fter a long afternoon of closing arguments in Marine Le Pen’s appeal trial over the European parliamentary assistants’ case, the advocates general ruled in favour of upholding the sentence handed down in the first instance a year ago against the leader of the Rassemblement National (RN) MPs—albeit with some nuances. The final verdict will not be known for several months, but Marine Le Pen’s chances of being able to stand in the 2027 presidential election are steadily dwindling.
At the end of the three-week appeal trial, the prosecution sought a four-year prison sentence for Le Pen, including one year without parole, which could be served with an electronic tag, and five years of ineligibility. However, unlike the first-instance conviction, no provisional enforcement was requested.
The issue of provisional enforcement was at the heart of the RN’s challenges to the first judgement, which saw the first-instance verdict as a deliberate attempt to prevent Marine Le Pen from running in the 2027 presidential election. The absence of provisional enforcement in the indictment is therefore ‘good news’ for the RN, according to RN spokesman Laurent Jacobelli, who appeared on the parliamentary channel Public Sénat on Wednesday, February 4th. “It proves that everything we said during the first stage of the trial was realistic,” said the MP. “It is clear that this line of defence was the right one.”
The party is making the most of every opportunity, but there is little cause for celebration. We must wait for the verdict—with “confidence, serenity and impatience,” in Jacobelli’s words—which is due this summer, but acquittal now seems highly unlikely. On the evening of February 3rd, Marine Le Pen acknowledged that she would not be a candidate in the presidential election if the prosecution’s recommendations were followed.
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