On July 7, 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal upheld Marine Le Pen’s conviction for embezzling EU funds. She was found guilty of misusing around €2.8 million of European Parliament money, a significant sum, but modest compared with some of the larger corruption scandals that have affected European institutions. The court imposed a three-year sentence, with two years suspended and one year to be served under electronic monitoring. The five-year ban from public office was reduced to 45 months, of which 30 months were suspended. Le Pen has said she could not campaign for president wearing an ankle bracelet. The case proceeded with notable speed, moving from investigation to trial to conviction. Whatever one thinks of the verdict itself, the speed and decisiveness of the proceedings stood in marked contrast to several other high-profile corruption cases in Europe.
But the Le Pen case extends beyond one politician. It raises broader questions about the functioning of justice within today’s European institutional order.
In this context, it is worth recalling the Qatargate scandal. It broke in December 2022, with claims of large-scale corruption at the heart of the European Parliament. The scandal involved cash payments, luxury gifts and senior politicians accused of accepting bribes from Qatar and Morocco. The alleged sums involved appeared substantially larger than those at issue in the Le Pen case, and the full scale of the corruption may be even higher, as the investigation is still ongoing. The political stakes were at least as high. Yet, nearly four years after the scandal broke, no final convictions have been secured. Some key figures, including former ministers, have avoided questioning by invoking immunity.
The comparison does not rest on the legal complexity of the cases being identical. It rests on the question of whether political influence and institutional status appear to affect the urgency with which justice is pursued. The judicial system that moved so decisively against Le Pen has not produced a comparable level of judicial finality in corruption allegations involving the highest levels of European governance.
Nor are concerns about uneven institutional responses limited to Qatargate. In November 2025, allegations surrounding a $100 million (around €90 million) fraud case involving Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company Energoatom raised further questions about whether Brussels applies the same level of scrutiny across politically sensitive cases. With senior officials and individuals reportedly linked to Zelensky’s political circle among those implicated, critics argued that the institutional response appeared limited compared with the pressure applied in other high-profile cases. Given the EU’s extensive financial and political commitment to Ukraine, such perceptions carry particular significance.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s government has repeatedly clashed with the judiciary, accusing it of political interference and blocking key reforms on migration and justice. Meloni and her allies have argued that courts are overstepping their mandate, overriding democratic mandates, a sentiment that has fuelled her calls for judicial reform. In Slovakia, Robert Fico’s government has faced similar conflicts with the Constitutional Court over reforms that the court found inconsistent with EU standards. The pattern repeats: where governments challenge the prevailing consensus, they encounter resistance from the same institutional structures, courts, tribunals and EU frameworks.
The broader consequence is political. Courts may be formally independent, but when the public perceives that they act selectively, swift against some, slow against others, confidence in the impartiality of the system inevitably declines. Whether that perception is fully justified is ultimately less important than the fact that it exists. Institutional legitimacy depends not only on legal procedure, but also on public confidence that justice is applied consistently.
Le Pen, Meloni and Fico represent different political traditions, but they share one thing: All have challenged aspects of the prevailing European consensus. And all have encountered resistance from key institutions within the European political and legal order. The contrast suggests that institutional responses may differ depending on the political context of a case. When political actors outside the institutional mainstream are involved, institutions can act swiftly and decisively. When the target is its own elite, they hesitate.
These contrasting institutional responses do not necessarily require a conspiracy to be politically significant. They may instead reflect structural incentives within a governance model that has become increasingly self-protective. If this institutional framework continues to apply one set of standards to outsiders and another to its own elites, public trust will continue to erode. That erosion will, in turn, fuel the very political movements that European institutions increasingly seek to contain. Europe faces a choice: Reform its institutional framework to ensure genuine fairness, or continue down a path of growing public alienation. The contrast between the Le Pen verdict and the unresolved Qatargate affair is unlikely to be dismissed as a coincidence by European voters. Whether justified or not, that perception is becoming part of Europe’s political reality, and European institutions ignore it at their own risk.
