Le Pen jailed, barred from running for French presidential election

A French court has, on March 31, 2025, sentenced a presidential aspirant, Marine Le Pen to four years in prison.

The judge also barred her from running for presidency in France, as well as running for any other public office.

Le Pen will, however, spend two of the four years as a suspended sentence.

The fiery opposition leader but will no longer be contesting for the 2027 presidential race following the court ruling on Monday.

Le Pen is the deputy for Pas-de-Calais and the president of the National Rally group in the National Assembly.

She was a presidential nominee in 2012, 2017, and 2022, for National Rally.

Further information shows that she is the daughter of National Rally founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Among the candidates that have declared their intention to run is the Mayor of Le Havre, Édouard Philippe.

Philippe is also the leader of Horizons and former Prime Minister of France.

Another potential candidate is the leader of Reconquête, Éric Zemmour, a presidential nominee in 2022.

Others are a Member of Parliament, Jordan Bardella.

Bardella is the chairman of the Patriots for Europe and the leader of the National Rally.

Like Le Pen in France, like Georgescu in Romania

In the past month, Romania and France have each banned opposition leaders from presidential elections.

Romania barred its front-runner, Călin Georgescu, from contesting the country’s election.

The incident involving Le Pen followed suit in France, raising question of the state of democracy in Europe.

Romania had held its presidential elections on November 24, 2024.

A second round was due to be held on December 8, 2024, as no candidate achieved an absolute majority in the first round.

However, on December 6, the Constitutional Court annulled the election.

The court alleged that a Russian influence operation had impacted the vote in the November 24 election.

The election was the ninth presidential election held in the post-revolution Romania.

The Independent nationalist candidate achieved a relative majority of votes.

Meanwhile, the center-right politician Elena Lasconi finished second and also advanced to the runoff election.

Currently, like Le Pen, Georgescu will not be participating in the presidential election following the recent court ruling.

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