On Monday, September 30, the trial of the parliamentary assistants of the MEPs of the National Front (FN, since converted into the National Group, RN) will begin. After two months of hearing and a period of deliberation, the judicial decision will be specially examined by the political class, two and a half years before the next presidential elections and a few months before a possible new dissolution of the National Assembly: the possible conviction of Marine Le Pen at the end of the debates.
Presumed innocent, like any accused, the three-time presidential election candidate is removed from office for acts of “embezzlement of public funds” between September 2009 and February 2016, as well as “complicity, under instructions, in the embezzlement of public funds.” “between January 2011 and December 2016. He faces up to ten years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros for acts committed between 2009 and 2013. The law was tightened in December 2013, and he is even more at risk in relation to those after 2013: the maximum fine is increased to 1 million euros. . However, these amounts constitute an upper limit that is rarely reached.
Suspensive appeal
The main risk, for the president of the RN group in the National Assembly, is not financial, but political: an additional penalty of ineligibility. This sanction, normally limited to five years, can be increased to ten years for people who held an elective public mandate at the time of the events, as was the case of Marine Le Pen, then an MEP.
However, it is not certain that it will be pronounced. The mandatory nature of ineligibility for people convicted of violations of integrity is mentioned in the Sapin 2 law of December 9, 2016, but it has not been generalized and It was not transcribed into the criminal code until September 2017, by the law of confidence in political life, six months after the last events identified by the courts in relation to Marine Le Pen. By virtue of the constitutional principle of non-retroactivity of the most severe criminal law, it is therefore the most lenient version of the law – possibility, but not obligation, to declare ineligibility – that will be applied to the far-right elected official.
Depending on their type, sanctions for disqualification can have very different consequences. If the judge handed down a “suspended” sentence, there would be no consequences for the leader of the RN deputies, unless she was caught reoffending. If firm ineligibility is declared without immediate execution, Mme Le Pen would probably appeal and therefore suspend the execution of this disqualification until a possible final conviction.
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