Marine Le Pen’s pernicious offensive

Dince the prosecution's requisitions fell on Wednesday, November 13, at the Paris courthouse, Marine Le Pen has been leading an intense communications campaign to try to discredit the justice system and transform the trial of the assistants of the National Front MEPs – now the Rally national – in a political trial whose sole aim would be to exclude her from political life by making her ineligible. Five years in prison were ordered against her, three of which were suspended, a fine of 300,000 euros and five years of ineligibility, with provisional execution. “A political death sentence”she said, Friday November 15.

For those who have been seeking to establish themselves since 2022, this offensive is first and foremost a spectacular admission of weakness. The 27 defendants in this case appeared powerless, during the trial, to contest the existence of a systemic and massive embezzlement of public funds organized by Jean-Marie Le Pen then by his daughter, between 2004 and 2016, to put the assistants MEPs serving almost exclusively the party and its leaders.

However, since the Sapin 2 law of December 9, 2016, the penalty of ineligibility is mandatory for this type of offense. Those responsible for the RN, who continue to denounce judicial laxity, who demand the multiplication of minimum sentences or even the immediate execution of sentences, are particularly ill-advised to contest the rigor of the law when they are concerned, unless they consider that there are two types of justice, one for the weak, the other for the strong.

It is by relying on her political capital, the millions of votes that she represents but also the weight acquired by the RN in the National Assembly, that Marine Le Pen argues, between the requisitions and the judgment at first instance, to influence the course of justice. The decision of the criminal court is expected at the beginning of 2025, it is up to it to follow the prosecution's requisitions or not. The key question is that of the provisional execution of ineligibility, which, if confirmed, would prevent Marine Le Pen from competing in the presidential election in 2027, without waiting for the result of the appeals she could initiate.

Mistaking danger

Whatever decision it takes, the court is already trapped in the previously organized political hype: if it is more lenient than the requisitions, and Marine Le Pen will rejoice in having won the round . Whether he confirms them or toughens them, he will on the contrary be accused of having deprived the “French people” of their free expression.

The offensive is all the more pernicious as it takes place in a climate of growing protest against the rule of law, fueled by the far right and more recently by part of the right. Popular sovereignty is increasingly put in competition with judicial power, which is supposed to hinder it.

With great imprudence, the former Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin saw fit to declare that he “would be deeply shocking if Marine Le Pen were deemed ineligible and thus cannot present himself before the suffrage of the French ». To say this is to misunderstand the danger, to refuse to see that those who, in opposition, undermine the third power are the same ones who, once in charge, do everything to subjugate it. The evolution of so-called illiberal democracies as well as what is emerging in the United States are only the chilling demonstration of this.