The general public prosecutor’s office of the Paris Court of Appeal decided on Wednesday July 15 not to file an appeal in the case of the assistants of MEPs of the FN (now RN), “following an in-depth examination of the judgment rendered on July 7”.
Representatives of the prosecution had until July 20 to file a possible appeal. If the appeal magistrates had followed their requests to condemn Marine Le Pen and a dozen party executives to the flame for embezzlement of public funds, the sentences handed down had been far lower than their requests.
Thus, regarding the leader of the far right, the attorneys general had requested a sentence of five years of ineligibility, which would have deprived her of a candidacy for the Élysée in 2027. In the name in particular of “the freedom of the voter” and the “freedom of candidacies”, and despite the “seriousness” of the facts, the court of appeal restricted this ban on participating in an election to fifteen months, already served.
But the Court of Cassation judges respect for the law and not the merits of the cases. Last week, the attorney general of the court of appeal, Marie-Suzanne Le Quéau, then gave herself “a few days” to analyze the approximately 400 pages of the contested decision to determine whether it contained disputed reasoning. The answer therefore appears, in the eyes of the public prosecutor’s office, to be negative.
Decision for Le Pen no later than April
Marine Le Pen, for her part, indicated a few hours after her conviction to contact the senior magistrates, contesting the qualification of “misappropriation of public funds”, according to her inapplicable to her case in that it could not concern European elected officials – a thesis swept aside by the magistrates of first instance as well as those of appeal.
The appeal allows the woman who also declared herself a candidate for the fourth consecutive time for the presidency of the Republic to suspend her one-year prison sentence in the form of house arrest with wearing an electronic bracelet.
Last Wednesday, the Court of Cassation indicated that it should be able to rule “at the beginning of April 2027 at the latest” on the appeal of the Pas-de-Calais MP – as well as, where applicable, on those filed by other convicted persons, the former MEP and current mayor of Perpignan Louis Aliot having also announced his intention to file an appeal.
If the appeal is rejected, Marine Le Pen could theoretically be required to wear this bracelet before the first round of the presidential election, on April 18, a hypothesis that is nevertheless uncertain as the execution times for sentences can be several weeks long.
