Marine Le Pen sentenced to one year in prison with electronic monitoring
The Paris appeals court has sentenced Marine Le Pen to one year in prison with electronic monitoring and temporarily stripped her of voting rights and eligibility in the European parliamentary assistants affair.
Marine Le Pen sentenced to one year in prison with electronic monitoring
The Paris appeals court has sentenced Marine Le Pen, leader of the Rassemblement National, to a sentence of one year in prison with electronic monitoring. The court has also temporarily stripped her of voting rights and eligibility for fifteen months, with thirty months suspended. This measure has already been applied provisionally since the end of March 2025 and is therefore considered to have been served by the court.
The judgment handed down on Tuesday concerns a case of alleged fictitious employment of European parliamentary assistants between 2004 and 2016. The court characterised the facts as serious. As head of the party, Le Pen should have ensured compliance with the rules. The central charge concerned the misappropriation of funds intended for parliamentary assistants who had allegedly actually worked for the party.
In addition to the prison sentence and the temporary deprivation of civic rights, the court imposed a fine of 100,000 euros. The conviction could seriously compromise Le Pen's candidacy in the French presidential election in the spring next year. Although the ineligibility sentence has already been served, the electronic monitoring would impose strict schedules that would make an election campaign with extensive travel virtually impossible.
At first instance, Le Pen had been stripped of voting rights and eligibility for five years with immediate effect and sentenced to four years in prison with two years suspended. The prosecution maintained its demands on appeal, while the defence lawyers argued for acquittal.
If Marine Le Pen renounces standing as a candidate, the Rassemblement National would need to designate Jordan Bardella as its candidate. The young party president, aged 30, slightly leads her in polling for the first round. Both nevertheless remain clearly ahead of other candidates in voting intentions.
Source: Google News CH — Crime (de)