France’s presidential elections are set to be held less than a year from now, with the likely second round taking place in early May 2027. While politics can always throw surprises, no one expected Britain’s Keir Starmer to make it only two years as prime minister after winning a massive majority, one generally has an idea of who will be running for office less than a year before the election.
Except if you’re French. Marine Le Pen shocked her country on the evening of July 7 with her announcement that she would be running for president after all, contrary to expectations that she would be stepping aside for Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally (RN). Le Pen had said she would not be running with an ankle bracelet on (while in house arrest); but as she is appealing court rulings, she no longer needs to worry about wearing one. Lest there were any doubters, she clarified, “There is no longer any scenario in which I could not run in 2027.”
There technically still is an open chance that she will not be able to run, though, with an uncertain timeline for when her appeals will move through the system. But it is almost certain that she will be her party’s nominee.
This is an unfortunate reality for those who wished for the populist Right to have the best chance possible at winning in 2027. Bardella, 30 years old with an Italian princess girlfriend, did (un)surprisingly well with youth. And he also polled much better than Le Pen, breaking 70 per cent in some polling against likely second-round opponents. Now, the party will be stuck running a two-time loser who, while having run in office for decades, has never managed to lead her party to major France-wide victories.
Le Pen’s likelihood of success, or lack thereof, is secondary, though, to what should be a sobering point: The French public was not waiting on whether or not she would decide to run. They were instead waiting on the courts to decide for them.
Le Pen had been being investigated by the French government for the past few years for embezzling funds. To make a long legal saga short, she was alleged to have misused funds intended for European Parliamentary-related work. The Paris appeal court confirmed that conviction on July 7, 2026, while cutting her disqualification to 15 months, a term already served, which is what cleared her to stand in 2027.
It is important to mention that “the government” here is not Emmanuel Macron, who officially, and likely unofficially, had no hand in this. It is instead the prosecutors, representing the French government, who have gone after her so relentlessly. This is not, shockingly, just a Le Pen problem. Bardella himself has fallen under public scrutiny recently (for similar alleged crimes), as has Édouard Philippe, another feasible centrist contender for the presidency.
While it may be noteworthy that no left-wing figures have been accused of wrongdoing here, that is not the main story. It is a problem, but the larger problem is much more significant: That the modern European political system effectively is being governed by unelected prosecutors placed into power in order to uphold the current establishment.
One can write “European” because this same problem is cropping up all over Europe. Former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz was forced from office after a plethora of scandals broke against him. Five years later, and he has never been found guilty of any crimes (having been acquitted after a years-long court battle). Italy’s Matteo Salvini was charged for simply doing his job as interior minister and likewise had to fight for years in court, with prosecutors forcing the case all the way to Italy’s highest court, which finally found him not guilty. Finnish prosecutors went after a member of parliament for reading a Bible verse. Romania’s Călin Georgescu is in the midst of two separate trials. And so on, and so on.
Defenders of the established order comfort themselves by arguing that the prosecutors are just doing their jobs, and that the ascendant right-wing populists are simply criminals.
They are half right: They are indeed doing their jobs, but the job is not to mete out justice fairly. It is to keep challengers at bay.
Europe is in the midst of a decade-plus succession of populist waves. While they have not been able to dislodge all establishments, the populist Right has become the most popular group in European elections, taking roughly a quarter of the vote across Europe. If this is sustained, they will in time replace the traditional parties permanently. And that can be most easily achieved by winning in one of Europe’s largest economies: France or Germany.
Due to Germany’s political system and the need for governing coalitions there, France, with its presidential republican system, is the best bet. So prosecutors there, like elsewhere, have gone all-in to try to weaken Le Pen and Bardella or, at the least, to cause enough chaos before the vote.
They have succeeded. Le Pen will, like President Donald Trump was forced to in the United States, run under the cloud of court proceedings. Democrats sought to make hay of Trump being a “felon” during the campaign. While it failed, Trump certainly would have preferred to not have to spend every Wednesday tied up in a courtroom.
Of course, delegitimisation of Trump did not start in 2024. The effort started before he took office, with Democrats accusing his campaign of having colluded with Russia (claims which came to nothing). That managed to create a cloud over Trump’s entire first term.
French prosecutors have done the same thing here. If Le Pen does manage to win, she will have presidential immunity for the duration of office. But the investigations against her will continue, and if she challenges it she will be challenging the “sacred” “neutrality” of the prosecution. After she leaves office, the prosecution will continue.
This will continue to happen until the European populist Right fires back at supposedly neutral prosecutors. Giorgia Meloni in Italy sought to do so in a half-hearted referendum, but that narrowly failed. They must put their full weight on the effort to reveal these naked partisans for what they are, or they can watch the populist wave dissolve and recede back into the political waters.
