Would banning Marine Le Pen from running for president be a gift for France's far right?

It’s been almost ten years since the investigation began, and the walls are finally starting to close in. France’s far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen and two dozen other members of her National Rally (Rassemblement National, or RN) party stand accused of embezzling European Union funds, having allegedly funnelled millions of euros meant for EU parliamentary assistants into paying the salaries of their own party staffers in France.

This week, prosecutors in Paris told the court that they were seeking to ban all of the defendants from public office for five years, in keeping with a 2016 law that automatically bans politicians found guilty of misappropriating public money from political life. Critically, the ban would remain in effect even if the defence appeals. The party itself would be fined €2 million, with Le Pen herself facing a fine of €300,000 as well as up to five years in prison.

Read moreWhat does the EU embezzlement trial mean for Le Pen and the French far right?

The RN maintains that the staffers were legitimately employed as parliamentary aides and has already repaid more than €1 million to the EU parliament, which the party denies is an admission of guilt. The trial continues until November 27.

For Le Pen, already the veteran of two second-round clashes with centre-right President Emmanuel Macron in previous presidential votes, the ban would be disastrous. But Le Pen, who has for decades tried to drag the far-right party out of the shadow of her Holocaust-denying father Jean-Marie, is no longer the party’s only prospect for the presidency. Party President Jordan Bardella, who was just 28 years old when he ran as the RN’s candidate for prime minister earlier this year, has for years been groomed by Le Pen as her "lion cub". 

The heir-apparent

Not many people would feel capable of writing their memoirs before they reach the age of 30, but Le Pen’s hand-picked protégé Jordan Bardella evidently felt he had a great deal worth putting on the page. Bardella, who joined the RN at 16, became a member of the European Parliament in 2019 aged 23, before being personally handed the party presidency by Le Pen three years later.

This year, he ran as the far-right party’s prime ministerial candidate in the snap legislative elections. Although the party failed to break through the block once again built by left-wing and liberal voters set on stymying the far right’s rise to power, the RN now holds more National Assembly seats than at any moment in the party’s history and stands as the largest single party in the lower house. At the launch earlier this week of his book What I’m Looking For, published by a group owned by right-wing billionaire Vincent Bolloré, Bardella was still riding high.

Read moreHow Jordan Bardella became France’s far-right poster boy

Fred Paxton, a political scientist at the University of Glasgow and the author of Restrained Radicals: Populist Radical Right Parties in Local Government, said that while Bardella differed in style from his long-time mentor Le Pen, the substance of his hardline anti-immigration programme remained largely the same. Nevertheless, he said, the RN’s heir-apparent seemed to have managed to present himself as the more acceptable face of a party that has for decades struggled to distance itself in the public imagination from its openly anti-Semitic founders and enduring links to neo-Nazi groups.

“It’s clear that they’re very close, but at the same time he’s been very clever in the European Parliament in identifying his own unique standpoints on certain issues, a nuance on Le Pen’s position,” he said. “In somewhat of a similar way that Le Pen managed to do in respect to her father – maybe not as radical a break, but still some distinct positions. So he has potentially laid the groundworks quite well to break off and establish something new.”

As well as his seemingly greater appeal to younger voters, Bardella would also be entering the presidential race with a strong story to sell to an electorate less and less trusting of longstanding institutions: no longer just the party’s hand-picked poster boy, but the standard-bearer of a popular leader banned from political office by an anti-democratic judiciary in service to distant European bureaucrats.

'Martyr posture'

The narrative is already well under way. Speaking to the Bolloré-owned CNews channel on Thursday, Bardella was unequivocal in his condemnation of the prosecutors’ demand.

“The courts are seeking to triumph where the political class has failed, by rendering Marine Le Pen ineligible and financially ruining the Rassemblement National,” he said.

Tristan Boursier, associate researcher at Sciences Po University’s political research centre, said that the party was already using the case to shore up its anti-establishment credentials.

“If the RN succeeds in portraying this case as an attack on an anti-establishment figure, it could instead bolster its support by adopting a victimisation narrative against perceived hostile institutions,” he said. “Even if a sentence of ineligibility is not handed down, the RN stands to gain doubly from this trial – it can position itself as a victim of European justice without suffering the severest consequences. For weeks now, RN leaders have been shaping public opinion with this notion of a ‘political trial’, preparing a martyr posture in case of conviction.”

French far-right’s Le Pen faces questioning in Paris court in fake EU jobs trial

02:44

To display this content from , you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.

Accept Manage my choices

Certainly, criminal convictions have proved no obstacle to winning high office – as the recent election of US President-elect Donald Trump has shown all too clearly. Although he cautioned against drawing one-to-one parallels with the US presidential election and the upcoming French vote, Paxton said that Bardella could be well placed to weaponise France’s deepening anti-system sentiment.

“I think a lot of people’s minds will go straight to Trump – the comparison is certainly relevant,” he said. “I think another comparison which is relevant is the Austrian Freedom Party, the far-right party in Austria, which also went through legal controversies in recent years in relation to foreign influence, and managed to bounce back and gain levels of popularity beyond that which they had reached in the past. So these scandals can be short-lived. That’s the first thing. Whether they can actually be used to actually profit even in the short term, as seems to have happened in the US, that is unclear.”

Shock to the system

Paxton said that the case’s connection to the European Union and its institutions was likely to play in the RN’s favour in the court of public opinion.

“I would imagine the Rassemblement National are grateful that this is connected to the European Parliament,” he said. “I think it could be easier for them to brush this off in a reputational sense, the fact that it’s in an institution which many are sceptical about – certainly the party’s voters. But we shouldn’t forget … how sceptical France as a whole is about the EU. It’s certainly not trusted.”

Françoise Boucek, a visiting research fellow at Queen Mary University of London, said that the RN could well use a possible guilty verdict to further shake public faith in public institutions – though she stressed that she did not see the loss of long-standing leader Le Pen as much of an opportunity for the party considering her deep-rooted popularity in the RN’s traditional base.

“A guilty verdict, if it comes, will be likely to create a lot of public disquiet against the establishment and elites by RN supporters and perhaps even the public in general depending how the question is perceived and argued – separation of powers, politicisation of the judiciary branch, etcetera,” she said. “It will reinforce anti-elite perceptions at the national and European levels, which the RN will continue to capitalise on.”

Prosecution accuses Le Pen of devising system to embezzle EU parliament money for far-right RN

06:18

To display this content from , you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement.

Accept Manage my choices

Boursier pointed to a recent survey that suggested that fewer than one in four French people described themselves as having confidence in the European Union – and less than half in the country’s justice system.

“It is not only the potential conviction that could heighten scepticism towards the European Union but also how it is perceived in the public debate,” he said. “When the EU is discussed in national media, explanations about its functioning are often insufficient, fuelling a climate of mistrust towards the EU in France. Revisiting the foundations and limits of European justice could help reduce this general mistrust. More broadly, such a trial could affect the French people’s trust in the justice system in general, which, according to the latest CEVIPOF survey is already lower than their confidence in major private companies.”

Ultimately, Paxton said, the RN’s growing support among French voters – coming amid the steady rise of far-right movements across Europe and beyond – was built on more than just the personality at the head of the party.

“I think the opportunity, the demand for Rassemblement National-style policies and that form of politics, most of that will remain whatever the outcome of this, whatever the prosecution achieves,” he said. “I think it’s worth emphasising the point that prior to this, they seemed in an extremely strong position. The prospect of a Rassemblement National presidency, a Le Pen presidency, seemed very, very likely – more likely than ever.”