tippinsights Editorial Board, TIPP Insights
Biden Did It. Pakistan Perfected It. Brazil Fell In Line. Now France Joins the Club. Welcome to the Lawfare League, Where Voters Are Damned.
In an earth-shattering move, a French court on Monday found Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement for siphoning off about 3 million euros in EU funds (while she was a member of the EU Parliament from 2004 to 2016) to her party, the National Rally (RN: Rassemblement National). The criminal court immediately barred the French conservative leader from running for public office for the next five years. The immediate consequence is that unless the verdict is overturned on appeal, Le Pen will not be able to run for president in 2027.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been in the Elysee Palace for nearly eight years – and has dominated European politics during his tenure. In 2017, at just 39 years old, Macron won a landslide victory against Le Pen, with a 64-36 margin. Coming after Brexit in June 2016 and President Donald Trump’s first victory in November 2016, Macron was seen as someone who stopped nationalism in its tracks.
Macron won not because people liked him or because of his resume. In fact, he did not even belong to one of France’s political parties, having founded a centrist party, En Marche! (meaning, move forward), only a year earlier. His experience as an investment banker at Rothschild was not seen as a strong endorsement of his qualifications in a country that embraces socialism at every turn. As the Economics Minister in the government of François Hollande, he carried all of that unpopular administration’s baggage––along with the blame for the persistently high 10.5% unemployment rate at the time [with youth unemployment rate above 20%].
Then, why did Macron win? Because in 2017, the alternative, Marine Le Pen, was considered a far worse choice. Le Pen was everything Macron was not. She stoked nationalist fears by suggesting that immigrants were taking away French jobs. She repeatedly stated that Muslim immigrants were the cause of France’s frequent terror attacks. She actively advocated for a return to the French Franc and threatened a Frexit referendum––a chance for France to leave the EU.
Fast-forward to 2025, Le Pen’s positions resonate deeply with voters. In the June 2024 European Parliament elections, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) emerged as the largest group, securing around 186 seats (about 26% of the total). The results were a serious setback for Macron, so he took a massive gamble by calling for snap national elections to the French Parliament, hoping to demonstrate that French voters, when given a chance, wouldn’t elect Le Pen’s party.
But, Macron’s gamble failed. The National Rally, led by Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, her 29-year-old protege, took a strong lead with 33.2% of the vote (about 10 million votes). Turnout was 66.7%, the highest since 1997, reflecting intense public engagement. Because France votes in two rounds, Macron somehow engineered a final result that prevented the National Rally from coming to power. By encouraging tactical withdrawals by third-place candidates from Macron’s Ensemble coalition and the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) in the second round on July 7, 2024, Macron blocked the National Rally from securing a majority.
The final results left France with a hung parliament: the NFP won the most seats, 182, followed by Ensemble with 168, and the National Rally with 143 (out of 577 total seats). No bloc secured the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority.
Since then, governance in France has been a mess. Macron’s initial choice for a government, led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, collapsed on December 4, 2024, after a no-confidence vote backed by both the NFP and RN over budget disputes. On December 13, 2024, Macron appointed François Bayrou, a centrist ally from the MoDem party within the Ensemble coalition, as Prime Minister. Bayrou now leads a fragile minority government, relying on ad hoc support from moderate lawmakers, as the constitution bars new elections until at least July 2025.
Thousands of politicians in France engaged in political maneuvering and open horse-trading at the highest levels to keep Le Pen’s party from assuming the prime ministership. Le Pen basked in the knowledge that the average French voter would never approve of such shady tactics. After all, democracy—a term that every French politician covets––doesn’t overrule voters’ choices. But the European Union is different today. The only politicians that the levers of EU power will allow are those deemed “clean and sanitized,” regardless of voters’ preferences.
In November 2024, Romania’s conservative nationalist Călin Georgescu unexpectedly took the lead with about 23% of the vote. His platform—anti-NATO, anti-EU, and promising to halt aid to Ukraine—alarmed the country’s pro-Western establishment. On March 11, 2025, the country’s Constitutional Court barred Georgescu from running in the rescheduled election (set for May 4, with a runoff on May 18), citing violations of democratic norms tied to campaign irregularities.
On Monday, a court in Paris copied Romania’s Constitutional Court, delivering an outcome that the EU’s Deep State desperately wanted. On an “embezzlement” charge in which Le Pen was never charged with personally profiteering (she was charged with using EU funds to pay party workers), a judge ruled that Le Pen would be barred from contesting any elections, including the 2027 presidential election. How convenient for Macron and other European leaders as they put together a Coalition of the Willing to continue the Russia-Ukraine war.
Le Pen has been a staunch French nationalist for decades. She is a Eurosceptic with a strong anti-establishment stance, critical of NATO and Western military escalation, and a strong proponent of peace, emphasizing diplomacy over military engagement. She advocates for France to prioritize its national interests and avoid entanglement in foreign conflicts.
Le Pen will likely appeal the verdict, but the French courts are known to be slow. Voters, in the court of public opinion, are likely to side with her party. France’s lawfare on Le Pen isn’t likely to go well.
