Paris, 1 April 2025 (dpa/MIA) - French far-right icon Marine Le Pen has said she will do everything she can to overturn a ruling barring her from running for office for five years after a Paris criminal court found her guilty of embezzlement on Monday.

Le Pen condemned the ruling, which centres on the misuse of European Union funds by her party, as "political."

"There are millions of French people tonight who are outraged, and outraged to an unimaginable extent, when they see that in France, the country of human rights, judges have introduced practices that were thought to be reserved for authoritarian regimes," Le Pen told broadcaster TF1.

She accused the judge of aiming to prevent her from being elected as France's next president. "If that's not a political decision, I don't know what is."

"I will not allow myself to be eliminated just like that," Le Pen vowed, adding that she would use all available legal avenues to fight the decision.

While Le Pen's defence team has said it will appeal the verdict, Monday's ruling likely ends Le Pen's plans to compete in the 2027 presidential election, with the lengthy legal process unlikely to conclude before the vote.

As Le Pen was the front-runner in the election in which President Emmanuel Macron cannot stand again, the explosive ruling could upend French politics.

The judge sentenced Le Pen to four years in prison, two of them suspended and the other two with an electronic tag rather than in custody. Le Pen was also given a €100,000 ($108,000) fine.

She was barred from seeking public office for five years, effective immediately.

Until the end of the parliamentary term, Le Pen can continue to sit as a member of parliament.

Prosecutors accused Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party of using money from the European Parliament to pay staff who were working for her political party, rather than for parliamentary assistants.

The judge also delivered guilty verdicts to eight other members of her party who, like Le Pen, served as lawmakers in the European Parliament. Additionally, 12 parliamentary assistants were found guilty.

National Rally leader: Court dealt blow to French democracy

Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old leader of the National Rally, described Le Pen's sentence as a death knell for French democracy.

"Today, it is not only Marine Le Pen who is being unjustly condemned: it is French democracy that is being executed," Bardella wrote on X.

Le Pen indicated that, should she fail to overturn the ruling, Bardella could run for president instead.

"Jordan Bardella is a great asset to the party, and I've been saying that for a long time," she said.

The Front National, founded by her late father Jean-Marie Le Pen, was rebranded as the National Rally in 2018 by Marine, who shifted the party's focus away from extreme positions in an effort to broaden its appeal and make it electable to a wider segment of the population.

The efforts have paid off, with the party making major gains in last year's European Parliament elections. A subsequent snap election for the French parliament also strengthened its hand, although it did not come out on top.

Criticism from allies and opponents alike

Monday's ruling sparked anger from Le Pen's political allies across Europe and beyond, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán posting in French "Je suis Marine!" (I am Marine) on X.

Orbán leads the Fidesz party, which, alongside Le Pen's RN, forms the core of the far-right faction Patriots for Europe, the third-largest group of lawmakers in the European Parliament.

Washington meanwhile called the ruling "concerning."

"We have got to do more as the West than just talk about democratic values. We must live them," said State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce when asked about the case.

Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., also reacted to the ruling on X.

"France is sending le Pen to jail and barring her from running?!" he wrote.

"Are they just trying to prove JD Vance was right about everything?," he added, apparently referring to a speech by the US vice president at the Munich Security Conference last month, in which he charged that European allies were restricting free speech and democratic values.

In France, political opponents of Le Pen also criticized the decision to bar her from running for office, with veteran leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon saying it "should be up to the people" to remove a politician from office.

The parliamentary group leader of the conservative Republicans, Laurent Wauquiez, called the conviction "serious and extraordinary."

Le Pen has always rejected accusations

Le Pen consistently denied the allegations. "I don't feel I have committed the slightest irregularity, the slightest illegality," she said during the trial.

A total of 28 defendants were accused in the case, which is said to involve a sum of almost €7 million.

Le Pen paid back €330,000 to the European Parliament in 2023. However, her party emphasized that this was not an admission of misconduct.

The allegations, which relate to the years 2004 to 2016, have dogged Le Pen and her party for years.

With regard to Le Pen's sentence, the exact terms of her electronic monitoring remain unclear. It is common practice in France for such details to be determined only once a verdict is final.

Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, for instance, who was also recently sentenced to serve time under electronic monitoring in a separate trial, is currently confined to his home under a strict curfew.

MIA file photo