France’s far right is hoping for a massive public show of support tomorrow in a “people’s protest” against Marine Le Pen being barred from standing for president in 2027.
The Rassemblement National (National Rally – RN) party called for a nationwide demonstration under the banner “Save Democracy” after Le Pen was found guilty in a €4m (£3.4m) embezzlement trial.
Leftwing and centrist parties have also called for separate gatherings in and around the capital in support of the law being enforced – as well to back the court, and judges who have been subject to death threats requiring police protection.
The prime minister, François Bayrou, has called for the rival rallies to be held in a spirit of “calm, mutual respect and a spirit of responsibility” to avoid clashes.
The Ouest-France newspaper said the demonstrations would be a “battle of images”. “We might almost believe we’re in the middle of an election campaign,” it wrote.
The RN called for a “peaceful popular mobilisation” after Le Pen was found guilty last Monday of embezzling European Parliament funds through a huge fake jobs scam. A 10-year investigation was followed by a nine-week trial last autumn and the three judges delivered their verdict after a three-month deliberation.
Le Pen and eight other RN European Parliament members, who all denied the charges and have appealed, were judged to have been part of an organised “system” of embezzlement between 2004 and 2016 in which European funds supposed to be used to pay EU parliamentary assistants were used to pay the party’s workers in France. The court found Le Pen to be at “the heart” of this system and guilty of directly organising eight fictitious contracts and instigating a wider fake jobs scheme.
Le Pen and her colleagues are not the only French politicians to have been accused of financial impropriety. In February 2024, eight members of Bayrou’s centrist party MoDem were found guilty of similarly misusing European Parliament funds. They were fined, sentenced to prison terms and banned from public office. Bayrou was cleared of embezzlement.
Rightwing French MP Éric Ciotti, who supports Le Pen, and has suggested overturning the law barring her and others convicted of fraud from public office, is under investigation on allegations of misuse of public funds.
In 2022, former PM and presidential hopeful François Fillon and his Welsh wife, Penelope, were convicted on appeal of embezzling public funds in a fake job scandal.
Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison, two suspended and two to be served with an electronic tag. She was also fined €100,000 and hit with an immediate ban from public office for five years. Because of the appeal against her conviction, the sentence is postponed until a retrial, but the bar from public office remains in place.
French legal authorities have said they will speed up the process, which can take decades, to ensure the Court of Appeal hears the case and delivers a verdict by the summer of 2026.
To take part in the presidential election she will need to be either cleared, or convicted a second time but with the ban lifted. The second option raises the prospect of a convicted fraudster entering the Elysée wearing an electronic anklet.
While the RN is hoping for a show of strength this weekend, polls suggest Le Pen may not have the public support she is counting on and claims.
An institute cluster poll for Le Point magazine found 61% of French people thought her conviction justified and two out of three of those quizzed said the immediate application of a bar on standing for public office was “fair”; 43% said the condemnation and punishment was “extremely justified”.
Stewart Chau, director of polling at Vérian Group, said France was engaged in a “battle of opinion” and that the polls had to be viewed with caution.
“If 60% of people believe this justice is impartial and think Marine Le Pen is not above the law and should be judged like anyone else, it still means 40% do not agree and think it is a political decision, which is not an insignificant number,” Chau told the Observer.
He said he did not think there would be a massive mobilisation in support of the RN on Sunday.
“The RN is trying to wrap this judgement against it up as a wider issue of an attack on democracy. While the political earthquake caused by last Monday’s judgement is felt by the RN’s inner circle and its supporters, I don’t think the wider dynamic is there,” he added.
The French far-right has repeatedly presented itself as above the corruption and abuse of power scandals that have hit other parties. Le Pen’s father and founder of the Front National, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died in January, adopted the slogan “clean hands and head held high” before the 1993 legislative elections. For decades, his daughter, who took over the party in 2011, has campaigned for stricter laws to tackle corruption in public life; when the ineligibility rule for public office for convicted fraudsters was debated in parliament in 2016 she called for those found guilty to be barred for life.
Commentators say to beware of rallies suggesting there is widespread popular support when most of those attending are already party members or supportersbackers.
“There will no doubt be a large crowd at the RN’s Paris meeting on Sunday. As in 2017 at the meeting called by François Fillon at Place du Trocadéro when he was indicted. But beware of optical illusions: every time, it’s not the ‘people’ who revolt against the judges, it’s just the supporters, the faithful who fly to the aid of their candidate,” wrote FranceInfo.
