This Tuesday, February 3, the public prosecutor requested a four-year prison sentence, including one year under an electronic bracelet, as well as five years of ineligibility and a fine of 100,000 euros against Marine Le Pen during the appeal trial in the case of the parliamentary assistants of the National Front (FN). At first instance, the member of parliament for Pas-de-Calais was sentenced to four years in prison, including two years that could be spent under an electronic bracelet.
The rest of the required sentence is identical to the judgment of March 2025, with one notable difference: the prosecution did not request this time the provisional, that is to say immediate, execution of the sentence, which somewhat clears the horizon for the leader of the deputies of the National Rally (RN), the new name of the FN. Marine Le Pen, 57, is in fact at stake for her political future in this trial which will decide whether or not to maintain her sentence of five years of ineligibility, a sanction which for the moment invalidates the hypothesis of her candidacy for the presidential election of May 2027.
The judgment of the Paris Court of Appeal is expected before the summer. A possibility of running for the Elysée for the fourth time could be offered to the daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen if she appeals to the cassation after the possible pronouncement of a sentence consistent with appeal. “If the court follows the requisition of the general prosecutor’s office with a confirmation of a sentence of ineligibility of 5 years, if there is no provisional execution, in criminal matters, the cassation appeal suspends the execution of the sentence until the decision of the Court of Cassation”, explained to journalists Me Patrick Maisonneuve, lawyer of the European Parliament in this case. “So if there was a firm sentence of ineligibility, followed by an appeal to the cassation, from the moment there is an appeal to the cassation, well, Marine Le Pen could be a presidential candidate,” he said.
A constrained schedule
The delay in the referral and then the decision of the Court of Cassation – which however indicated that it would act diligently in this scenario – however casts doubt on the political calendar of the putative candidate. A decision from the highest French court “could come within six months, so that means a few months, a few weeks before the presidential election, so the choice [d’être ou non candidate] would be complicated”, underlined Me Maisonneuve. In March 2025, the Paris criminal court found Marine Le Pen and eight other former FN MEPs guilty of embezzlement of public funds, for a total of 4.1 million euros used for the benefit of the party over a period from 2004 to 2016. The requisitions once again severely highlighted their responsibility.
The party – for which a fine of two million euros was requested on Tuesday, one million of which was suspended – and a dozen parliamentary assistants were also found guilty in March of having unduly received this sum. At issue: the use by Marine Le Pen and other party executives of funds from the European Parliament to pay people actually working for the FN.
No “risk of recurrence”
Detailing one by one the case of each co-defendant who appealed, the representatives of the public prosecutor’s office hammered out their accusations on Tuesday, deploring on the part of Marine Le Pen “a questioning of the facade”. “She signed the contracts. She cannot tell us that she was unaware. She was a lawyer and jurist by training”, underlined one of the two general advocates, Thierry Ramonatxo, adding that Marine Le Pen was, in her capacity as president of the party, “very closely informed” of all questions relating to the assistants’ envelopes. “She had a central role as an organizer. She was the one who set the rules for internal functioning,” he insisted.
To explain the choice to rule out provisional execution, the advocates general notably recalled that such a condition responded to a risk of repeat offenses, which in their view is no longer established. “Marine Le Pen’s criminal record does not allow us to characterize an established risk of reiteration,” said attorney general Stéphane Madoz-Blanchet. He also dismissed the “major disturbance to public order” invoked at first instance and considered that “the choice of a line of defense” could not “alone qualify a risk of recurrence”.
“The only point that I see extremely positive today, in these requisitions, is that it was said that a line of defense was no longer a criminalization and a risk of recidivism for the client,” reacted Me Rodolphe Bossault, lawyer for Marine Le Pen, at the end of the hearing. For Marine Le Pen, who spoke to BFMTV, uncertainty remains: “Clearly the general public prosecutor’s office is in line with the public prosecutor’s office at first instance.”
