Saturday | April 5, 2025
This week, a French court found far-right leader Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzling millions of euros in European Union funds and barred her from holding political office for five years — a ruling that removes the leading contender from the 2027 presidential race and has outraged her supporters.
The verdict follows closely on the heels of Romania’s annulment of a far-right candidate’s first-round election win, intensifying a growing debate on both sides of the Atlantic over whether courts are overstepping by sidelining politicians and, in doing so, disenfranchising voters.
Le Pen’s conviction has become something of a political Rorschach test. Her critics see the ruling as evidence of liberal elites using the judicial system to block rivals from gaining power. Her supporters, however, argue that the case demonstrates the strength of democratic institutions — that no one is above the law, regardless of their political influence or the potential backlash.
For those in the first camp, “the will of the people” is paramount. For the latter, the “rule of law” must take precedence, even when it challenges popular sentiment.
The cases in France and Romania have sparked anger among Europe’s far-right movements and drawn sharp reactions from former U.S. President Donald Trump and members of his administration, who claim he, too, was a victim of politically motivated legal tactics meant to block his return to office. Trump is now the first convicted felon to become president.
“The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.
“When the radical left can’t win via a democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents,” billionaire Elon Musk posted on X following Monday’s verdict. “This is their standard playbook throughout the world.”
Vice President JD Vance also cited Romania as an example of democratic backsliding. Calin Georgescu, a far-right candidate, unexpectedly won the first round of Romania’s presidential election in November. But the constitutional court later annulled the results, citing intelligence reports that alleged Russian interference via TikTok — claims both Georgescu and Moscow denied. Prosecutors then barred him from running in May’s rerun election, charging him with founding a fascist organization and other crimes.
In a fiery speech at the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance criticized what he called weak evidence against Georgescu and accused European leaders of “running in fear” from their electorates.
While Vance’s comments were widely rebuked in Europe — and Romania was commended for acting against suspected foreign meddling — some scholars have expressed concern that democracy’s defenders risk undermining it themselves.
“If we allow courts to invalidate election results simply because we disapprove of the winner, we are edging toward a system where judges, not voters, hold the final say,” said Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Johns Hopkins University.
Le Pen was found guilty of embezzling EU funds by paying her party’s political staff using money earmarked for European Parliament assistants between 2004 and 2016. The National Rally (RN) was ordered to repay €4.1 million (about $4.4 million), along with €2 million in fines. Le Pen has vowed to appeal the decision.
While not disputing the court’s findings, Mounk warned of the broader implications such rulings can have.
“In a democracy, the way to defeat extremists is at the ballot box,” he told CNN. “If mainstream parties can’t build strong coalitions, they shouldn’t rely on institutional loopholes to sidestep the will of the people.”
The great inversion
Though this debate has deep historical roots, the ideological lines have recently blurred. Traditionally, conservatives have upheld civic institutions as repositories of ancestral wisdom, while progressives emphasized universal rights, personal freedoms, and the will of the people.
But according to Ben Ansell, professor of comparative democratic institutions at the University of Oxford, those roles have reversed. “In recent years, left-wing progressives — once skeptical of the establishment — have become its staunch defenders,” he noted, “while conservatives, long advocates of caution and institutional stability, are now leading the charge to dismantle the very structures they once revered.”
This reversal is especially pronounced in the United States. For years, Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah stressed that America is a republic, not a democracy — one where the system of checks and balances is paramount. “Power is not found in mere majorities, but in carefully balanced power,” he wrote in 2020.
But the tide has shifted. Spurred in part by Donald Trump’s 2020 popular vote victory — the first for a Republican in two decades — many conservatives are rebranding the U.S. as a democracy in which majoritarian will should reign supreme. Trump took this view to its extreme in February, quoting Napoleon on X: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” The implication: if an elected leader embodies the people’s will, why should courts be allowed to constrain him?
Whether this belief resonates broadly across the American electorate is uncertain. But in Europe, the historical context is different. In countries like Germany, Spain, and Italy — as well as former Eastern Bloc nations — memories of authoritarian rule remain vivid. Many citizens there see democratic institutions not as obstacles, but as safeguards against tyranny.
Still, a competing narrative is taking hold: that these institutions, once protectors of democracy, have been “captured” by liberal elites and now wield their power selectively. That belief — spreading among populist movements across Europe — casts figures like Le Pen and Georgescu not as wrongdoers, but as victims of an unjust establishment.
This perception could backfire on those trying to uphold the rule of law, warned political scientist Yascha Mounk. “In purely political terms, I think it is more likely to strengthen than to weaken Le Pen’s National Rally,” he said.
Indeed, Le Pen’s allies on the European far-right quickly sprang to her defense. “Je suis Marine,” declared Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a show of solidarity. Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini argued that those who fear the voice of the people often find solace in courtroom rulings. Meanwhile, the Kremlin seized on the moment to undermine Western credibility, claiming the judgment showed Europe was “trampling on democratic norms.”
‘Two-tiered’ justice?
Despite the outcry and apparent surge of support, Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at political risk consultancy Eurasia Group, believes this controversy is unlikely to translate into an electoral win in France. While the narrative of political persecution may energize the National Rally’s base, it remains unclear whether it can win over the swing voters necessary for victory, he told CNN.
Rahman also pointed to a potential liability: Le Pen’s protégé, 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, who may lead the party into the 2027 election. “Any marginal benefit the far right might gain from this broader conspiracy narrative will be offset by Bardella’s lack of experience and weaker performance as a candidate,” he said.
Le Pen’s conviction, meanwhile, is not without precedent. In 2017, just before France’s presidential election, conservative frontrunner François Fillon was convicted of misusing public funds to pay his wife and children for fake jobs. Though not barred from running, the scandal effectively ended his campaign. Similar legal troubles have sunk political careers on both the right and left in France.
Ben Ansell, professor at Oxford, warned that Europe’s populists may be drawing the wrong lessons from Donald Trump’s comeback. The former U.S. president’s 2024 victory — despite his conviction in the New York hush-money case and other legal battles — is often portrayed as proof that legal action fuels political success. But Ansell argues Trump won despite the prosecutions, not because of them.
In a year when voters punished incumbents globally, Trump’s success had more to do with facing an unpopular opponent and discontent over inflation than with any sympathy vote stemming from his legal woes.
In France, public sentiment appears to support the legal outcome. A BFMTV poll conducted for CNN found that 57% of respondents viewed Le Pen’s conviction as a “normal judicial decision.”
“Being banned from office is bad for her — and it’s mad that that’s controversial,” Ansell said. While he acknowledged the risk that courts could be perceived as politically biased, he warned that the opposite — avoiding prosecution for fear of backlash — could be just as damaging to the rule of law.
Claims of a “two-tiered” justice system, often made by right-wing populists, cut both ways, he noted. If courts begin to shy away from prosecuting political figures to avoid appearing partisan, the credibility of institutions may suffer even more.
“There’s an odd double standard here,” Ansell added. “Populists seem to expect special treatment — as though their leaders deserve leniency that wouldn’t be granted to others. They play the victim either way, and that threatens to erode trust in the very institutions meant to hold all leaders accountable.”
