(Bloomberg) -- Far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused French prosecutors of interfering with the democratic process after they called for her to be barred from the next presidential election.
The prosecutors have accused Le Pen of embezzling European Union funds to finance party operations in France and on Wednesday recommended that she be banned immediately from public office for five years. That would rule her out of the 2027 race, which she would enter as one of the favorites to succeed President Emmanuel Macron.
“The public prosecutor’s office is trying to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for the people they want,” the far-right leader told reporters late Wednesday. Le Pen denies any wrongdoing.
The Paris criminal court isn’t expected to issue a ruling for another few months but the pressure is already mounting on judges.
Le Pen and her party, the National Rally, have the wind in their sails after almost tripling their number of seats in this year’s parliamentary elections and securing a de facto veto over government policy. Now she’s trying to capitalize on that position to claim the presidency, after finishing second to Macron in both the 2017 and 2022 presidential election.
Donald Trump’s victory in the US election adds extra interest to the case. Trump won a second term with a clutch of criminal cases hanging over him and, like Le Pen, has made trenchant opposition to immigration a cornerstone of his program.
The key political issue in Le Pen’s situation is whether the judges would be prepared to order an election ban that would be effective immediately. If they don’t, Le Pen could challenge any ban, lifting the sentence until appeals are exhausted. That would clear her to run, albeit with legal issues hanging over her, as Trump had.
Even Le Pen’s opponents are arguing that the judges should avoid any decision that would affect the outcome of the election.
Macron’s former right-wing interior minister of Gerald Darmanin — sometimes touted as a candidate for the 2027 presidency — said on X that “it would be deeply shocking if Marine Le Pen were deemed ineligible and, thus, could not stand before the French people’s suffrage.”
“Fighting Madame Le Pen should be done at the ballot box, not elsewhere,” Darmanin added, saying that banning her from running would widen “the gap between the ‘elites’ and the vast majority of our fellow citizens.”
Le Pen and other party members elected to the European Parliament were accused of improperly using a budget allocation for EU aides. Prosecutors say the aides focused on work for the then-National Front in France rather than EU affairs as their contracts specified.
In a separate case earlier this year, judges convicted several people from the centrist Modem party, allied to Macron, without immediately banning them from running for offices. Paris prosecutors insisted on Wednesday that the two cases couldn’t be compared as the allegedly embezzled amounts are vastly different — about €4.5 million ($4.7 million) for the National Rally trial and less than €300,000 for the Modem, with much fewer contracts and over a much shorter time span.
Prosecutor Nicolas Barret argued that the “seriousness of the allegations” calls for making an example. In addition to the ban, his colleague Louise Neyton sought a two-year jail term for Le Pen, but suggested it could be served with an electronic bracelet, as well as a €300,000 fine. The National Rally is facing a request from prosecutors for a €4.3 million penalty, of which more than half would be suspended.
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