MOSCOW, March 31. /TASS/. France is diving into "stormy uncharted waters" and may face protests similar to the ones in Romania after Calin Georgescu was barred from running for president, according to Karin Kneissl, ex-Austrian foreign minister and head of the Geopolitical Observatory for Russia’s Key Issues (G.O.R.K.I.) center at St. Petersburg State University.
Earlier, a court in Paris found Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s National Rally parliamentary faction, and eight other members of parliament guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds.
"France, which has been shaken by a series of government changes and faces a tremendous deficit, is now heading for very stormy unchartered waters," Kneissl noted. She recalled that "the French Parliament finds itself in a real quagmire" since last summer, with governments rapidly "changing, like it was the case during the third Republic."
"The worst case scenario will be, when a parliamentarian dispute moves into an extra-parliamentarian confrontation, i.e. into the streets. That is a risk for many EU countries when certain persons are prohibited from running for political offices. We have seen it in Romania," she stated.
According to the former top diplomat, France "is a much bigger case with strong ramifications." She opined that Washington would follow up with "heavy language along the lines of what Vice President Vance stated" at the Munich Security Conference in February. Back then, he said that the main threat to European security comes from within, rather than from Russia and China.
Embezzlement case
The investigation into the case on embezzling European Parliament funds was initially launched in 2014, when the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) demanded that Le Pen reimburse 339,000 euros. The politician was accused of using the funds to pay the salaries of her office head, Catherine Grisez, and security guard Thierry Legier, while they were still employed by her party. According to the investigation, Le Pen allegedly orchestrated a financial scheme whereby EU funds were embezzled under the guise of paying non-existent assistants in the European Parliament.
The prosecutor’s office demanded that Le Pen be barred from running for president or occupying any electoral positions for five years, as well as be imprisoned for five years and fined 300,000 euros. The verdict against her means that Le Pen could potentially be unable to campaign ahead of the 2027 presidential election.
According to an opinion poll published by the Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper on March 30, during the upcoming election, Le Pen could lead in the first round, garnering 34-37% of the vote, according to various sources. Members of incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron’s political team - former Prime Ministers Edouard Philippe (20-25%) and Gabriel Attal (20%) - remain her main rivals.