“Ineligibility is accessory, the offense is the main one” | EUROtoday

CAs one would anticipate, the reception of the judgment of the Paris Criminal Court, on March 31, Marine Le Pen primarily centered on the complementary sentence of 5 years of ineligibility accompanied by a provisional execution. It is obvious why, insofar as such a choice will usually have the impact of prohibiting the chief of the National Rally (RN) within the National Assembly to use for the presidential election. Consequently, this judgment provoked the fury not solely of the principle get together, but additionally of a “populist international” (Russia, Hungary and the United States), claims in unison that democracy was endangered by this court docket determination.

But to focus solely on this conviction which is equal to accent, we’d threat forgetting the principal, specifically the conviction of Marine Le Pen to 4 years in jail, two of that are shut, for “embezzlement of public funds”. However, residents should know the explanations. The judgment particulars at size why the National Front (FN), which has since develop into the RN, knowingly organized, beneath the aegis of its chief, a system of embezzlement of public funds.

He specifies particularly that the get together has “Make care by the European Parliament, under cover of fictitious parliamentary assistant contracts, employees actually working for [lui] »». From this point of view, the facts set out by the judges are overwhelming and it is difficult to see how criminal qualification could be modified on appeal, as the offense seems established.

Make the sanction effective

Reading the judgment is also instructive in that it highlights the behavior of the defendants which, on the one hand, systematically denied evidence and, on the other hand, centered their defense on the idea that there would be a kind of immunity (judges speak of “impunity”) of the political class. In response, and this is one of the leitmotifs of this judgment, the court has continued to object to them that elected officials, in the current French democracy, enjoyed any irresponsibility (the immunity of parliamentarians, provided for in article 26 of the Constitution, did not apply in this case), and that they were on the contrary criminally responsible, as any ordinary citizen. The fact of being elected does not put them above the law, while the defense of the defendants consisted in claiming (openly or not) the opposite, which returned from them to claim a privilege in relation to the rest of the citizens.

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