French populist leader Marine Le Pen has stated that if the appeal against her five-year election ban is unsuccessful, she will step aside and support her deputy, Jordan Bardella, in the race to replace President Emmanuel Macron.
Marine Le Pen
Game over? French Council of State rejects Le Pen’s appeal against ineligibility
France’s Council of State has rejected the National Rally de facto leader Marine Le Pen’s appeal against her immediate ineligibility, which was handed down in March.
The case revolves around the employment of MEP assistants by the Front National – now National Rally (RN).
Marine Le Pen says corruption case could block presidential run
Marine Le Pen has asked Jordan Bardella, her top lieutenant, to prepare to replace her as presidential candidate for the hard-right National Rally if the appeal court upholds a bar on her entering the 2027 election.
The 56-year-old populist, who is far ahead in the polling in her planned fourth run for the French presidency, was acknowledging for the first time that her conviction in March for embezzling EU funds could block her path to the Élysée Palace.
Le Pen calls embezzlement conviction a ‘witch hunt’
France’s far-right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen has called a court ruling banning her from running for office for five years a “witch hunt”.
“I won’t give up,” she told thousands of flag-waving supporters in Place Vauban, close to the Eiffel Tower in Paris on Sunday.
She was on Monday found guilty of helping to embezzle €2.9m (£2.5m) of EU funds between 2004 and 2016 for use by her party. Le Pen has appealed.
At the rally on Sunday she claimed the ruling was a “political decision”, adding: “We are not asking to be above the law, but to not be below the law.”
Marine Le Pen speaking at the rally in Paris
“I would like to echo the words of MLK when he talked of the American people deprived of votes”
“We will fight on in a disciplined & dignified way – we will not give up to the despair of our adversaries” pic.twitter.com/WioWKeORCR
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) April 6, 2025
France braced as “far right” and leftwing parties plan rallies in wake of Le Pen decision
France’s far right is hoping for a massive public show of support tomorrow in a “people’s protest” against Marine Le Pen being barred from standing for president in 2027.
The Rassemblement National (National Rally – RN) party called for a nationwide demonstration under the banner “Save Democracy” after Le Pen was found guilty in a €4m (£3.4m) embezzlement trial.
Leftwing and centrist parties have also called for separate gatherings in and around the capital in support of the law being enforced – as well to back the court, and judges who have been subject to death threats requiring police protection.
Le Pen Backers to Protest in Paris on Sunday
French Left condemns march for democracy as “fascist threat”
France’s right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) has called for a demonstration in Paris on Sunday, April 6th, in support of Marine Le Pen. The planned protest—which follows Le Pen’s conviction, prison sentence, and disqualification from running in the 2027 presidential election—has provoked the anger of the Left, which called it a “fascist” threat. Despite this, the RN, supported by a public statement from Donald Trump, claims that its membership has exploded in the space of a few days.
Free Le Pen! pic.twitter.com/mtx3ndQ10r
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 4, 2025
Trump has finally ditched Macron for Marine Le Pen
It’s official, the bromance between Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron is over. It had always been a rocky relationship but on Thursday it ended in a spectacular fashion.
The French president, reacting to Trump’s decision to impose 20 per cent tariffs on all EU products, announced: ‘Investments to come or investments announced in recent weeks should be suspended until things are clarified with the United States.’
The Martyrdom of Marine Le Pen
A French criminal court’s disqualification of Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French populist party, the Rassemblement National, from running for office for five years, along with a sentence of four years’ imprisonment—meaning two years under effective house arrest—and a fine of $110,000 has, not surprisingly, acted like a stick poked into a hornet’s nest. The disqualification means that Le Pen will not be able to run for the presidency, which she had a reasonable chance of winning, in 2027.
Banning Le Pen, playing with fire
An insurgent politician, spoiling to cause an upset and topple the establishment, removed from the ballot paper following corruption charges. No, I’m not talking about Erdogan’s Turkey, or some other faraway autocracy, but nominally democratic France, where a court has just upended the next presidential election.
Trump slams Le Pen conviction: ‘Sounds a lot like this country’
U.S. President Donald Trump said the conviction of Marine Le Pen and her exclusion from the presidential election was a “very serious matter”.
“This is a really big deal,” said the U.S. president on Monday when asked about Le Pen’s conviction yesterday, which saw her sentenced to two years in prison and two years of house arrest, in addition to a complete ban from running for office for five years.
Is Marine Le Pen trial a leftist plot? Her allies may claim so
The Paris Criminal Court verdict is an earthquake that is likely to transform the French political landscape.
Marine Le Pen, 56, who was the frontrunner for the 2027 presidential election, has been knocked out of the race at a stroke of a judge’s pen.
Her long-term plan to win power by making her hard-right National Rally party less toxic and more acceptable to mainstream voters has been reduced to rubble.
Marine Le Pen Is Banned From Elections For 5 Years
The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running for president in 2027 after a court found her guilty of a vast system of embezzlement of European parliament funds and banned her from running for public office with immediate effect.
The decision was a political earthquake for Le Pen, the leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, who had hoped to mount a fourth campaign to become president.
Le Pen, 56, said before the verdict that that any immediate ban on running for election would be like a “political death sentence” and that judges had “the power of life or death over our movement”. She is likely to immediately appeal against the verdict.
h/t DM and XC
Le Pen delivers final blow to crush French government
On Wednesday, extreme-right figurehead Marine Le Pen led the charge in a no-confidence vote by partnering with the left, leaving the country without a government for the second time in roughly six months. Though their actions plunge France into another phase of political chaos, many assign equal blame to President Emmanuel Macron.
Paris prosecutor seeks jail and public office ban for Marine Le Pen
A Paris prosecutor has requested a five-year prison sentence and a five-year ban from public office for the leader Marine Le Pen, at a trial in which she and 24 others are accused of embezzling EU funds.far-right
The trial, which comes almost a decade after initial investigations started, threatens to undermine her National Rally (RN) party’s efforts to polish its image before the 2027 presidential election, which many believe she could win.
On Wednesday, the Paris prosecutor requested a €300,000 (£249,439) fine, five years in prison and an ineligibility sentence against Le Pen, with provisional execution – meaning the ban on running for public office would take immediate effect.
As France’s Islamo-Marxist Left Unites, Will Gallic Jews Back Marine Le Pen?
Whom are French Jews to believe ahead of the general election’s second round, this coming Sunday? Their chief rabbi, Haim Korsia, just urged them “not to vote for the National Rally nor for La France Insoumise” — neither for Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populists nor for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Islamo-Marxists, known as France Unbowed.