Marine Le Pen sentenced: Lille administrative court confirms loss of her mandate as departmental councilor

In her crusade to delegitimize her immediate ineligibility during the National Rally's fictitious jobs trial, Marine Le Pen lost a round. In April, the Pas-de-Calais prefecture notified her of her compulsory resignation from the post of departmental councilor. The leader of the National Rally (RN) deputies immediately challenged the decision before the Lille administrative court. The court ruled against her on Wednesday, June 4, and formally recorded her resignation.

" On the merits of the dispute, the court ruled that the legislative provisions of the electoral code applicable to departmental councillors require the prefect to declare the departmental representative declared ineligible by the criminal judge to have resigned automatically, by a judgment accompanied by provisional execution, " the court ruled in its decision .

On March 31, the Paris court found Marine Le Pen guilty of having developed a system of embezzlement of public funds in the case of the RN's European parliamentary assistants , for a total loss of €4.1 million. She was sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were firm, and five years of ineligibility with provisional execution. She has also appealed this sentence, with the 2027 presidential race in her sights.

Marine Le Pen does not seem to like defeat and persists. Her lawyer, Thomas Laval, immediately announced that she wished to appeal , suspending the compulsory resignation. In a press release following the announcement of the verdict, Thomas Laval deplores a decision that " deprives her of representing the voters of the canton of Hénin-Beaumont." "The mechanism of compulsory resignation for a non-final ineligibility sentence violates several fundamental principles in a state governed by the rule of law, such as the principle of contradiction, as well as several of France's international commitments ," he continued, recycling the argument deployed by RN executives who have constantly railed against "tyrant judges who execute the rule of law in public."

However, not only did the Lille administrative court reject the priority question of constitutionality (QPC) that the RN leader had submitted to assert a possible infringement of voters' freedom and other constitutional principles, but it also stressed that the legislative provisions in question had already been deemed to be in conformity with the Constitution by a decision of the Constitutional Council of March 28, 2025.