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With Europe under fire for its lack of support for Ukraine and grappling with the prospect of losing Greenland to President Donald Trump — a shift that could spell the end of NATO — an appeal court in Paris could give the coup de grace to the future of the EU as a bloc, if Marine Le Pen’s appeal against a conviction relating to the embezzlement of European Parliament funds by her party succeeds.
It is not only the French far-right firebrand’s political future that hangs in the balance, but also the fate of France’s Fifth Republic and that of Europe, too.
Either Le Pen or her protegee Jordan Bardella, head of the patriotic French movement National Rally, will run for president of France regardless of the court decision. Right-wing skeptics have been on the rise across the Continent but have so far been kept at bay in major European countries such as France and Germany. But with their numbers growing, Le Pen’s legal troubles might not be sufficient to shift the vote away from a populist movement bent on winning the keys to the Elysee Palace.
Meanwhile, France’s mainstream political parties appear fragmented and in disarray, with none seeming to offer an appealing alternative to National Rally’s plan to radically change the country’s direction with anti-immigration and US-style “France first” policies and a euroskeptic agenda.
Le Pen is seeking to overturn a March ruling that found her guilty of misusing EU funds in the hiring of staff from 2004 to 2016. However, with no new political coalition or movement emerging to challenge the populist shift, the success or failure of the appeal is unlikely to dent her chances or those of her party in winning the presidency 500 days from now.
France’s mainstream parties appear fragmented.
Mohamed Chebaro
Recent opinion polls suggest that Le Pen’s legal troubles have had little impact on National Rally’s fortunes. Instead, the party’s appeal has been growing across the board, especially among young and older voters. A poll by Le Monde showed that 40 percent of respondents believed that National Rally would improve the situation in France when it came to security, reindustrialization, quality of public services, and the cost of living.
Like many populist parties in Europe, Le Pen’s National Rally has been benefiting from toxic social media and a narrative of despair directed from the US toward Europe’s mainstream parties. A third of voters also said that National Rally is the only party that could do things differently, while not specifying how. Meanwhile, a growing number of voters favor tougher rules for overseas-born residents in relation to housing, welfare, and employment.
For the past 15 years, Le Pen has been trying to bring the far right into the political mainstream in France. Recent geopolitical changes mean there has never been a more favorable time for such a drive, with Europe as a bloc, as well as its democratic liberal values, besieged and under attack. While the past stigma of racism and antisemitism persists, National Rally’s disdain of EU as a bloc — a posture that echoes the Make America Great Again stance in the US — resonates with a larger section of voters in France, and indeed the rest of Europe.
The case against Le Pen for misusing EU funds is now a matter for the Paris appeal court, which might clear her after 13 weeks of deliberation or uphold the previous verdict. But whatever the court’s finding, Le Pen and Bardella are likely to emerge stronger, appearing to be the victims of a witch hunt, and capable of rallying even more support.
The question facing France and the EU is what Le Pen or Bardella will do with a win — whether they will be able to deliver better living standards and boost economic growth and not just deliver more “patriotic posturing” while worsening the socioeconomic malaise in the country.
French people, of course, are free to elect novices who lack a track record in office. But voters should be under no illusion that with the US and Russia actively seeking to undermine the EU, and promote far-right nationalist parties as a kind of “enemy within,” the stakes in France are high for 2027.
• Mohamed Chebaro is a British-Lebanese journalist with more than 25 years’ experience covering war, terrorism, defense, current affairs and diplomacy.