PARIS — A court appeal begins on Tuesday that will determine whether Marine Le Pen or her protégé Jordan Bardella will head into next year’s presidential election as favorite from the far-right National Rally party. While Le Pen has been a decisive force in making the anti-immigration party the front-runner for the presidency in 2027, she is currently unable to succeed Emmanuel Macron herself thanks to a five-year election ban imposed over her conviction last year for embezzling European Parliament funds. She is now appealing that decision in a case that is expected to last one month, although a verdict is not due until the summer. Le Pen looks set to fight her appeal on technical legal objections and an argument that the ban is disproportionate, rather than going out all-guns blazing and insisting she is the victim of a political hit job. If she does overcome the very steep hurdles required to win her case, she will still have to deal with the political reality that the French electorate are leaning more toward Bardella. The party’s supposed Plan B is starting to have the air of a Plan A. A poll from Ipsos in December showed the 30-year-old overtaking Le Pen as the French politician with the highest share of positive opinions. And a survey from pollster Odoxa conducted in November showed Bardella would win both rounds of the presidential contest.  The National Rally continues to insist that Le Pen is their top choice, but getting her on the ballot will likely require her to win her fast-tracked appeal by setting aside her personal grievances and perhaps even showing a measure of uncustomary contrition to ensure this trial does not end the way the embezzlement case did.  Le Pen is not famous for being low-key and eating humble pie. Shortly after her conviction, she said her movement would follow the example of civil rights’ icon Martin Luther King and vowed: “We will never give in to this violation of democracy.” That’s not the playbook she intends to deploy now. Her lawyers will pursue a less politicized strategy to win round the judges, according to three far-right politicians with direct knowledge of the case, who were granted anonymity to discuss it freely.  “We’ll be heading in with a certain amount of humility, and we’ll try not to be in the mindset that this is a political trial,” said one of trio, a French elected official who is one of the codefendants appealing their conviction.  LINE BY LINE Le Pen and 24 other codefendants stood trial in late 2024 on charges they illicitly used funds from the European Parliament to pay party employees by having them hired as parliamentary assistants. But those assistants, the prosecution argued, rarely if ever worked on actual parliamentary business.  The National Rally’s apparent defense strategy back then was to paint the trial as politicized, potentially winning in the court of public opinion and living with the consequences of a guilty verdict.  The attorneys representing the defendants could did little to rebut several pieces of particularly damning evidence, including the fact that one assistant sent a message to Le Pen asking if he could be introduced to the MEP he had supposedly been working with for months.  Given how severely the defense miscalculated the first time around, lawyers for many of the 14 codefendants in court this week will pursue more traditional appeals, going through the preliminary ruling “line by line” to identify potential rebuttals or procedural hiccups, the trio with direct knowledge of the case explained.   A survey from pollster Odoxa conducted in November showed Bardella would win both rounds of the presidential contest.  | Telmo Pinto/NurPhoto via Getty Images Defense lawyers also plan to tailor their individual arguments more precisely to each client to avoid feeding the sentiment that decisions taken at the highest levels of the National Rally leadership are imposed on the whole party. The prosecution during the initial trial successfully argued that National Rally bigwigs hand-picked assistants at party headquarters to serve the leadership rather than MEPs.  Le Pen’s lawyers will also argue that her punishment — barring a front-running presidential candidate from standing in a nationwide election — was disproportionate to the crime for which she was convicted.  The appeals’ court ruling will have seismic consequences for French politics and Europe ahead of one of the continent’s most important elections. The path toward the presidency will be nearly impossible for Le Pen if her election ban is upheld. Le Pen has indicated in past interviews that she would throw in the towel if she received the same election ban, given that she wouldn’t have enough time to appeal again to a higher court.   Should Bardella replace her and win, the consequences for the French judicial system could be profound. One of the codefendants floated the possibility of a response along the lines of what U.S. President Donald Trump did to those who prosecuted him before his reelection.   “The lingering sense of injustice will remain and can eventually evolve into a quest for revenge,” the codefendant said.

Mujtaba Rahman is the head of Eurasia Group’s Europe practice. He posts at @Mij_Europe. 2026 is here, and Europe is under siege. External pressure from Russia is mounting in Ukraine, China is undermining the EU’s industrial base, and the U.S. — now effectively threatening to annex the territory of a NATO ally — is undermining the EU’s multilateral rule book, which appears increasingly outdated in a far more transactional and less cooperative world. And none of this shows signs of slowing down. In fact, in the year ahead, the steady erosion of the norms Europe has come to rely on will only be compounded by the bloc’s weak leadership — especially in the so-called “E3” nations of Germany, France and the U.K. Looking forward, the greatest existential risks for Europe will flow from the transatlantic relationship. For the bloc’s leaders, keeping the U.S. invested in the war in Ukraine was the key goal for 2025. And the best possible outcome for 2026 will be a continuation of the ad-hoc diplomacy and transactionalism that has defined the last 12 months. However, if new threats emerge in this relationship — especially regarding Greenland — this balancing act may be impossible. The year also starts with no sign of any concessions from Russia when it comes to its ceasefire demands, or any willingness to accept the terms of the 20-point U.S.-EU-Ukraine plan. This is because Russian President Vladimir Putin is calculating that Ukraine’s military situation will further deteriorate, forcing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to capitulate to territorial demands. I believe Putin is wrong — that backed by Europe, Zelenskyy will continue to resist U.S. pressure on territorial concessions, and instead, increasingly target Russian energy production and exports in addition to resisting along the frontline. Of course, this means Russian aerial attacks against Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure will also increase in kind. Nonetheless, Europe’s growing military spending, purchase of U.S. weapons, financing for Kyiv and sanctions against Russia — which also target sources of energy revenue — could help maintain last year’s status quo. But this is perhaps the best case scenario. Activists protest outside Downing street against the recent policies of Donald Trump. | Guy Smallman/Getty Images Meanwhile, European leaders will be forced to publicly ignore Washington’s support for far-right parties, which was clearly spelled out in the new U.S. national security strategy, while privately doing all they can to counter any antiestablishment backlash at the polls. Specifically, the upcoming election in Hungary will be a bellwether for whether the MAGA movement can tip the balance for its ideological affiliates in Europe, as populist, euroskeptic Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is currently poised to lose for the first time in 15 years. Orbán, for his part, has been frantically campaigning to boost voter support, signaling that he and his inner circle actually view defeat as a possibility. His charismatic rival Péter Magyar, who shares his conservative-nationalist political origins but lacks any taint of corruption poses a real challenge, as does the country’s stagnating economy and rising prices. While traditional electoral strategies — financial giveaways, smear campaigns and war fearmongering — have so far proven ineffective for Orbán, a military spillover from Ukraine that directly affects Hungary could reignite voter fears and shift the dynamic. To top it all off, these challenges will be compounded by the E3’s weakness. The hollowing out of Europe’s political center has already been a decade in the making. But France, Germany and the U.K. each entered 2026 with weak, unpopular governments besieged by the populist right and left, as well as a U.S. administration rooting for their collapse. While none face scheduled general elections, all three risk paralysis at best and destabilization at worst. And at least one leader — namely, Britain’s Keir Starmer — could fall because of an internal party revolt. The year’s pivotal event in the U.K. will be the midterm elections in May. As it stands, the Labour Party faces the humiliation of coming third in the Welsh parliament, failing to oust the Scottish National Party in the Scottish parliament and losing seats to both the Greens and ReformUK in English local elections. Labour MPs already expect a formal challenge to Starmer as party leader, and his chances of surviving seem slight. France, meanwhile, entered 2026 without a budget for the second consecutive year. The good news for President Emmanuel Macron is that his Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s minority government will probably achieve a budget deal targeting a modest deficit reduction by late February or March. And with the presidential election only 16 months away and local elections due to be held in March, the opposition’s appetite for a snap parliamentary election has abated. However, this is the best he can hope for, as a splintered National Assembly will sustain a mood of slow-motion crisis until the 2027 race. Finally, while Germany’s economy looks like it will slightly recover this year, it still won’t overcome its structural malaise. Largely consumed by ideological divisions, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government will struggle to implement far-reaching reforms. And with the five upcoming state elections expected to see increased vote shares for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, pressure on the government in Berlin will only mount A historic truth — one often forgotten in the quiet times — will reassert itself in 2026: that liberty, stability, prosperity and peace in Europe are always brittle. The holiday from history, provided by Pax Americana and exceptional post-World War II cooperation and integration, has officially come to an end. Moving forward, Europe’s relevance in the new global order will be defined by its response to Russia’s increased hybrid aggression, its influence on diplomacy regarding the Ukraine war and its ability to improve competitiveness, all while managing an increasingly ascendant far right and addressing the existential threats to its economy and security posed by Russia, China and the U.S. This is what will decide whether Europe can survive.

PARIS — Marine Le Pen and her troops are making it clear that they’re not jumping into bed with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration despite their shared ideology. The far-right National Rally has in recent days gone out of its way to tamp down any hint of a political romance with the White House after German news outlet Der Spiegel reported that team Trump considered sanctioning the French judges who convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzlement and handed her a five-year election ban, effectively barring her from next year’s presidential race. After the verdict was handed down, U.S. President Donald Trump likened Le Pen’s judicial woes to his own and said her conviction was an example of “using Lawfare to silence Free Speech.” Le Pen will be back in court next week to appeal the verdict. Though the State Department has since denied the Spiegel report as “stale and false,” the mere hint of a National Rally-MAGA liaison was enough to quickly put the party on the defensive — especially given that Washington sanctioned a French judge at the International Criminal Court that issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In a press release dated Wednesday, the National Rally said it condemned the sanctions against the ICC judge and watches closely for “any pressure of unacceptable nature on the judicial branch.” In the same statement, it slammed the initial Spiegel report as “fake news” and chastised the press for picking it up. Three National Rally officials contacted by POLITICO also expressed unease at the unconfirmed report. “We have always rejected foreign interference from one side or the other,” Renaud Labaye, a close adviser to Le Pen and high-ranking member of her party, the National Rally, said Thursday. “We stand by that.” Alexandre Sabatou, a member of the France-U.S. friendship group in the National Assembly who traveled across the Atlantic for Trump’s inauguration, said Tuesday that “as a staunch defender of France as a sovereign nation, it bugs me.” The National Rally has been forced to play a delicate dance when it comes to support from Trump, whose administration last month hinted that it was ready to throw its weight between “patriotic European parties” in its bombshell national security strategy. However, Trump is largely unpopular in France, even among the far-right party’s supporters, and many voters recognize that his administration is pursuing economic and geopolitical policies that aren’t in France’s interest. Overtures from the White House to intervene in French and European politics also run counter to the National Rally’s pledge to protect French geostrategic independence — especially from American hegemony — rooted in the politics of legendary Gen. Charles De Gaulle. The debate around potential foreign interference comes as the country’s judicial branch is already under intense political pressure over high-profile cases, including the trial of former President Nicolas Sarkozy and Le Pen’s appeal.

PARIS — Marine Le Pen is trying to quash mounting speculation that she could get sidelined by National Rally President Jordan Bardella on her road to the Elysée after a series of flattering polls for her protégé.  Le Pen, who is currently banned from running in the 2027 presidential election pending an appeal of her embezzlement conviction, is in an increasingly awkward situation after two recent polls showed that 30-year-old Bardella is gaining traction as a presidential candidate at Le Pen’s expense. Asked Tuesday on TV station BFMTV why Bardella was only a plan B candidate considering his favorable polling, Le Pen said: “Because we decided as much.”   “We are the ones who decide, Jordan and me,” she said. Le Pen was found guilty last year of embezzling European Parliament funds and sentenced to an immediate five-year ban from running for public office. She will return to court in January after appealing all charges, which she has repeatedly denied and framed as politically motivated. She has said Bardella will run in her place if the appeal court upholds the election ban, but a decision won’t be known before spring.  SHIFTING DYNAMIC But while Bardella is officially his party’s plan B, polls show he is starting to outshine his boss. In an IFOP-Fiducial poll unveiled Tuesday, 44 percent of respondents said they wanted Bardella to run in the 2027 presidential election against 40 percent for Le Pen. Last week, a survey from pollster Odoxa showed Bardella winning against all the other candidates polled, beating the likes of center-right Edouard Philippe to leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Le Pen wasn’t even polled. While polls this early before an election have to be taken with a serious grain of salt, the dynamic hasn’t gone unnoticed. Renaud Labaye, the National Rally group’s secretary-general in the National Assembly and a close adviser to Le Pen, said the poll was good news for the party, showing “the dynamic was on [their] side.”  Privately, party heavyweights say they don’t doubt Bardella’s loyalty but admit his rise raises uncomfortable questions for their camp.  While Le Pen must constantly face off questions over her viability as a candidate, Bardella is triumphantly touring the country to promote his newest book, drawing crowds in what many see as an ideal launching pad for a presidential run.  A National Rally lawmaker close to Le Pen, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Le Pen’s truly believes Bardella supports her. But, the lawmaker admitted, the book tour can also be seen as Bardella laying the groundwork for his own presidential candidacy.  

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron has just turned to one of his most trusted lieutenants — Sébastien Lecornu — to break the political impasse paralyzing France. Lecornu, appointed as prime minister last week, is “the guy [Macron] drinks whiskey with at 3 a.m.,” said one government adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. The former armed forces minister also often spends his holidays with Macron at the seaside bastion of Fort de Brégançon. Turning to one of the devoted inner circle has the air of a last desperate throw of the dice. If Lecornu can’t save Macron, it’s hard to see who can. Lecornu is the fifth French prime minister in less than two years and it still seems highly unlikely that he will succeed in forcing the bitterly divided National Assembly to accept the tens of billions of euros of budgetary belt-tightening that are needed to ward off a debt crisis in the EU’s second-largest economy. Even Macron knows it’s a big ask. In comments obtained by POLITICO, the president insisted the task ahead was not impossible, but admitted it was “unprecedented.” So why does Macron think Lecornu might just be the man to strike a deal? In short, the president views him as a fixer who can bridge the political divide. Lecornu got into the president’s good books by building a wide parliamentary consensus over increasing the military budget in 2023, and by helping him defuse the grassroots Yellow Vest protests that gripped the nation in 2018 and 2019. As a former conservative, he has “good relations with Les Républicains party” and represents “continuity” with the president’s past governments, Macron said. On the other hand he has “earned the respect of leftwing forces” by the way he handled France’s rearmament in the wake of the war in Ukraine. And during defense budget talks in 2023 Lecornu was seen as having listened to the opposition and taken their views on board. Sebastien Lecornu is the fifth French prime minister in less than two years. | Pool Photo by Ludovic Marin via Getty Images The key point is that Macron might not send Lecornu into battle unarmed in the way that he did his previous two prime ministers, EU veteran Michel Barnier and the centrist François Bayrou. This time, he could allow his premier to make some meaningful concessions on the core economic agenda. Until now, Macron has battled to keep his key achievements untouched, notably his controversial pension reforms and long-running opposition to tax hikes, despite election defeats in 2022 and 2024. “We’ll have to backtrack on some things, on [canceling two] bank holidays,” Macron said, referring to Bayrou’s draft budget that included removing two bank holidays. “We must be able to find a compromise.” THE MAN FOR THE JOB France’s new prime minister may not be well known to the general public, but while still only 39 years old he has notched a few political successes in his eight years by Macron’s side, honing skills that will be much needed in the weeks ahead. As armed forces minister, Lecornu managed to overcome divisions in a highly fractured parliament and get more than 400 lawmakers to pass his seven-year military programming budget in 2023, which saw increased spending for the military. “Some say it’s easy to negotiate budget increases,” said a close ally of the president. “He will tell you it wasn’t.” Unlike political grandees Bayrou and Barnier, Lecornu has spent the last years in the political trenches at the National Assembly and in local politics. “He knows how mercurial the National Assembly is, he’ll be maneuvering, he’ll be immersed in the debate,” said the same ally. “He knows how to negotiate.” Less well known, but equally important in these politically volatile times, Lecornu was instrumental in helping Macron quell the Yellow Vest protests. As minister for local territories he helped organize a debate between the French president and local representatives in his Normandy constituency. This first successful meeting with the French public led to others, and to a tour of France that helped bring the protests to an end. OFF ON THE WRONG FOOT The true test of Lecornu’s worth still lies ahead and depends on whether he can strike a deal with the Socialists without alienating the conservatives, who look set to continue in government. The risk for Lecornu is he’ll get caught in a bidding war he can’t win: The more he needs a deal, the more concessions opposition parties will demand. There’s disappointment among the Socialists from the outset. The moderate left wanted to see a prime minister appointed from their ranks, and instead will have to deal with one of Macron’s closest allies. As a former conservative, he has “good relations with Les Républicains party” and represents “continuity” with the president’s past governments, Emmanuel Macron said. | Nicolas Economou/Getty Images This week, Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure warned that no Socialist would join Lecornu’s government and “if nothing changes” they would not shy from toppling the government. If the moderate left remains outside the government, they will want to extract a high price for their tacit support. And on budget talks, there’s a massive gap to bridge. The Socialists want to suspend Macron’s flagship reform of pensions, a red line for the president. They also want a tax on France’s ultra-rich individuals, the so-called Zucman tax, which has been slammed by Macron’s centrists as a futile proposal that will just encourage France’s wealthiest to move abroad. Macron, however, has signaled some room for maneuver on the scale of the budget cuts needed. Bayrou’s plans to squeeze the 2026 French budget by €43.8 billion may well be shelved. The president “prefers structural reform to lopping €3 billion off the budget,” said the ally quoted above. There might be a way. “If he refuses the Zucman tax but increases the minimum wage, we’ll take a look,” said a Socialist official. Ultimately, Lecornu’s secret weapon could turn against him. The man who has Macron’s full confidence may have to extract uncomfortable concessions from his own boss — if he wants to survive as prime minister.

PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron’s escape route out of the political and economic crisis gripping France now looks almost impossibly narrow. On Monday, his key ally Prime Minister François Bayrou was toppled in a bloodbath of a no-confidence vote, with 364 lawmakers voting to oust him and only 194 coming out in support. Macron’s office promptly said he would move in “the next few days” to appoint the country’s fifth prime minister in less than two years, but there are grave doubts that the new appointee will prove any more successful than Bayrou in forcing through the tens of billions of euros of budget cuts needed to save the EU’s second-biggest economy from a ballooning debt crisis. Macron is now squarely in the line of public fire, ahead of threats of a national shutdown on Sept. 10 and major protests planned by trade unions on Sept. 18. The president’s popularity has dropped to an all-time low, with polls showing he is more unpopular today than at the peak of the Yellow Vest protests in 2018 and 2019, one of the gravest crises of his tenure. Ever confident in his ability to wriggle, Houdini-like, out of the worst of tangles, Macron is still holding out for a deal with the moderate left, the centrists and the conservative Les Républicains party to form a minority government that can finally reach an agreement over the budget. But Macron is almost certainly clutching at straws in a country that looks increasingly ungovernable. The scale of Bayrou’s defeat in parliament on Monday and the signals emerging from lawmakers already suggest his efforts are doomed from the outset. MACRON TRIES TO HOLD THE CENTER During a day of high drama in parliament, opposition parties rounded on Macron as the protagonist responsible for the stalemate engulfing France. “There is only one person responsible for the crisis, for the fiasco and instability, it’s the president of the Republic,” said Boris Vallaud, the Socialist Party’s parliamentary leader. Communist parliamentary leader Stéphane Peu likened the crisis to “Saving Private Ryan” with Bayrou being “the fourth prime minister to fall to save President Macron.” After the vote, many called for Macron to step down. “The president doesn’t want to change his policies? Well, we’ll have to change president,” said Mathilde Panot, parliamentary head of the far-left France Unbowed party. Macron faces an intense challenge in keeping the center together, while the far-right National Rally — the party that tops the polls — and the far left are on an anti-establishment blitz, threatening to bring down any future administrations that slash public spending. Consolidating the middle ground is difficult because the center-left Socialists and center-right Les Républicains disagree fundamentally on economic policy aims, despite growing fears that France’s inability to put its books in order could ultimately put a strain on the EU’s finances. ALL EYES ON THE SOCIALISTS In his valedictory speech before the National Assembly, Bayrou warned against complacency about the depths of France’s financial mess, saying the nation suffers from a “life-threatening” level of debt. “You have the power to overthrow the government” but not “to erase reality,” he told lawmakers. In his valedictory speech before the National Assembly, François Bayrou warned against complacency about the depths of France’s financial mess, saying the nation suffers from a “life-threatening” level of debt. | Yoan Valat/EPA But very quickly, opposition leaders were already looking to the post-Bayrou scenarios. Sensing an opportunity for the left, the Socialist Vallaud called on the liberal President Macron to “do his duty” and appoint a prime minister from their ranks. “We are ready, come and get us,” he said. He touted “another path” for France that would include what he described as a fairer tax policy, and said the Socialists would row back on Bayrou’s proposed cancellation of two bank holidays. By Monday evening, all sorts of scenarios involving the Socialist Party were being floated. These included a grand coalition running from the conservatives to the Socialists (which is the least likely) and a non-aggression pact that would see the Socialists refraining from toppling a center-right government, led by a left-leaning centrist, in exchange for budget concessions. Also being discussed is a similar arrangement with Les Républicains, which would see the latter refrain from toppling a government from the left in return for concessions on the budget. THE LEFT-RIGHT TIGHTROPE Theoretically, a government backed by both the Socialists and Les Républicains would have wider support in parliament than Bayrou’s outgoing center-right government. But why would the Socialists and Les Républicains — generally at daggers drawn — actually work together? There is a glimmer of a chance that they might see it makes sense to compromise now to keep their parliamentary seats rather than push France into more chaos and risk losing them in a snap election. In reality, though, the risks of failure are high. Laurent Wauquiez, Les Républicains’ parliamentary leader, warned on Monday his party would not support a Socialist government that is too deeply inspired by other more radical left-wing parties with which they stood in last year’s election, as part of a pan-leftist grouping called the New Popular Front. “We would never accept the nefarious political platform of the New Popular Front,” said Wauquiez. “And that obviously applies to any Socialist government that carries the ideas of the New Popular Front.” Additionally, with local elections set for March 2026, no opposition parties will really want to ally themselves with a president surround by an aura of fin de règne. And even if the party top brass in the center parties agreed to cooperate on a budget, there is no guarantee the rank and file lawmakers would follow. Take the Bayrou vote as an example. On Monday, Les Républicains, were conspicuously divided on the no-confidence vote, with 27 voting to support Bayrou and 13 against, despite calls from Les Républicains’ head and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau to back the government. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen also cast doubt on Macron’s ability to hold the center, and to get any left-right alliance to agree on a budget. The only option, as she saw it, was to call an election. “Dissolving parliament will not be option, but an obligation,” she said. But that election would also probably do little to heal the divisions at the heart of the crippling national impasse.

PARIS — French lawmakers toppled Prime Minister François Bayrou’s minority government on Monday evening, thrusting the country deeper into a political crisis that will force President Emmanuel Macron to name a fifth premier in less than two years.   Macron’s office hasn’t said whether he will speak tonight. But Macron has limited options to steer France out of this crisis. He is reportedly leaning toward appointing another prime minister — the fifth since January 2024 — but a new premier would face the same intractable parliament. So too would a technical government made up of civil servants.   Another snap election looks unappetizing, though, as it could easily deliver another hung parliament.   In an extreme scenario, Macron could even resign, but that’s highly unlikely given his past statements.

PARIS — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen will face an appeal trial from Jan. 13 to Feb. 12 next year that will determine whether she will be able to run in the 2027 presidential election. Le Pen was found guilty in March of embezzling European Parliament funds and sentenced to an immediate five-year ban from running for public office, in a decision that seemingly dealt a fatal blow to her presidential ambitions. Le Pen denied all the charges and immediately appealed the ruling. Following widespread outrage at the verdict from various corners of the right, including U.S. President Donald Trump, the court of appeal promised a decision by summer of 2026. It usually takes two to three months for the court to reach a decision after the trial ends. The far-right leader slammed the trial as politically motivated and the guilty verdict as antidemocratic. Le Pen’s supporters hope the court will either overturn her immediate election ban so she can run in the presidential election or commute the sentence into a shorter one with the same effect. Le Pen and 24 other codefendants were accused of illicitly siphoning off European Parliament funds to pay for National Rally employees who seldom or never attended to their parliamentary activities in Brussels or Strasbourg. The court estimated the accused had embezzled more than €4 million over 12 years.  The harshest punishment was reserved for Le Pen, as she was convicted of criminal activity both as a former MEP and as the then-president of her party.  While her protégé, National Rally President Jordan Bardella, is theoretically ready to step up as an alternative presidential candidate, Le Pen, currently lawmaker in the French Assemblée Nationale, has signaled her intention to use all possible judicial means at her disposal to run, even if President Emmanuel Macron calls new parliamentary elections before her appeal trial.

PARIS — François Bayrou is set to be booted out as France’s prime minister on Monday, but that doesn’t necessarily spell the end of the long political road of the canny, three-time presidential candidate. Does the 74-year-old from the Pyrenees have one more shot at the Elysée Palace in him? Is he the centrist unifier who could stop the far-right National Rally from coming to power in 2027 and reshaping Europe’s political landscape under Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella? When asked by reporters, he tends to observe knowingly: “That’s not how the game is played.” Bayrou is undaunted by his current poor showing in the polls. As he sees it, the pieces will only start to click in the winter of late 2026. “The criterion,” he believes, “is that in their kitchen, around family meals, at the earliest at Christmas, in February or in March, there are people who say: This one can do it.” For now, Bayrou seems unlikely to be that “one.” He is set to lose a vote of no confidence next week after failing to push through a raft of severe budget cuts he says are vital to stop France, the EU’s second-largest economy, from pitching into a Greek-style debt crisis. Bayrou’s logic is that he will ultimately be vindicated as a principled prophet on the dangers of overspending. Should his dire warnings prove prescient, every family forced to scrimp on presents for their children in 2026 or on festive staples like champagne and oysters next Christmas will see Bayrou as the guru who “told you so.” Even so, he has a lot of ground to claw back in terms of popularity. The big presidential showdown in the spring of 2027 may still be far off, but other former centrist prime ministers, namely Édouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, currently look better placed for the race. Bayrou’s standing has not been helped by an ugly scandal this year featuring revelations that his daughter — unbeknown to him — was one of multiple children abused at a Catholic school near the city of Pau, his southwestern bastion in the Pyrenees. PYRENEAN POLITICS Bayrou, a former mayor of Pau, is proud of his regional heritage and rural origins. His father, a farmer, was crushed to death by a hay wagon. But his béarnais charm conceals the fact that Bayrou is a veteran political operator — and a strong proponent of a classical education — who has survived for decades through his talent for gauging France’s political fickle political winds. A former teacher, Bayrou draws inspiration from (and wrote a book about) Henri IV, the famously pragmatic king and fellow Pau native who converted from the Protestant faith to Catholicism to save France from the bloodshed of the wars of religion. François Bayrou, a former mayor of Pau, is proud of his regional heritage and rural origins. | Pool photo by Thibaud Moritz via EPA Bayrou was unafraid to throw his support behind the Socialist François Hollande and burn bridges with center-right President Nicolas Sarkozy before the 2012 presidential election, which Sarkozy lost. That winning bet helped him become the face of French centrism in the months that followed. Bayrou was also one of the earliest supporters of a virtually unknown young economy minister named Emmanuel Macron, who spurned the Socialist Party in 2016 to create his own centrist movement in a long-shot bid for the presidency. He has even been known to boast that Macron wouldn’t have won the presidency without his support.   Having failed to win the top job in 2002, 2007 and 2012, Bayrou surely has only one chance left. His strategy now is to depart his PM role showing he was prepared to go down fighting on a point of principle — the need to balance the books being one that he has stressed for years. Faced with the same intractably divided parliament that doomed his predecessor, Michel Barnier, as he tries to pass his budget reforms, Bayrou is confronting his fate rather than having it imposed upon him. Or, in the words of one ministerial adviser overheard moments after Bayrou announced his plans: “It’s better to die by suicide than suffer in agony.”  Bayrou will be hoping his self-immolation can set the stage for a phoenix-like resurrection.   All it would take is a dash of economic calamity.  MR. ANTI-DEBT  Since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, only Jacques Chirac has succeeded in using the French premiership as a springboard to the presidency. Prime ministers tend to leave office worse off than they started, wrung dry of political capital by powerful presidents who lean on them to do the dirty work of legislating.   But Bayrou’s career-long warnings about profligate public spending could come to fruition. “He wants to be Mr. Anti-Debt,” said one high-ranking ally of the president who was granted anonymity to candidly discuss the current state of French politics.  It’s still a sheer climb. Bayrou is historically unpopular, with one poll late last month showing just 19 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of him. He’ll need to contend with criticism that he was all talk and failed to address issues relating to French debt while holding positions of authority. Europe’s increasing disdain for career politicians and its preference for upstart populists won’t help either. Surveys show that Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, already the single largest opposition party in France’s more powerful lower house of parliament, is the most popular political movement in the country.   Bayrou’s machinations aren’t a secret within the gilded walls of the Elysée. Some of Macron’s allies question whether the prime minister is exaggerating the threat posed by France’s sky-high budget deficit for political reasons.  While there’s wide agreement that France needs to get its books in order, not everyone is concerned that Paris will need to turn to the International Monetary Fund or the European Central Bank for a bailout in the short term. ECB chief Christine Lagarde said in an interview Monday that the situation is worrying but not yet dire.  Macron himself reportedly tried to downplay the crisis at a meeting with his ministers last week, and believes the government could survive if it found a way to bring the center-left Socialists back into the fold, despite their anger with Bayrou over retirement reforms. Markets are jittery and borrowing costs are rising, but not drastically. Whether the economy runs into a real storm will determine whether Bayrou sees out his career at the center of power in Paris, or back home in Pau. Paul de Villepin contributed reporting.   

PARIS — French politics are so paralyzed that the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron — an idea once only whispered in the corridors of power — is now being openly debated. But while Macron’s departure would be an earthquake on the European diplomatic stage, there’s increasing doubt it would fix the gridlock stalling the Fifth Republic. France’s problems appear to be deeper. Macron is already scouting around for his fifth prime minister in less than two years, in the expectation that François Bayrou will be ousted on Monday over his unpopular measures to slash the country’s eye-watering budget deficit. But would a new prime ministerial nominee from Macron be able to force through the billions of euros in budget tightening that the country needs to avoid a debt crisis? And would a new snap election create a workable majority? Neither outcome seems likely. And even if Macron were to resign, his successor would almost certainly face the same obstacles. For nearly 70 years, the institutions of the French Fifth Republic have held, no matter how often people took to the streets or how long they went on strike. Governments came and went as presidents, for the most part, lasted until the end of their terms, albeit usually less popular than when they began. The system endured. But today the legislature is deadlocked, budget talks are flatlining, and murmurs of social unrest are growing louder. Financial markets are jumpy, and Bayrou himself is warning that Paris faces a Greek-style scenario unless it reins in spending. Against that backdrop, far-right National Rally President Jordan Bardella and far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, whose parties together account for a third of seats in the National Assembly, are openly calling for the president to go. The broader conversation about his departure is no longer outlandish and now includes reputable political commentators and some figures from the center right. “We’re hearing this even from voices close to the Macron camp,” said Mathieu Gallard, a pollster at Ipsos France. “The discomfort is real.” HANGING IN THERE Macron is still seen as extremely unlikely to throw in the towel, not least because his premature exit — a presidential election isn’t due until 2027 — would do nothing to resolve the mess. Surveys show a new legislative election in the coming weeks would most likely yield another hung parliament with a few more seats for Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Emmanuel Macron is already scouting around for his fifth prime minister in less than two years, in the expectation that François Bayrou will be ousted on Monday over his unpopular measures to slash the country’s eye-watering budget deficit. | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA “Politicians wrongly believe the myth that the French choose a leader, and then hand him a working parliamentary majority to act,” said French constitutional expert Benjamin Morel. That idea, Morel said, was a another casualty of Macron’s 2017 victory as a liberal disruptor who laid waste to France’s bipartisan tradition. The political fault lines that emerged from the rubble have, in a cruel twist of fate, come back to haunt him. “I haven’t seen this much uncertainty since I was a student in 1968,” said Eric Chaney, former chief economist of the AXA insurance firm, referring to May 1968 protests that brought France to a standstill and led to deep social and political changes. “Suddenly, you don’t know what is happening to your own economy, your own government,” Chaney said. NEW LEADER, SAME PROBLEMS Known to be headstrong, Macron has often waved off the possibility of an early departure. The 47-year-old centrist has been a dominant and increasingly polarizing force in French politics for the past eight years, while his promises to forge the country into “the start-up nation” haven’t quite been fulfilled. The president knows full well there is scant sign that French politicians are prepared to put aside their divisions and resolve the budget malaise for the good of the nation. Indeed, the mood in France is downright uncooperative, said Gaspard Gantzer, a former adviser to Socialist French President François Hollande. “We’ll carry on deepening the deficit, nothing will happen and the situation will just get worse,” he said. But French opposition parties would be wrong to think they can cycle through new prime ministers, fresh elections and even an early presidential election without swallowing the bitter medicine that Macron’s successive governments have tried to administer, Chaney said. “If people start thinking it’s not so bad, we can live with deficits, we are heading toward a full-blown crisis,” he said. “Germany will start thinking that France is a serious problem and the ECB [European Central Bank] will not be able to help the French government manage its debt.” Germany, Chaney says, could set conditions on any help the ECB gives France. But even if Berlin were able to strong-arm the French political establishment, would France follow suit? If the Yellow Vest protests of 2018 and 2019, the pensions protests of 2023 and the current calls for a national shutdown are anything to go by, an increasingly skeptical and restive public has little appetite for sacrifices and austerity. As for getting rid of Macron, France is a country steeped in regicidal revolutionary history and understands both the attractions and pitfalls of giving the boss the chop. It’s easy to call for his head — but you’ve got to be ready for the chaos that comes next.