cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4484610
A French court found Marine Le Pen guilty Monday in an embezzlement case and followed up the verdict with a sentence barring her immediately from running for office for five years. Le Pen abruptly left the Paris courtroom before hearing how long she will be banned from running for public office.
Le Pen and 24 other officials from her National Rally were accused of having used money intended for European Union parliamentary aides to pay staff who worked for the party between 2004 and 2016, in violation of the 27-nation bloc’s regulations. Le Pen and her co-defendants deny wrongdoing.
The biggest concern for Le Pen was that the court may declare her ineligible to run for office preventing her from running for president in 2027 – a scenario she had described as a “political death.”
The Constitutional Council ruled Friday, in a separate case, that imposing the punishment immediately was constitutional.
A coachable moment for those that think we need to crack down on shoplifters and be tougher on crime.
She’s snaffled 3 million quid and won’t see the inside of a cell.
Assuming the verdict stands, she’ll be locked away for 2 years and spend another 2 in house arrest. I do agree with your point however, justice isn’t as blind as it’s made out to be.I’d read 2 years suspended, 2 years on tag
😔
Courts can do this?
-An American who thought Sternly Worded Letters were ALL that’s allowed!
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEHEHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE !
Anybody who thinks that neoliberals won’t be doing the same thing with socialists going forward is in for a surprise. It’s becoming clear that the EU will just use lawfare to keep neoliberal center in power going forward.
You aren’t wrong, but can you really say they wouldn’t do this to socialists if they didn’t do it to Le Pen first? The concept of “precedent” seems very nebulous and liberal to me. In many countries the first targets are socialists.
Seems to me like they can go after anyone they want and they always could. Going after Le Pen doesn’t change this.
I mean the reason they went after Le Pen was because neolibs see her as the biggest threat. If it was somebody on the left like Mélenchon they would’ve gone after him instead. I agree that they don’t really need a precedent, but I’m sure they will leverage it next time now that it’s there.
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100% agree! The EU has opened a pandora’s box by going after elements like Le Pen and Georgescu. That is not the way! Address people’s concerns, penalize huge corporations negative externalities and wrongdoings as it should… banning voices just exacerbates their grievances. I don’t know about Le Pen, just dislike her incendiary immigrant rhetoric wanted to reduce drastically immigration is a valid stance in my mind, although I disagree with, but being anti-[fill_religion_or_color__here] is not). What I know is that the claims posed by Romania does not hold any water… There is no evidence presented to this day of Russian interference… just claims; with that any current government can also ‘claim’ interference and stop a candidate. Bad, bad times in the EU.
So like… She should not get any punishment for embezzling European Union funds ?
So like… when you apply law selectively that’s a problem. For example, Christine Lagarde was found guilty of involvement in a corrupt 400m euro arbitration, received no sentence, and was awarded with the ECB governor job. https://news.sky.com/story/court-finds-imf-chief-christine-lagarde-guilty-of-criminal-negligence-10702431
Then there’s von der Leyen who simply refused to disclose text messages she exchanged with the chief executive of Pfizer https://www.ft.com/content/72f0cb12-3753-42a9-aba4-7b3fb596e1cd
There are plenty of such cases and these people never face any punishment, but all of a sudden in this case there’s a sentence handed down. Anybody with even a minimally functioning brain can see that this is politically motivated lawfare. If the law is not applied equally then it’s no longer just.
This is because LePen is being condamned based on a law from 2016. (That she voted BTW)
The cases you mention here are older and cannot be judged through this law in France.
Definitely. Macron is jumping gleefully at this.
Micron’s gotta stay in power somehow. :)
I still think this is good news though. Should help the far-right lose momentum. But then again it’s getting harder all the time to distinguish them from the ‘moderate’ right.
I don’t think this is going to cause far-right to lose momentum, if anything we should expect the opposite to happen because everybody can see this was politically motivated. The reason far-right is gaining momentum is because the standard of living is collapsing due to neoliberal policies. Since liberals have no actual solution to this problem the disenfranchisement will continue to grow. Le Pen will just get replaced with somebody else and the same people who support her will rally behind them instead.
It’s not that simple. I’m from Spain and the case with our own far-right party is different. They’ve lost momentum gradually, through multiple figureheads leaving or being kicked out, with the main guy still standing, but the scandals and the lack of actual policies proposed have definitely hurt them. The problem is that those who vote for them are exactly the ones who used to vote for the traditionally ‘moderate’ conservative party. Same as in France. So it’s just a constant voter dance between the two parties. The actual number of right-wing voters hasn’t changed much.
One can only hope that disenfranchisement as you call it (I call it chronic planned distraction) will eventually lead to some form of working-class rebellion, as it tends to happen historically.
But this will definitely hurt the European far-right. Le Pen was one of their main bastions and believe it or not, those types are not so easily replaceable. People lose interest quickly and they’ll tire of the ‘this was all a politically motivated complot’ rhetoric. I’ve seen the same happen in my country. In fact, the right lost the last general election because they were so sure they were going to win, their campaign sucked.
Eventually the workers will rise up, but my impression is that genuine socialists are still a minority in Europe. Neoliberal centre is still strong, and the right has been doing a better job than the left attracting people who fall out of it. The right also has the benefit of being backed by the rich since they don’t see it as a threat. I suspect it’s quite likely that we could see a right wave sweep through Europe before people start seriously looking left.
