The leader of the French extreme right Marine Le Pen will meet on Monday the sentence for alleged diversion of funds from the European Parliament that will profile her future and that can end her presidential ambitions.
Accused of having urged a plot so that the parliamentary assistants allocated by the Eurocamara to their parliamentarians would actually work for its party, the Prosecutor’s Office requested five years in prison against it, three of them exempt from compliance, two troops although not between bars and 300,000 euros of a fine.
But, above all, at the end of a hard allegation that requested an exemplary penalty, the Prosecutor’s Office included a complementary request that has become the most important part of the case: five years of disqualification for public office with immediate application, even in the foreseeable case of an appeal.
“I don’t think (the judges) get so far,” Le Pen said in statements to the weekly La Tribune on Sunday Posted this weekend.
If the court followed the criteria of the Public Ministry, Le Pen would see his fourth career for the presidency of France, with new elections planned for 2027, after having reached the second round twice, always in ascending progression.
The ultra -rightist leader appears as a serious favorite for those elections, at the head of a party that chains successes at the polls and that seems to have broken the roofs that, both to her and her father, have closed so far the doors of the Elysium.
Although from the first day, Pen has refused to consider this trial as a political process, in the last days of the same he did put on the table the implications that “for democracy”: “behind me there are eleven million people who have voted for the movement that I represent. Millions of French who would be deprived of their candidate.”
His words resonated serious in the court where for two months he defended his innocence against the evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office and the private accusation, which represents the European Parliament, which raises more than 6.8 million euros the damage suffered.
Le Pen and 26 people are accused of embezzlement of public funds between 2004 and 2016. Throughout the hearing, the accusation tried to demonstrate that the parliamentary attendees of the National Front, subsequently renamed as National Group (RN), did not work for the Europarliamentarians, but for the party.
Many of them barely stepped on the Eurocamara, while their regular presence was accredited in the premises of the party, where a good part also had an assigned position.
The ultra -rightist leader explained that they were looking for parliamentary assistants with political commitment and that they worked together, without distinction between their parliamentary and partisan work.
A practice that did not attract the attention of the European Parliament while the extreme right had a small parliamentary group, but that changed dimension when in 2014 they were the most voted party in France and sent 24 parliamentarians to the Chamber.
The then president of the Eurocamara, the German socialist Martin Schulz, filed a complaint in 2015 that led to almost ten years of investigation and ended in the trial.
Several jurists consulted by Efe agree that Le Pen will be convicted, but none is able to pronounce on the question of disqualification and, even less, if it will be suspended. For months, the jurists of the country have discussed the constitutional lace of such penalty, without anyone having known to give a clear interpretation to an unpublished situation.
Many think that an appeal should leave it in suspense, which would allow Le Pen to extend the case beyond 2027. If it were, in case of imposing himself in the race for Elisha, the leader of the extreme right would see the judicial clock protected by the presidential immunity to stop.
Others consider, however, that there is matter for disqualification to be imposed even in case of resource, which would leave politics out of play and propel the first line to his dolphin, the young Jordan Bardella, 29.
The issue can end in the offices of the Constitutional Council, chaired by the faithful macronist Richard Ferrand, whose appointment was endorsed by Parliament month and a half for just a vote and with the abstention of the Le Pen party, which many interpret as a favor that will carry counterparts.
This agency has not yet seated jurisprudence on the provisional application of an disqualification penalty for a national position, although it did endors it last Friday for a municipal position in a case of a Mayotte councilor.
Le Pen’s lawyers expect a more favorable sentence.
