Is Marine Le Pen’s conviction an attack on democracy?
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Marine Le Pen, an immensely popular French politician, has been found guilty of misappropriating EU funds and is barred from running for public office for five years. Wim Voermans, Professor of Constitutional Law, commented on her conviction in ‘Bar Laat’.
The French court found Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzling €4.4 million in EU funds and sentenced her to four years in prison, two of them suspended. She is considered the brain behind an illegal scheme to pay party staff. As an added penalty with immediate effect, the court also barred her from standing for election for five years, preventing her from running in the 2027 presidential election. That electoral sanction must be imposed by the judge with immediate effect in such cases according to French legislation passed in 2013. Ironically, Le Pen herself was involved in the introduction of that legislation; in fact, at the time, she thought the sanctions were too lenient and even advocated lifetime electoral disqualification for this kind of fraud.
Voermans says ‘that this exclusion strikes a fundamental democratic chord. Although the punishment is severe, the rule of law and democracy clash here.' He believes it is not desirable to remove politicians from the political and democratic arena in this way. The public debate on this should remain open. Ideally, it would be better for the voters to judge these kinds of crimes and not the courts. In the Netherlands, therefore, we still have hardly any way to bar a person from standing for election. A large section of the French population is now being deprived of the opportunity to vote for the candidate they want. In the Netherlands, legislation has been relaxed since 1983 and not being allowed to stand for election applies only in cases of very serious electoral offences. Excluding a person from standing for election has therefore hardly ever occurred since 1983, and never in the case of a politician.
Another issue was also discussed during the late-night current affairs programme – the refusal of asylum minister Marjolein Faber to approve royal honours. She refuses to sign the nominations of five former volunteers at COA, the agency for the reception of asylum seekers in the Netherlands. Her explanation for her refusal is that it would be at odds with her policy on immigration. Professor Voermans says her attitude is ‘petty. These royal honours are given by the government, i.e. the King and a minister. The minister responsible usually approves it' regardless of political considerations. Now the Dutch prime minister together with the home affairs minister have stepped in and signed instead of Faber. Something like this has never happened before and raises questions about the unity of government policy.
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Watch the Bar Laat broadcast (in Dutch)