Marine Le Pen’s ineligibility sentence was pronounced by the court, with provisional execution. Explanations on a technical measure that changes everything for the RN.
It is a legal expression which was hitherto very confidential, but the news gives it such an important light that it should integrate the vocabulary of political life for a long time. “Provisional execution.” This expression designates an accessory decision pronounced by a court of first instance, immediately acting the execution of the judgment rendered, despite the appeals that the convicted person would have initiated. In other words: even in the event of an appeal, the latter does not suspend the conviction pronounced with provisional execution.
Marine Le Pen’s ineligibility penalty, found guilty of embezzlement of public funds in the case of parliamentary assistants of the National Front (which has become a national rally, RN) on Monday, March 31, is accompanied by this provisional execution. The former president of the far -right party was also sentenced to a four -year prison sentence, two years of which were firm, convertible with an electronic bracelet and a fine of 100,000 euros.
In the case of Marine Le Pen, the provisional execution of ineligibility prevents him from applying for the presidential election. And the judges, who have undoubtedly measured the political impact that such a decision would generate, took care to explain.
In her long 152 -page judgment, the president of the court, Bénédicte de Perthuis, considered that the choice to pronounce the provisional execution was a “delicate conciliation” with the right to appeal. However, it advances a major argument which tipped the scales: the risk of “recurrence” for Marine Le Pen to make crimes of the same type. For what ? Because the former MEP and the other convicted of the embezzlement of public funds “have expressed any awareness of their violation of the law and the importance of probity”.
“You are able to repeat”
“What the judges are part is that at no time did she admit that she did something questionable, analyzes this Tuesday, April 1, Michel Sapin, former Minister of Justice, In the columns of the Parisian. She was in fact placed in the state of mind to be able to continue. She could have recognized an error. She adopted another strategy, considering that for 20 years, the national rally did only perfectly normal things. The judge’s reasoning therefore amounts to saying: “Since you have no awareness of what you have done, so you are able to repeat”.
The former minister also recalls that “the Sapin 2 law does not create automatic ineligibility”. “It was not directly applied in this trial directly since the alleged facts were prior to 2016. This law simply obliges the judge to examine an ineligibility sentence. […] Provisional execution has not been created by the Sapin 2. Law. The system has existed for a very long time. If the judge receives a significant risk of recurrence, he may decide on provisional execution. It is a provision that is the total discretion of judges “.
Did the judge who condemned Marine Le Pen made a “disproportionate” decision? Again, the law authorizes judges to provisional execution, depending on the seriousness of the facts. Asked about this measurement which would be taken on unlocked sentences – for a local mandate – the Constitutional Council issued a “proportionality control” for the judge on Friday 28 March to consider the law of the voter. But the Constitutional Council also considers that “it is up to the judge, in his decision, to assess the proportionate nature of the attack that this measure is likely to bring to the exercise of an in progress mandate and to the preservation of the freedom of the voter”.