PARIS, March 31, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Far-right leader Marine Le
Pen has over the last year displayed the influence she wields in
France after a long campaign to make her party an electable force,
but now faces a trial verdict that risks banishing her from politics
for good.

Le Pen in 2011 took over leadership of the National Front (FN)
from her father Jean-Marie, who co-founded France's main
postwar far-right movement.

Distancing it from the legacy of her father, who openly made anti-
Semitic and racist statements, she renamed the party the National
Rally (RN) and embarked on a policy she dubbed
"dediabolisation" ("de-demonisation")

The work bore fruit in the snap legislative polls last summer, with
the RN emerging as the largest single party in the National
Assembly, although without the outright majority it had targeted.

That gave Le Pen unprecedented power over French politics,
which she used by backing a no-confidence vote that toppled the
government of prime minister Michel Barnier later in the year.

Critics accuse the party of still being inherently racist, taking too
long to distance itself from Russia and resorting to corrupt tactics
to ease its strained finances, allegations Le Pen denies.

But playing on people's day-to-day concerns about immigration
and the cost of living, Le Pen is now seen as having her best
chance to win the French presidency in 2027 after three
unsuccessful attempts.

- 'Political target' -

But a major hurdle awaits on Monday.

Le Pen, 56, and other RN defendants have been on trial accused
of creating fake jobs at the EU parliament, and if convicted when
the verdict is delivered Monday she would likely be disqualified
from running in the presidential election two years away.

Prosecutors have asked for a jail sentence and a ban from public
office that would apply immediately, even if she appeals. The
defendants all deny any wrongdoing.

Le Pen says that prosecutors wanted her "political death", adding
that she was being put on trial as a "political target".

Her young lieutenant and protege Jordan Bardella, 29, who is the
RN party chief, is not among the accused in the trial and is also
seen as a potential presidential contender should Marine Le Pen
fall.

Last year, he published his first book "Ce que je cherche" ("What I
am looking for") describing growing up in poor Paris suburbs and
his political vision.

And this month he became the first RN party leader to visit Israel,
speaking at a conference on the fight against anti-Semitism.

In a comment seen by some as a shot across the bow of Le Pen,
Bardella told French television last year that "not having a criminal
record is, for me, rule number one when you want to be an MP".

While opponents dubbed him "Brutus" after the Roman politician
who assassinated ex-ally Julius Ceasar, Le Pen denied there were
any tensions with her protege, saying they had a "relationship of
trust".

- 'Immense pain' -

After coming third in the 2012 presidential polls, Marine Le Pen
made the run-off in 2017 and 2022 but was beaten by Emmanuel
Macron on both occasions.

Yet 2027 could be a different opportunity, with Macron not
allowed to stand again.

Le Pen's life has been marked by the legacy of her openly racist
father, a veteran of the long war in Algeria that ultimately led to
the former French colony's independence.

She expelled her father, who once called the gas chambers of the
Holocaust a "detail of history", from the party in 2011, helping to
further temper its toxic image.

But the death in January aged 96 of the man nicknamed "the devil
of the Republic" by opponents plunged his daughter into grief. She
said "I will never forgive myself" for expelling him and described
him as a "warrior" in a tribute.

"I know it caused him immense pain," she said. "This decision was
one of the most difficult of my life. And until the end of my life, I
will always ask myself the question: 'could I have done this
differently?'", she said.