What does the EU embezzlement trial mean for Le Pen and the French far right?
Marine Le Pen and other senior figures within France’s far-right National Rally party are standing trial on charges of having embezzled millions in European Parliament funds to finance the party’s own political activities. Marta Lorimer, lecturer in politics at Cardiff University, discusses what the trial could mean for the party’s future – and Le Pen’s own presidential ambitions.
The nine-week trial of Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally (RN) party opened in Paris on Monday, promising more than two months of very public scrutiny of the party’s use of European Parliament funds over more than a decade.
Le Pen and more than two dozen figures within the party stand accused of having embezzled millions of euros in European Parliament funding to finance the party’s private political activities, funnelling money meant for parliamentary assistants to instead pay the salaries of party staffers that the cash-strapped RN – previously known as the National Front – was otherwise struggling to afford.
The consequences could be severe. If found guilty, each of the co-defendants could be sentenced to up to a decade in prison, or face fines upwards of a million euros each. Le Pen herself is facing the threat of being barred from running for public office for up to ten years, putting her long-held presidential ambitions in jeopardy.
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