On Monday, a criminal court in France found Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement, and barred her from running for the French Presidency in 2027. Le Pen, the far-right leader of the National Rally, the political party formerly known as the National Front, had been leading first-round Presidential election polls. The National Rally is now likely to run Jordan Bardella, a twenty-nine-year-old member of the European Parliament who, since 2022, has served as the Party’s president. Bardella claimed on X that the court’s verdict represented the “execution of French democracy,” a sentiment shared by far-right politicians across the globe, from Viktor Orbán to J. D. Vance. Although Le Pen was not accused of profiting from the embezzlement, the court found her guilty of overseeing a scheme that enriched her party with European Union money.
To help understand the scandal and what the court’s decision means for France, I recently spoke by phone with Cécile Alduy, a professor of French studies at Stanford and an expert on the French far right. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether this decision upholds or undercuts French democracy, how the far right may change under a new leader, and what the second Trump Administration could mean for French politics going forward.
How do you understand this decision? Do you see this as a French court following the law, or an attempt to apply a double standard to someone who many people feel is a threat to French democracy?
From all the documents that have been shared across this investigation, and in comparison with other cases of embezzlement trials in France, in my opinion, it’s very clear that this was just the court applying the law. And this is not the first case in France like this. There have been other trials about the embezzlement of funds distributed by the European Union for parliamentary aides. Even the political party of the current French Prime Minister, François Bayrou, has come under investigation for similar charges. And in recent months some mayors of small cities in France have been condemned to ineligibility because of embezzlement. So it’s not at all something uncommon. It’s the magnitude of the amount that has been embezzled, over so many years, and the systemic nature of it that is unique. This was millions of Euros that had been used by the National Front that were supposed to be paying the salaries of parliamentary aides but, in effect, have been proven by the investigations to have been used by the political party for its own functioning.
So just to explain to Americans how this works: a country in the E.U., like France, gets a certain amount of money for—
No, it’s not exactly this way. The European Parliament gives some funds to each European representative so that they can hire parliamentary aides that assist in compiling dossiers on specific policies that they want to be implemented, that organize their agendas and do things like buy train tickets. And the European Parliament gives the same amount of money for each deputy to do their jobs through the hiring of a parliamentary aide. The French National Front used that budget to hire, indeed, parliamentary aides, but they would rarely, if ever, show up at the European Parliament. In fact, they worked directly for the National Front in Paris, or sometimes locally in France. What’s been proven by the investigation is that people were hired through this budget but never worked for the purpose of the job description.
This decision raises a number of interesting questions about democracy, both in France and in general, but maybe the first is whether candidates who are convicted of crimes should be allowed to run for office. My understanding is that France is a little different than, say, the United States, that its politicians have been banned from running for office with some regularity. That this is something that happened to François Fillon, a former French Prime Minister. What was that case, and how would you describe the French approach to this issue?
You have to be convicted to be prevented from running. But there are two different aspects to this question. One is public opinion and the perception of corruption in those cases that could be damaging to candidates’ images and prevent them from even being nominated once a scandal erupts. This was the case of François Fillon. He had not been convicted yet. The scandal about him providing his wife with a fictitious job that was remunerated by the French parliament erupted during the Presidential campaign in 2017. It was so scandalous that he had no chance of, you know, winning. He was convicted afterwards. It took a long time, actually, for the trial to be over.
Then you have the cases of candidates who are convicted by justice. And the law since 2016 has opened up the possibility that any candidate who has been convicted for embezzlement of public funds is immediately ineligible, and cannot run. Most of what Marine Le Pen did was before 2016. But the law left open the potential that if you are convicted for embezzlement you can be prevented from exerting any public office or running for public office. But you need the conviction to actually be enforced. So until today, Marine Le Pen was a candidate who could have won even if there was a scandal, because her base was not very sensitive to this kind of corruption, especially if it was taking money from the European Parliament. Her base is pretty much anti-European Union. So there is a distinction between the perception of these scandals and the legal conviction in this case.
Right, the political aspect is probably pretty similar to the United States, where Trump’s base doesn’t really care if he is convicted of a crime. But the difference is that even though he was convicted of a crime he could still run. Just to clarify about Fillon, though: he was banned from running, but that decision took a while to come down, after 2017 and his stepping aside?
Yeah, exactly. So this was way after the 2017 election. That year, he ran in the first round of the election but didn’t reach the runoff. And then he was dismissed by his own political party. It was three years later that he was officially condemned and barred from running again.
And I gather something similar happened to the former President Nicolas Sarkozy, too.
Yeah. This conversation is really giving a terrible image of French politicians. But, yeah, Sarkozy has like a dozen different legal suits on him at the moment.
There have been a lot of comments from across the political spectrum in France, including from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left leader, basically saying that this decision deprives voters of the right of being able to choose their President. But I interpreted a lot of the statements that I’ve seen as not simply saying French law shouldn’t preclude convicted criminals from seeking office but something stronger, i.e., that this is the French system picking on Marine Le Pen in some way. So do you think that that is going to be a widespread feeling in France, even if you think the court was following the law here correctly or fairly?
This is exactly what Marine Le Pen herself and her party are proclaiming—that it’s political retaliation. Honestly, I don’t really think that is the case, since there were already trials for similar cases across the political spectrum, as you just underlined, including Mélenchon, which is probably why he’s not very sympathetic to the justice system. In this case, I think there are two different aspects to this. There are politicians or even citizens who might think, indeed, it reshuffles the political spectrum in such a huge way, because she was the primary contender for the next Presidential election, that it leaves a vacuum. And there is a sense that it has an impact on democracy. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong, though. It says that, well, there’s something called the separation of powers, and the judicial power exerted its authority, and every citizen is responsible under the law, and the law applies equally to everyone. But there’s an effect on democracy in how this is going to be played out.
And then there’s a second line of opinion that circulates among the far right and some of the far left as well, which calls France the “Republic of the Judges,” and it’s this kind of underlying accusation that judges have too much power to remove or damage the reputation of politicians. Even recently, someone in the current government, Minister of Interior Bruno Retailleau, said that the rule of law was a little overstated as a principle of democracy. So this is actually getting to the core of several conceptions of democracy. And we’re seeing a similar questioning of the rule of law and separation of powers in other countries, whether it’s Hungary or the United States. There is this little music floating around that judges shouldn’t have this amount of power, because it’s the executive power which has been elected, and has more of a mandate from the people.
Right, but what’s being implied by a lot of Le Pen supporters, both in the U.S. and within France, is not simply that judges have too much power in some generic sense but that judges are picking on the far right. Trump acted like he was picked on, too. So I assume the political argument in France will end up being less about judicial power and more about whether the judges are being too political, right?
Yeah, and, as I said, the counter argument is that actually the U.S. has similar verdicts across the political spectrum. So judges are not giving out political decisions but are acting because people transgress the law. But here’s the thing: parliament makes the laws. Marine Le Pen herself became known in 2002 for criticizing the current political establishment for corruption. So there are amazing archives of several interviews she did at the time where she was aggressively condemning her adversaries for being corrupt and asking that any politician found guilty of embezzlement be barred from office for life. She’s the one who asked for it.
And, over the years, French legislation has become more stringent on corruption. That’s true. This is the outcome of decades of political scandals that were originally not in the far right but within the Socialist Party, and within the center right under Jacques Chirac and Sarkozy.
I think it was easier in some ways for Trump to make the argument that he was being picked on because American Presidents had not been prosecuted in this way, even if he, let’s say, deserved it more than past Presidents. But in the French case it seems like what you’re saying is that’s not really true.
Yes, the law has come for former Prime Ministers and Presidents. It was a demand of the French people that there be more stringency about this, and over the years legislators have reinforced the rules and regulations to make sure that there’s more accountability. So it’s kind of ironic that the populist party that requested this level of sanction for corruption is now complaining when it has come for them.
I want to talk to you now about the National Rally, where it is assumed that Jordan Bardella will be the candidate of the far right. Do you presume that’s the case? And how do you think the party will or will not change under his leadership?
I do assume this because of the very short turnaround the party has in front of it before the 2027 election. I don’t think it has much of a choice. Bardella is the most public figure currently in this party. The problem of a very hierarchical party is that not a lot of alternative figures emerge because there’s the leader and only the leader, and everyone else is just subservient to the leader. There might be some infighting, but there isn’t much choice. Moreover, there isn’t anyone else who has the popularity that he has, and it could be positive politically for the National Rally because he has more of a clean slate. He doesn’t bear the burden of the name Le Pen.
Because Le Pen’s father was a notorious Holocaust denier and fascist?
Yes, and his name continues to be seen as repulsive to a lot of people, and in comparison Bardella looks innocuous. He has shaped his image as this TikToker, almost. His strategy is to depoliticize everything and present it as common sense, whereas Marine Le Pen can be pretty vehement in her positioning. She’s known for being an old-school politician, actually, and he appeals to the young people who don’t even care about his political opinions. So he could broaden the base a little bit, and he seems to be more of a Reaganite kind of right-wing politician.
In what sense?
Fiscally, Marine Le Pen held a pretty unique mix of policies under her leadership, where, on the one hand, she was very much in favor of state intervention and the correction of the market through state intervention and social subsidies for a specific class of people. That class is French people born of French people.
But Bardella seems to be wanting to echo or to reincarnate Sarkozy, actually, so he is much more business-friendly, in favor of low taxation, pretty open around the European Union as a market, and he has kind of, like, this bureaucratic image. He may have a better chance of uniting the different right-wing parties because he’s perceived as less of a far-right figure than she would be. He also appeals very much to seniors, which is a demographic that she had a hard time convincing.
You say pro-business, but he’s fanatically anti-immigrant, which is a bit of a contradiction.
Yeah, and this is the constant contradiction of the National Rally anyway, that, whenever the party wants to pretend it’s for business, it’s confronted with being completely anti-immigration, very ideologically so, and ignoring the needs of agriculture, hospitals, and businesses to have labor. But, still, he could be more appealing to a lot of people.
I looked at a poll of Canada, with the Liberals ahead ten points after being behind double digits several months ago, and am wondering to what degree you think a pretty crazy first two and a half months of the Trump Administration has changed politics in France.
This is a really hard question. I think it will all depend on the outcomes, both outcomes for America and for France itself, like if the tariff war continues and whether it really damages the economy. If so, then Trump as a model is not going to be sellable for a lot of people. If it goes badly, that will really rally politicians against him and his agenda. Then there are the outcomes for American society in general. If it becomes clear that it’s really damaging to the entire fabric of American society, which is my experience living here, and if it becomes clear to the French public, then this could be a problem for the far right. But right now I think people are waiting. I think by 2027 people will have a better idea of how this played out, how damaging it is for France, how damaging it is for the Americans.
But you don’t sense it has changed politics in the way it seems to have in Germany and Canada?
Not as much, because French people don’t feel as threatened by the American Administration. I think the tariffs are just starting to have an effect on things like wine, but we don’t have a strong automobile industry driven by exports. And so the economic effects of all the tariffs are not as strongly felt yet.
And also we are a nuclear power. So there’s this sense of independence that preceded Trump. Emmanuel Macron has been telling the French people for six or seven years that NATO needed to be reformed, and that we needed to build an independent European defense. So in a sense other European countries are waking up at the last minute to the realization that they were so dependent on the Americans for their defense, and for the international market. And now they have to change gears, whereas France doesn’t have to change gears.
Has there been any benefit to Macron that, at least on some of these issues, such as the need for independent European defense, he was perhaps more correct than some people realized? Or is he still in the same political hole that he’s been in for quite a while now?
I think he’s been recovering a little bit thanks to Donald Trump, that’s for sure. He is also in his favorite spot, which is the leader leading through an emergency, like with COVID. He has a savior personality, and being on the international stage as a leader of a possible transformation of Europe, for instance, can only benefit his popularity and strengthen the sense that he will have a good legacy if he succeeds. So I think it’s rather a blessing for him.
Yes, although one critique of him is that his centrist movement has hollowed out the traditional center-right and center-left parties and left nothing in the vacuum.
We could have an entire other conversation about what his real legacy is for France. But what I’m saying is that the reshuffling of the international stage opens up a realm of action for him that he had been deprived of. But, yes, he has created the chaos we are in today. That’s for sure. So he might take up the gauntlet on the international stage, but within France his legacy is to bring us to the verge of political collapse. ♦
