence to support this.

First off, what is Le Pen accused of? Arnaud Bertrand did a great summary on X:

The whole case centers on the fact that between 2004 and 2016, Front National (FN) [the precursor to the National Rally] members of the European Parliament (MEPs) were using their EU parliamentary assistant allowances to pay people who were actually working for the party rather than on EU business.

At the European parliament, each MEP gets around €23,392 monthly to hire assistants, and the FN/RN created a system to funnel that money into party operations, which is illegal.

Tellingly, many of these “assistants” were on both the European Parliament payroll AND the party’s organizational chart, and some never even met the MEPs they supposedly worked for.

The court determined the amount diverted totalled €2.9 million.

The investigation began all the way back in 2015 when European Parliament president Martin Schulz referred the matter to the European Anti-Fraud Office after noticing that 20 of the 24 FN parliamentary assistants appeared on the party’s organizational chart.

The French justice system opened their formal investigation in 2016, and the case involved 27 defendants — nine former FN/RN MEPs including Le Pen herself, twelve parliamentary assistants, four other FN/RN officials, and the party itself as a legal entity.

Le Pen wasn’t the only one who got convicted. The Rassemblement National party itself got hit with a €2 million fine. Eight other former MEPs were all convicted, alongside twelve parliamentary assistants and three RN officials.

The prosecution’s case was pretty straightforward: the party created a systematic scheme to divest EU funds for party benefit. They had mountains of evidence showing assistants working primarily or exclusively for the party while being paid by the European Parliament.

The operation wasn’t just a one-off — it was a years-long scheme that was centrally managed by the party leadership.

On the defense side, they insist all assistants performed “real work” (which is true, just not the work they were paid for, which is the whole point), claim political persecution and argue there was no personal enrichment (which is correct).

They also compare the way they’re treated to that of the MoDem party — the party of current Prime Minister François Bayrou — which faced similar charges. They argue their case demonstrates a double standard in French justice, since MoDem officials received much lighter sentences for similar offenses.

This is somewhat correct given that members of both parties were found guilty of essentially the same crime — using European Parliament funds to pay for party work.

However, the scale and nature of the operations were quite different. The RN operation involved €2.9 million compared to MoDem’s €204,000. The RN maintained their system for 12 years across 46 contracts, while MoDem’s operation lasted for a shorter period with 10 contracts. Perhaps most importantly, MoDem officials stopped the practice voluntarily without legal intervention, while the RN only ceased when the European Parliament started investigating.

Still, the stark difference in sentencing, particularly regarding immediate ineligibility, has become a big controversy, with many questioning whether the punishment truly fits the crime or reflects political considerations about keeping Le Pen out of the 2027 presidential race.

The last point is key. The issue isn’t so much whether Le Pen is guilty (bearing in mind that she has yet to go through all the degrees of judgement) but whether an immediate five-year election ban is a proportionate punishment — especially considering that she has yet to exhaust all avenues of appeal.

It should be noted that, while ineligibility is mandatory in France for the offence of misappropriation of public funds, it is entirely up to the judges to decide whether to provisionally enforce ineligibility before the last degree of judgement — i.e., while the defendant still has the right to appeal. This is primarily based on the fact that in France, as in most countries, you’re not officially “guilty” until all normal legal remedies have been exhausted — that is, until you’ve gone through all levels of judgement, at which point the decision becomes final and enforceable.

In this sense, the court’s decision to immediately enforce the ineligibility ban on Le Pen was, ipso facto, an arbitrary decision — and indeed one that by the judges’ own admission was based on moral and political considerations.

According to the court, Le Pen’s lack of remorse or acknowledgment puts her at risk of reoffending — and essentially makes her morally unfit for public office. Moreover, the court found that allowing Le Pen to run, or even worse to be elected, while convicted (potentially in the final degree) of misappropriation of public funds, could cause “a major disturbance to democratic public order”. It’s unclear if they’re referring to the risk of public protest or to the potential “reputational damage” to France’s public authorities.

Either way, the argument is highly questionable, to say the least: countless high-profile politicians, both in France and elsewhere, have been accused — or even convicted — of misusing public funds without facing meaningful consequences to their careers.

In 2016, for example, Christine Lagarde, then the head of the International Monetary Fund, was found guilty of negligence in approving a massive €400-million payout of public money to controversial French businessman Bernard Tapie during her time as French finance minister between 2007 and 2011, but the court decided that she should not be punished and that the conviction would not constitute a criminal record. Indeed, she then went on to become none other than the president of the European Central Bank, a role she still holds.

Overall, it’s hard to deny that the ruling has all the hallmarks of a politically motivated decision. It is also virtually unprecedented: for many years, France’s Constitutional Council, the country’s highest constitutional authority, has taken the position that the penalty of ineligibility, even if it is accompanied by provisional execution, does not apply to the current mandates of national elected officials.

However, in a separate ruling (unrelated to Le Pen) that, strangely enough, came just days before the Le Pen sentence, the Constitutional Council argued that the provisional execution of an ineligibility sentence, by helping to “reinforce the requirement of integrity and exemplarity of elected officials and the trust of voters in their representatives”, responded to “the constitutional value objective of safeguarding public order”.

The political nature of this decision should be obvious to anyone not blinded by ideological tribalism — and I say this as someone who has frequently criticised Le Pen in the past. Once this precedent is established, it can — and will — be used against any candidate who is perceived (emphasis on the latter) to be a threat to the establishment. Today, those threats (real or perceived that they may be) mostly come from the right — indeed, in Germany, lawmakers are preparing legislation that would render anyone convicted of “hate speech” ineligible to run for office, a move clearly designed to target the AfD — but any threat coming from the left would be treated in the same way.

It’s therefore not surprising that even someone like Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the left-wing La France Insoumise — who himself was unjustly excluded from government after the last elections — has criticised the judges’ decision, saying: “The choice to dismiss an elected official should only belong to the people”. Those on the left applauding this move are unwittingly paving the way for similar measures to be turned against them in the future.

A final note: I’ve seen many people (especially on the left) argue that if Le Pen is guilty, then the move cannot be considered lawfare. Notwithstanding the fact, as already noted, that she remains legally “innocent” until all avenues of appeal have been exhausted, a key point often overlooked is that lawfare doesn’t necessarily — or even primarily — involve fabricating false accusations (though that does also happen, as seen recently in Romania). More often, it consists in the selective and arbitrary application of the law: punishing some while turning a blind eye to others who may have committed the same offences.

This kind of asymmetrical justice is just as corrosive to democracy as outright false accusations. In politics, after all, dig deep enough and you’re almost certain to uncover some wrongdoing — especially of a financial nature. As an Italian, I know this all too well. In 1992, the two main parties at the time, Christian Democracy (DC) and the Socialist Party (PSI), were effectively wiped out by the Tangentopoli corruption scandal. Were they guilty of corruption? Absolutely. But the crackdown was also politically driven, orchestrated by powerful factions within the Italian state — and even beyond — who saw the existing political establishment as an obstacle to implementing radical neoliberal reforms. And those that came after were just as corrupt, if not more.

Ultimately, this isn’t just about Le Pen. Nor is it about left or right. It’s about a desperate establishment willing to use any tool at its disposal to stem the “populist” threat, whether real or imagined.

[Note: an earlier version of the article mistakenly attributed the Le Pen ruling to the Constitutional Court]

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Thomas Fazi

Website: thomasfazi.net

Twitter: @battleforeurope

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