Marine Le Pen appeared in a Paris courtroom on Tuesday to appeal her embezzlement conviction, denying wrongdoing as she asks judges to overturn a March ruling tied to her 2027 presidential ambitions.
Le Pen, 57, is seeking to reverse a March decision that found her guilty of misusing European Parliament funds to hire aides from 2004 to 2016. The March ruling imposed multiple penalties, including a five-year ban from holding elected office, two years of house arrest with an electronic bracelet, a further two-year suspended sentence, and a fine of 100,000 euros.
In her remarks to the court, Le Pen told the three-judge panel, “I’d like to tell the court that … we did not feel we had committed any offence,” and said European Parliament officials did not tell her party at the time that the way it was hiring people was potentially against any rules. She also added, “We have never concealed anything.”
The European Parliament’s lawyer, Patrick Maisonneuve, disputed Le Pen’s framing of the institution’s role, telling reporters there was a contradiction in describing the European Parliament as “an arbitrator” while also maintaining that she should not be judged based on the content of her work. Maisonneuve said, “There’s a contradiction in saying at the same time: ‘I deny you the right to examine the content of my work as a member of parliament’ and then saying: ‘but the European Parliament didn’t conduct a thorough review,’”
The appeal hearing is expected to last for five weeks. The panel is scheduled to deliver its verdict later, possibly before summer. The case includes Le Pen, 10 other defendants, and the National Rally party as a legal entity.
The courtroom proceedings unfold against a backdrop of high political stakes for Le Pen. She had been seen as a potential front-runner to succeed President Emmanuel Macron in 2027 until last year’s ruling, which sent shock waves through French politics. Le Pen denounced the March decision as “a democratic scandal” and alleged that the judicial system brought out “the nuclear bomb” to prevent her from becoming France’s president.
The National Rally party has been leading in opinion polls, and Le Pen’s appeal is being closely watched for what it could mean for her candidacy. Several outcomes are possible, ranging from acquittal to another conviction that may bar her from running. If convicted anew, she could face tougher penalties, including up to 10 years in prison and a fine of 1 million euros.
Anti-corruption campaigners have argued that the conviction showed French democracy works and that no one is above the law. Transparency France, an advocacy group, said the conviction came after years of investigation and a lengthy trial in which Le Pen and other party members were able to freely defend their positions.
In March, Le Pen and other party officials were convicted for using money intended for EU parliamentary assistants who instead had other duties between 2004 and 2016, in violation of EU rules. The court also said some of the work was for the party, which was known as the National Front at the time in French domestic politics. At sentencing, the judge said Le Pen was at the heart of a “system” set up to siphon off EU parliament funds, including to pay for her bodyguard and her chief of staff, and said the judge found that Le Pen and the other defendants did not enrich themselves personally.
The legal proceedings initially stemmed from a 2015 alert raised by Martin Schulz, then-president of the European Parliament, to French authorities. The case and its fallout have weighed heavily on Le Pen’s political future after more than a decade spent seeking to bring the far right into France’s political mainstream, including changes to the party’s name, expelling her father in 2015, and softening the party’s platform and her public image after taking over in 2011 from her late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
With Le Pen stepping down as party president in 2021 to focus on the presidential race and handing the role to Jordan Bardella, a potential ban from running would likely shift the leadership and the ticket to Bardella. Bardella, 30, is widely expected to be her successor if she cannot run. He said in a New Year address that a potential conviction would be “deeply worrying for (France’s) democracy,” and he has criticized the risks to democratic governance amid the appeal.