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The Great Le Pen Conviction Saga
Yesterday, Marine Le Pen, a French politician sometimes called a (female) French Trump and once called the Devil's daughter, was convicted in France of embezzling EU funds in the early 2000s. She is to be sentenced to house arrest for two years, and barred from politics for five.
The significance? That takes her out of the next presidential election, in 2027, where she is the current front runner.
The other problem?
When the original sentencing judge says Le Pen and other co-defendants didn't enrich themselves personally, 'embezzling' may have the wrong connotations. The judge who made the ruling preferred a 'democratic bypass that deceived parliament and voters.'
How does this lead to a leading political candidate getting imprisoned and disqualified in a leading western democracy?
Oh boy. This is a long one.
TL;DR: Banal political corruption insinuations ahead. And more. And more. Bless your innocent hearts if you have high trust in government, and don't be surprised if what follows starts to echo in your culture war interpretations in the months and years to come.
Disclaimer: What follows is a mix of plentiful citations, and some things that can only be noted with an eyebrow. Which is to say- some pretty hefty suspicion of impropriety, in ways that aren't exactly public record. However, if you want to believe that all governments are innocent unless proven guilty, by all means. Be ye warned.
What is this scandal?
It's more of a funding-code issue that results when you deliberately overlap organizational interests but establish conditionals that can be used as gotchas depending on whether the anti-fraud office wants to pursue.
EU funding for european political parties is normal. The overlap between national parties and EU political parties (Members of European Parliament, or MEP) is normal. The transition between national parties and nominally distinct EU parties is normal. Money is fungible. Even political aids are fungible- an aid who helps in one respect of a politician's work load enables the politician to work on others.
What Le Pen is charged / guilty of is that EU MEP party-member funds were used for someone who was working for Le Pen, the National Party leader, rather than Le Pen, the MEP party leader. Part of the basis of this claim is where there aid worked from- MEP assistants getting EU funds are supposed to work from / near the EU parliament, but around 20 of Le Pen's aides worked from France. As a result, they did not qualify for the funds they drew for being an aid to MEP-Le Pen, since Le Pen's MEP-aids are supposed to be geographically bounded.
Hence, embezzlement. Did the aids help with MEP work from France? Not actually relevant. Did the aids enable Le Pen to better focus on her MEP duties, as was the purpose of the money-for-aides? Also not particularly relevant.
What gives the saga more backstory, and scandal potential for those who think it's a gotcha, is that it's part of a much, much longer multi-decade saga.
Who is Le Pen?
Marine Le Pen is the daughter of Jean Le Pen, her father who founded the party. In short, he was the political outsider / far rightist / probable fascist sympathizer / possible nazi sympathizer, or at least dismisser, who was absolutely hated by the French political establishment. He's the guy who's synonymous with the National Front, unrepentant French far-right of the post-WW2 variety .
One of the key notes of Le Pen is that he ran the National Front like a family business... not successfully. Whether by purely coincidental mismanagement, personal bilateral animosity with French industry, or possibly indirect state pressures after the National Front's surprise and embarrassing showing in the 2002 presidential election, the National Front had some troubled finances.
And by troubled finances, I mean that by 2010 the French Government was progressively revoking the government's political party stipend that made up a plurality of its funding, even as Jean Le Pen was unable to get bank loans from French banks and unable to find a buyer for the 10-to-15 million Paris HQ to raise funds in 2008.
Where does the money come in?
The financial situation is where Marine Le Pen really enters in earnest. Marine Le Pen was given control of the party by her father in 2010. This was notably after she had already entered the European Parliament for over a half decade. Marine Le Pen was a MEP from 2004 to 2017, which is to say she inherited the National Front- and its financial issues- when she was already a MEP with no particular issue.
Marine's political priorities in the early 2010s was the rehabilitation of the National Front as a party. In 2013, she was still being called the Devil's Daughter by publications by the Atlantic. In 2018, this was when the National Front became the National Rally.
But the other part of Le Pen's job was to right the fiscal ship to keep the party viable. This is why across the 2010s Marine Le Pen was seeking foreign bank loans from abroad, including from US banks. This was where the Russia bank loan line of attack starts, since it was a Russian bank in 2014 that ultimately ended the credit embargo, but also saw Le Pen adopt a more pro-Russia rhetorical position. This challenge / options for loans has endured, and is why Le Pen more recently got a loan from Hungary in 2022.
So, to restate- Marine Le Pen was a reasonably-long-standing MEP in the 2000s with no major alleged issues at the time. In 2010, she took control over the national front. At this time, the NF was in financial distress.
This is the context where the misuse of European funds arose.
The Start of the Scandal
The Marine Le Pen allegations arose in Feb 2015, when European Parliament President Martin Shulz, a German MEP, raised complaints against her. Le Pen's party promptly counter-accused one of Shulz's own aids of a similar not-in-the-right-location violation. This didn't exactly get anywhere, because as noted at the time-
Remember: it's embezzlement if you take EU money and work for the party. It's not embezzlement if you voluntarily do national party work for free as a hobby.
Who was Martin Schulz?
Well, in 2014, the year before he initiated the Le Pen allegations were made, Schulz was generally considered a bit... lacking in ethical enforcement. He was one of the European leaders who may / may not have turned a bit of a blind eye to notorious Malta corruption. After his time in the EU parliament, he made a brief but ambitious play in german power politics as the actual head of the German SDP in the 2017 German election. He lost to Merkel, of course, but so do they all. But he had the ambition to try, and had a history of building favors and friends.
But back to the earlier 2010s for a moment. Besides being President of the European Parliament at the time, he was a member of the Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament. He was also a (clearly important) member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Germany, i.e. part of the key governing coalition which itself is part of the Franco-German alliance that is the heart of the EU. Schulz was in the running for being the German foreign minister following the 2017 German election,, which might have some relevance to foreign relation implications with France.
Why does Martin Schulz matter?
Why does this party orientation possibly matter?
Because in 2015, the President of France, Francoise Hollande, was a French Socialist. Unsurprisingly, French Socialists tend to caucus well with the European socialists in the European parliament, though party politics being what it is I'll just ask you believe me on that.
Did they get alone? It's hard to say. But in May 2015, just a few months after the le Pen allegations were leveraged, Hollande was among the heads of state awarding Schulz the Charlemagne prize 2015. The Charlemagne prize is bestowed to those who have advanced european unification, which means as much or as little as you think it means. Typically it's an insider's appreciation award for strengthening European Union politics, which is to say strengthening the Franco-German influence on the continent because that is, in most practical respects, what EU centralization entails.
More relevant was that Schulz's very diplomatic interest in working with French rose above partisan politics, such as his notably high-profile willingness in 2017 to work with Macron, the current (but currently troubled) French president whose political fortunes have gotten a bit better with Le Pen's disqualification.
Would a German politician-
-ever leverage a politically motivated ethics complaint against a MEP with a decade of non-complaints, over an issue that they themselves might be guilty of?
Heavens no, that's absurd.
Ahem. Sorry. Back to 2017 for a minute?
2017: Enter Macron
2017 is when Macron enters the Le Pen tale, since the 2017 election is what established them as rivals.
The 2017 French elections were notable for that they benefited both Macron and Le Pen as anti-establishment candidates. The election saw the collapse of the French establish right and left, and while that left a vacuum for Macron, it also benefited Le Pen. Macron ultimately won by the French firewall when the French socialist-left voted for him and against Le Pen, but it was historically remarkably close.
What was also remarkable is that Macron's party position has gotten worse over time. His party did very poorly in the 2020 municiple elections, though this was more a collapse of his left than a rise to Le Pen on the right. Macron pulled out another win in the 2022 election, where Le Pen, again, made it to the final round after a stronger-than-most showing.
This creates a certain... shall we say complication for the 2027 election, because Macron can't run for re-election in 2027, and he's known to not like that. Macron managed to beat Le Pen twice- was arguably the only person who could have- but the 2027 election would see him leave the stage and Le Pen be... well, a clear leading candidate, if by no means a guarantee.
Unless, of course, the judicial block-out is coincidentally underway even before the 2022 election is over.
And starting in a way that is- coincidentally- convenient for Macron's re-election.
2022: The Year the Scandal Returns In A Most Convenient Way
Five years after Macron takes the presidency, and nearly 7 after the Le Pen EU funding scandal starts, it returns in ways whose implications to the surrounding context become a bit clearer if you lay out relative dates of events. (Most of these dates are in the above al jazeera link.)
11 March 2022: The European Anti-Fraud Office provides the French prosecutor's office it's report on Le Pen.
Clearly the French government was taken by total surprise, and had no hand or insight into this EU process delivering this package.
12 March - 9 April 2022: No mention of or publicity is given to this report in most media. As such, no voters are aware of the duplicitious deception of French voters by a former MEP for whom this is an old scandal, forgotten scandal from over half a decade prior.
Which might have been slightly topical, given that...
10 April 2022: The first round of the French Presidential Election occurs.
After the French government sits on the report for a month, Le Pen places strong but somewhat distant second place, out-performing some expectations and underperforming others. 28% Macron, 23% Le Pen. The third-place runner up, and thus the potential second-round candidate party is a leftist party that garnered... 22%.
Which is to say, the French Prosectors really did Le Pen a favor by keeping that potentially embarrassing and undemocratic revelation a secret! Why, if she hadn't made it to the second round, Macron would have faced a broadly united left against him rather than for him in the name of the anti-le pen firewall!
It's a good thing that this virtuous adherence to principle applied for the rest of the campa-
17 April 2022: French prosecutors announce the new (actually old) Le Pen fund appropriation report
Coincidentally, 17 April 2022 was a Sunday, meaning this would be one of the opening media report for the next week's media cycle.
24 April 2022: The second round of the French Presidential Election occurs. Macron wins, 58% to 42%.
Fortunately, Macron's presidential margins are great! Any effects from the timing of the report probably had no result on a 16% gap.
June 2022: Unfortunately, Macron's parliamentary margins in the June 2022 elections are dismal, as his party loses control of the parliament and Le Pen's party gains 81 seats to become a key power player in government (in)stability for the next year and a half.
July 2022-February 2023: No particular action or movement is made on the Le Pen case. Nominally this is when the French prosecutors are developing their case, but given the substantial prior awareness in practice the case remains where it was since between rounds 1 of the election: available as a basis of future prosecution if and when desired.
The key point of 2022 is that the Le Pen scandal resurfaced coincidentally in time to shape the 2022 Presidential Election, where it was sat on when it might have hindered Le Pen's ability to get to the second round, but publicized right at a time to maximize Macron's electoral margins. Afterwards, it was further sat on until future timeliness.
2023 - 2024: A series of Correlating Progressions
March 2023: After Macron does the eternally popular thing of cutting welfare in the name of reform, the Macron government (in the legislature) comes less than a dozen votes from falling in a no confidence vote after Le Pen's party largely votes for no confidence.
June 2023: After about a year of political paralysis and parliamentary instability, a Macron ally who totally likes him for real guys raises the prospect of amending French constitution to give Macron third term. This totally-not-a-trial-balloon proposal flops like something that has no life.
August 2023: French Prosecutors announce intent to prosecute Le Pen for fraud. From the start, though buried in the article, implications are identified as up to 10 years in jail, and 10 years disbarment from politics.
October 2023: Just kidding about before, Macron makes a personal call for constitutional amendment for a third term.
8 December 2023: The French government announces Le Pen's trial will start in March 2024.](https://www.france24.com/en/france/20231208-french-prosecutores-order-le-pen-to-stand-trial-in-eu-funding-scandal)
20 December 2023: Le Pen does the unforgivable, and gives Macron a 'kiss of death' by forcing him to compromise on immigration legislation in return for support. This actually triggers an internal party rebellion for Macron. Unrelated, establishment French media wonder how Macron will manage Le Pen's ever-rising rise.
The 20 December events aren't particularly causal in the process, but are amusing context.
The more relevant point of 2023 is that Macron's decision to prosecute Le Pen, an act which would bring favor from the French establishment, comes amidst his very unpopular bid to extend his time in office, which would require support from the French establishment. At this time, the Macron administration adopts a Tough-on-Le Pen position of 10 years- a period of time that would easily take her out of two elections- that will later be taken down to two years out of [insert choice here].
Also notable in the August 2023 initiation of prosecution of that it is both a starting block for the timer, and all future events. Whether there needed to be a 7-month gap between the announced intent to prosecute and the trial or not, had the prosecution train been started seven months earlier- during the large gap after the 2022 elections- then the future 2-year house arrest would have by consequence ended before, rather than probably after, the 2027 election. An 18-month bar, for other cases, would have been even less likely have a presidential election impact... had that been desirable.
2024: The Trial of Political Opponents with Absolutely No Political Parallels Or Impacts Elsewhere
March 2024: The Trial of Le Pen starts, about 24 months after the French government received an EU report of the 2015 report nearly 108 months prior. Truly the gears of French justice turned as fast as they could.
Completely coincidentally, this corresponds to the AFD trial in Germany, where a German court found the AFD 'pursues goals against democracy.'
Also completely coincidentally, this happens to be timed to roughly the same time as one of the Trump lawfare trials in the United States, which was the 'we can bar Trump from running if we convict him' theory.
These are completely unrelated. Just because three major democracies of mutually-sympathetic ruling parties had parallel legal cases against leading opposition parties that threatened incumbent interests, and just because they did so on similar narrative themes/justification sof protecting democracy and rule of law themes, does not mean there was any sort of wink or nod or feeling emboldened by the example of others. Every case was independently moved forward on its own merits, with monetary judgements appropriate to the severity, and the mutual commentary by the states on the other's prosecutions was exactly what you would expect.
Also also coincidentally, this happened to be timed to roughly the same time that a UK court not only rejected a Trump lawsuit over the Steele dossier that was the root of the Russiagate hoax, but ordered Trump to pay 6-figures in legal fees, which was helpfully noted as adding to the half-billion in legal fees Trump had accrued so far that year and not at all contributing to pressures or efforts to drive Trump into bankruptcy analogous to the Le Pen experience earlier in the experience. Note that was before the historically unprecedented further half-billion fine from the New York judgement.
Now, admittedly, the Trump fiscal correlation must be a total distraction. Reputable democracies do not try to bankrupt their oppositions out of politics, and France failed to force Le Pen into fiscal insolvency years ago. The French government would only seek a 300,000 euro fine against Le Pen. And a 2 million euro fine against her party. And opened up a new case in September 2024 alleging illegal financing of the 2022 election.
This, clearly, is utterly unrelated to any other aspect of handling the Le Pen case, and not the initiation for a future basis to further fine and disqualify Le Pen from politics in the future after the current judgement runs its course.
And returning to the only relevant case itself, Le Pen trial that began in March in turn would certainly have no impact on...
June 2024: Surprise! Macron triggers snap elections in effort to overturn political gridlock and break his dependence on Le Pen. Perhaps the ongoing Le Pen trial will at last get rid of this troublesome opposition party?
July 2024: It, uh, doesn't work. Le Pen's party gets about 1/3 of all votes, and about 13% more than Macron's party.
The snap elections are generally considered a strategic mistake for Macron, doubling-down on his issues.
They also, coincidentally, totally kill any talk of Macron's constitutional reform for a third term candidacy.
A candidacy that- remembering previous elections- would have been substantially improved with a Le Pen in the field to rally a resentful Left to his side.
But now that Macron's political hopes for a third election are dead and buried...
November 2024: The French Government announces it seeks 5 years in jail, on top of the political bar, for Le Pen. However, conflicting reports say 2 years., with judgement expected in march 2025
Notably- even a 2 year sentence from vaguely April 2025 to April 2027 would release Le Pen right on / after the 2027 election, and thus totally unable to compete. And, depending on the terms of the house arrest, unable to speak or influence.
31 March 2025 (Yesterday): Le Pen is sentenced to 4-but-2-if-she-behaves years of prison, 2 of them under house arrest and 2 suspended, and a five year bar from political office. She is allowed to appeal but...
Gallic shrug
I am sure the French government that took a decade to bring this conviction about will speedily process the appeal of the Le Pen who recent French polling suggested was somewhere in the 40% voting range for the first round. (Usual French first round poling disclaimers abound.)
Functionally, this ruling conveniently clears the deck for France's nominal establishment left and rights to make a return, without Le Pen in the way.
Call it Macron's farewell gift to French democracy. It's not like he disqualified his own presidential election opponent...
...though that's more because he failed to get the constitutional change he wanted that would have allowed him to run again...
...in which case, perhaps prosecutorial discretion might have leaned another way.
Summing It All Up
Le Pen (Senior) was an all-around tosser and more or less enemy of the French establishment, if not the French State per see
Le Pen (Marine) is Le Pen's daughter who inherited his mess, and his enemies
President of European Parliament Shulz was a totally-not-corrupt German politician who totally didn't do a political hit job on the rival of an ally in furtherance of his own political ambitions
President Macron was totally not letting Le Pen stay in politics as a foil to bolster his personal electoral prospects against the French left
Macron was totally not prolonging the case management by months or years in parallel to anticipation of extending his own political career
But Macron's efforts to garner support for a constitutional amendment failed
Which makes it naturally the best time to announce the intent to jail and disqualify the clear frontrunner
In Conclusion
Is there a 'benign' explanation for all this? Sure, if you want.
Is this a sketchy-but-will-be-claimed-above-reapproach series of events? Also yes.
The Le Pen saga doesn't actually require some all-encompassing conspiracy. La Pen (Senior) can have his own political feuds with the French establishment separate from La Pen (Marine). Schulz was a means, but hardly the start or the end of the Le Pen family feud with the French establishment. Macron was (probably) never involved in the early phases of whatever French state pressures may or may not have been used to try to bankrupt the Le Pen party.
But unless you believe the French prosecutor's office is completely independent of Macron and only coincidentally schedules things to align with electoral milestones and key dates to Macron's benefit, the Macron-era Le Pen saga has plenty of its own implications of, shall we say, politically considerate handling.
And those Macron handlings were built on a history of the Marine Le Pen handlings. And the Marine Le Pen handlings were built on the Le Pen (Senior) handlings. This has been a political fight for longer than some of the posters on this forum have been alive.
None of this means that Le Pen didn't actually 'defraud' the EU of however many manhours of political aid hours she charged the EU. If that's all you care about, this can be 'just,' sure. Let justice be done though the heavens fall, and all that.
But the other part of 'just' is if this is handled the same as other cases. And to an extent this is impossible, because no one else in France gets handled like Le Pen, because no one else represents what the Le Pen family represents, or threatens, to the French establishment.
What Next?
Don't be surprised if this becomes a significant reoccurring propaganda / european culture war theme for the anti-establishment skeptics, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Establishment European media are already signaling an expectation of further political chaos in France, and trying to coax/signal Le Pen to 'help her party' over 'seek revenge.' (Politico) The National Rally remains in position to topple the government by contributing to a no-confidence vote if the other parties oppose Macron.
The New York Times, which is broadly sympathetic to the French government effort and hostile towards Le Pen with the NYT's characteristic framing devices, concedes that-
This is surrounded by all the appropriate signals that this is bad thought, of course, but it is unlikely to be solely an American critique. Various right-of-center politicians across Europe were quick to condemn, and the culture war lines will write themselves.
Not all are unhappy or afraid, though.
In true culture war fashion, it seems like there's a dilemma that is "obvious" from either side of the lens.
The strategy from the left is well-documented here: any opposition can simply be hamstrung with "lawfare". This is especially effective since within recent history the left's opposition in the "West" is led by strongmen populists of personality - there's no depth in terms of charismatic leadership within the movement at large, so if you cut off the head the beast is dead. Unfortunately for the left, that's also the case in places like Russia and Turkey, where it seems like it takes a cult of personality to "grassroots" a movement capable of opposing the entrenched right - so the whataboutism is baked in (as seen in your write-up).
But the strategy from the right can't be ignored either: snowball small crimes and cry lawfare on your way up to the larger (antidemocratic) crimes. White collar crimes are hilariously underpunished (unless you've already climbed the "lawfare" ladder), so the risk is extremely low: move a few decimal points here or there on some tax returns, make the SEC slap you on the wrist for misreporting on financial statements, etc. Then, when you're punished for something meaningful, simply appeal to your followers that you're only being punished because of your politics, and bring up all the other cases where white collar crimes were hilariously underpunished as a double-standard.
In fact, to "climb the lawfare ladder", you don't even have to have personally performed the smaller crimes first, like some perverse inversion of "guilt by association". It appears to be possible to utilize the (just) prosecutions of others as evidence that you yourself are being unjustly persecuted. Maybe one could even pardon those individuals, some of them on the left, to cast even more doubt!
Unfortunately for us plebeians of the non-accelerationist variety, I don't see this deescalating any time soon. Reactionary strategists have surely caught on to the pattern, and are probably quite pleased how much the term lawfare has spread like wildfire amongst the even the most moderate conservatives, thanks especially to news outlets that act like a memetic megaphone.
Likewise, the left seems to view a stronger judiciary as one of the only ways of stalling a full-on reactionary revolution - something that some on the right seems to acknowledge as well judging by comments from the Speaker of the House and the once-leader-cum-ex-leader-cum-leader of DOGE. Just browse Reddit for a bit to see how much the left sees the judiciary as the last bastion of hope against a unitary executive and a doormat legislature.
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