Just over a year before presidential elections in France, bad news for the face of the French extreme right, which continues to be shadowed by a court ruling for having embezzled millions of euros in European funds
The decision came at the beginning of last week. “The Council of State rejects the priority question of constitutionality raised by Marine Le Pen in the context of the appeal lodged against the municipal order that declared her automatically dismissed from the position of departmental counselor of Pas-de-Calais”, said the institution in a statement last Monday, November 10.
The French Council of State thus confirms the legality of the forced dismissal of the leader of the National Regroupment (RN), a French far-right party, from her position as counselor of a department of the Pas-de-Calais municipality, one of the 95 decentralized bodies that work to guarantee the health and well-being of French departments. At issue is his conviction earlier this year for alleged embezzlement of European funds.
The Council ruled that the provisions of the Electoral Code applicable to municipal councilors are constitutional, rejecting the appeal presented by Le Pen to the Constitutional Council, in which she questioned the validity of the compulsory resignation based on that ruling.
“Furthermore, the Council of State decides that the provisions of the Electoral Code relating to the automatic resignation of departmental councilors sentenced by the criminal court to a period of ineligibility with provisional execution are compatible with European and international law”, it was stated in the same statement.
In the context of the political crisis in France, Le Pen had argued in her appeal that the legislative provisions that led to her automatic resignation “did not respect the principle of equality before the law due to the difference in treatment between departmental advisors and members of parliament, whose mandates are only revoked in the case of a definitive conviction resulting in ineligibility”.
The Council of State’s ruling comes after a French court sentenced Le Pen, current leader of the RN parliamentary group, to four years in prison, two of them with a suspended sentence, and to five years of ineligibility for public office, a sentence that the French Republic will impose in the elections due to take place at the beginning of 2027.
The conviction is related to suspicions that he used European Parliament funds to pay party officials. During , in March this year, the French Public Prosecutor’s Office said that the RN treated the European Parliament as a “cash cow”, creating “a centralized and organized war machine” and a “brazen” money embezzlement scheme that was used to illegally finance the party itself “in violation of all the basic rules” of democracy.
In one of the pieces of evidence presented in court, the prosecutor cited an email sent to Marine Le Pen by a RN employee allegedly hired as a parliamentary assistant for four months but who had never even set foot in the European Parliament, where he was supposed to work – “I would like to visit the European Parliament, which would also allow me to meet the member of the European Parliament to whom I am linked”, said the email.
In another case, a second alleged assistant from the far-right party in the European Parliament had, in 11 months, a single telephone conversation with the MEP he was supposedly advising, with no document proving any service provided by him in the EU legislative body, despite receiving a monthly salary for that purpose. “The party showed contempt for public funds that came from the pockets of its own voters”, accused the MP during the trial.
In total, eight MEPs from RN and their 12 assistants were found guilty of embezzling funds, in addition to Marine Le Pen, and all were prevented from running for public office for a period of five years. The party was also fined two million euros. Due to the provisional execution of the sentence, Le Pen is prevented from running in future elections, including early legislative elections if French President Emmanuel Macron decides to dissolve the National Assembly again.
