Marine Le Pen barred from public office

[MAD87]

+1 Biloute, even though I despise the RN.

[DaveW]

I broadly agree except for the last sentence.
Surely it’s a french judicial/constitutional issue, has nothing to do with the EU.

[Wilbro]

Cutting though all the legalise she was told it was illegal, she knew it was illegal and money was taken under false pretences. Straight forward fraud and I'm quite happy with her sentence as I think any straightforward thinking person would be.

[Biloute]

The term "stolen" is the one used by politicians and media outlets who oppose the National Rally. The term used in the judgment was "fictitious jobs."
This money was allocated by the EU to pay its assistants. All parties also receive money for the same reason.
The job of assistants is to help parliamentarians in their political work, and this is true for all parties. And the EU has no power to control the nature of this work.
If justice were fair, all parties would have been accused, and their leaders would be ineligible! Bayrou and Mélenchon were also accused of the same thing: Bayrou was acquitted, and Mélenchon likely will be.

[Biloute]

[Pathca]

In UK law the basic definition of theft is ‘dishonestly misappropriate the property of another with the intention to permanently deprive ‘there are then specific acts to deal with TWOC fraud etc the difference between stolen and fictitious jobs would seem semantics

[Blaze]

a condamnation en première instance de Marine Le Pen, lundi 31 mars, dans l’affaire des assistants parlementaires du Rassemblement national est un coup de tonnerre dans la vie politique française. Trois fois candidate à l’élection présidentielle, la cheffe de file de l’extrême droite n’est plus assurée de pouvoir se représenter en 2027. Reconnue coupable d’avoir joué un rôle central dans le détournement des fonds versés par l’Union européenne au profit de son parti entre 2004 et 2016, elle a été condamnée à une peine de prison de quatre ans (dont deux avec sursis et deux sous bracelet électronique), assortie de cinq ans d’inéligibilité d’application immédiate.

She was found guilty of misappropriation of funds (or embezzlement if you prefer). She paid staff members of her party with money intended for aides to European lawmakers.

Here is an interesting article in English from Sciences Po university for political sciences in Paris):
https://www.sciencespo.fr/cevipof/en/ne ... in-france/
In this article is a link to The Conversation France, a partner of Sciences Po where it mentions the Loi Sapin 2. I've done a quick translation of the relevant paragraph :

To this end, the Loi Sapin II which came into force on 11 December 2016, provided that, for offences involving breaches of the duty of probity/honesty/integrity - including misappropriation of public funds - the penalty of ineligibility would no longer be a mere option, but an obligation.

Thus if I have understood correctly, notwithstanding the Loi Sapin 2, a judge was perfectly within his/her rights to declare MLP ineligible by using his/her facultative powers to do so for offences committed before 11/12/2016. (I hope this makes sense)

[Biloute]

She paid staff members of her party with money intended for aides to European lawmakers.

Of course, MLP recruited her assistants from among those who approve of the RN's ideas so she could trust them!
Should she have hired Mélenchon's friends who want to welcome ever more Islamists? Is Macron recruiting his assistants from a party that advocates Frexit? It's common sense... The work of MPs, as European legislators, is carried out in line with their party's ideas, and that's perfectly normal in a democracy. Or else we opt for a single party where everyone has the same ideas, but it goes by a different name than democracy...

[Pathca]

That doesn’t justify misappropriating funds to pay for them,

[Blaze]

@Biloute Despite all your justifications, I would have thought that the courts must have had sufficient evidence to show that the funds were ... erm ... diverted, otherwise she could not have been found guilty.
It seems some people are more concerned about her punishment of ineligibility for the next presidentials than the fact the millions were misappropriated.