The judgment fell without Marine Le Pen listening to the end: on March 31, the deputy of Pas-de-Calais was sentenced in the case of parliamentary assistants of the National Rally (RN) to a prison sentence of four years, including two farms arranged under electronic bracelet, as well as five years of ineligibility with provisional execution-which excludes it, for the moment, from the presidential election 2027. Immediately in the execution of the sentence, the president of the court notably underlined “the gravity of the facts”, put forward “their systemic nature”, “their duration”, and the “amount of diverted funds” – the total damage is estimated at more than 4 million euros.
Above all, while the accused expressed, neither during the investigation nor during the trial, “no awareness of the violation of the law they committed, nor a fortiori of the particular requirement of probity and exemplarity which attaches to elected officials”, write the judges, the court indicates to fear “a risk of recurrence”. Concerning Marine Le Pen, the judges also evoke the risk of an “irreparable disorder to the democratic public order that would generate the fact that it is candidate, or even elected […]while it is condemned for embezzlement of public funds “. A risk which prevails, according to the magistrates, on that which its ineligibility is canceled on appeal.
An argument against which was indignant Marine Le Pen, who denounced the same evening a “political decision” and the “violation of the rule of law”. Beyond the RN, the very principle of the provisional execution of this sentence – which is not automatic and depends on the assessment of the judge – arouses the debate in public opinion. In the community of magistrates, much less. All the professionals interviewed by L’Express are blocking around the judgment. “Provisional execution is a tool that we choose or not to use, in particular depending on the severity of the facts, the behavior of defendants at the hearing – whether or not they deny the facts, for example -, and therefore the possibility of recurrence”, explains Aurélien Martini, deputy secretary of the union union of magistrates (USM). He recalls that this decision, which must be voted by at least two in three judges, is not uncommon. According to Statistics of the Ministry of Justiceit concerned 58 % of firm prison terms in 2023.
A debate “sliced in the assembly”
The political consequences of such a decision, even though Marine Le Pen reaches up to 37 % of voting intention in the first round of the 2027 presidential election, should they be taken into account in such a decision? On offenses of providing provision, corruption or embezzlement of public funds, which are particularly aimed at public and political figures – potentially candidates for various mandates -, Aurélien Martini recalls that the law provides that they are automatically condemned to unlocked penalties, with the possibility of provisional execution. “When the parliamentarians adopted this law, they explicitly considered that there could be very strong political consequences for the convicted persons. This debate was decided in the National Assembly, and does not have to be in a courtroom,” he said. Before questioning: “If we start to take into account the popularity of Marine Le Pen in the upcoming elections and her political agenda considering that this should in fact exclude a possible provisional execution, where do we stop?”.
Frédéric Macé, President of the French Association of Company Magistrates (AFMI), abounds: “The judges took care to individualize the penalty by taking into account the accumulation of facts, and not the possible political consequences of their decision. The magistrates must not succumb to internal or external pressures, nor to public clamor. It is fundamental, otherwise they would come out of their independence,”
“We can of course debate the severity of a condemnation, but it must be recalled that it is applied according to the law. If the law is not suitable for deputies as they voted, it will be necessary to have the courage to go to the end of their reasoning, and to vote another. With all the consequences that this implies,” said Ludovic Friat, President of the USM. “There is undoubtedly a debate on how to motivate provisional execution, in particular because there is a political issue on this candidate,” admits Béatrice Brugère, secretary general of the Magistrates-Fo Unit union. “But we would almost forget about the acts committed, and the fact that it was the policies themselves who voted the law today applied,” she said, worried about a “general ecosystem against judges when the company does not agree with the judgment rendered”. “We must now get out of this impasse, with perhaps an adapted pedagogy and communication, without giving in to the fury of the debate,” concludes the magistrate.
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