{"id":675967,"date":"2026-07-06T02:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T02:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/675967\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T02:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T02:22:08","slug":"marine-le-pen-appeal-verdict-why-this-moment-matters-for-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/675967\/","title":{"rendered":"Marine Le Pen appeal verdict: Why this moment matters for France"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This appeal verdict will decide Le Pen&#8217;s political future and in effect fire the starting pistol on the presidential race. The first round is on 18 April 2027, and the run-off is on 2 May.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She was barred from holding public office for five years on 31 March 2025 when a court found her guilty of embezzling \u20ac1.4m (\u00a31.2m) in European Parliament (EP) funds to pay her own party employees from 2004-16 instead of parliamentary assistants. Le Pen was a member of the EP (MEP) from 2004-17.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She was also given a four-year jail term, two suspended and two to be served at home with an electronic tag.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Le Pen was found to have either approved or to have tolerated the fake jobs scheme, and the verdict ruled her out of the 2027 election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">During the appeal, heard in January and February, Le Pen denied organising the scam but did admit to &#8220;a mistake&#8221; that led to some parliamentary aides working &#8220;for the benefit of the party&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prosecutors want the original five-year ban on public office to stand, with a four-year jail term now including one year served with an electronic tag and three years suspended.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Le Pen says she is not afraid of the decision, but believes it is &#8220;not possible&#8221; to run for president if the judges decide she must wear a tag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This appeal verdict will decide Le Pen&#8217;s political future and in effect fire the starting pistol on the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-675967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}