In his address to the 61st Munich Security Conference, American Vice President, JD Vance, said of the magic of democracy:
‘To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice.’
He invoked Pope John Paul II who exhorted the faithful not to fear the frank discussion of social issues.
The Vice President’s message was disregarded when, on March 31, a magistrate in France banned Marine Le Pen, the charismatic leader of the National Rally and the front-runner to win the presidential election in 2027, from running for President. Together with a coterie of 20 party members, Le Pen was convicted for embezzlement of European Parliament funds which allegedly had been diverted for use by her political party. She also received a jail term of four years (two years suspended).
Although Le Pen is accused of using European Union (EU) funds to support the activities of her political party, even though this is exactly what almost every single party does with such funds. All the parties supporting the EU are tacitly allowed to take the same levels of money to employ people and hold conferences across Europe. But because Le Pen does not support the authoritarian globalist agenda, it has been alleged that the EU oligarchs are going after her and the French court has made her guilty and imposed on her a five-year ineligibility to run for office.
The banning of a credible and popular politician from running raises the question of whether the judiciary should impose such a draconian penalty which will inflame tensions in France and, inevitably, distort the political democratic process. Is it possible to think of anything more undemocratic than depriving the electorate of a chance to vote for a person of their choice? And for an unelected judge to make such a decision that has serious political consequences?
Le Pen has condemned the verdict as an ‘execution of French democracy’. She accused the local court of overreach. During the nine-week trial that took place in late 2024, she contended that ineligibility ‘would have the effect of depriving me of being a presidential candidate’ and disenfranchise her supporters. ‘There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,’ she told the panel of three judges.
At the Munich Conference, JD Vance had also criticised Romania for cancelling the result of its presidential election on the ‘flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours’. Vance, in referring to ‘flimsy suspicions’, focused on the alleged interference of Russia in the electoral process, which caused him to proclaim that, ‘If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.’
The Vice President’s comments were directed to the decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court that, two days before the second round of the election, annulled the result of the first round, alleging that Russian influence had adversely affected the electoral outcome. On March 9, the Central Electoral Bureau banned Călin Georgescu, the independent candidate, from standing for election.
Of course, judicial involvement in the political process was commonplace in the United States during the presidency of Joseph Biden when a politicised judiciary (and bureaucracy) sought to derail the presidential campaign of Donald Trump – a pursuit that spectacularly misfired. In Brazil, the Supreme Court has cleared the way for former President, Jair Bolsonaro, to be tried on coup charges, thereby preventing him from running for the presidency in 2026.
What these banned politicians have in common is that they are deemed to be right-of-centre politicians, who derisively would be referred to as the ‘extreme right’. Quite apart from the issue as to what is the difference between ‘right-of-centre’ and ‘extreme right’, why should judges have the authority to deprive millions of people of the right to vote for these politicians? These appointed, not elected, judges, when imposing election bans, are assaulting democracy and collaborating with the executive branch of government, mostly left-wing governments. This conclusion is strengthened by the fact that, typically, no law mandates the stripping of a person of their right to run for political office but usually results from the judge’s discretionary decision.
Among the people who criticised the French ruling in Le Pen’s case is Matteo Salvini, deputy Prime Minister of Italy. Salvini likened the decision of the French court to the decision of the Romanian Constitutional Court. He issued a dire warning, calling this a declaration of war from Brussels against all nationalist leaders across the Old Continent:
Those who fear the judgement of voters often seek reassurance from the courts. In Paris, they have condemned Marine Le Pen and would like to remove her from political life. A bad situation that is also being observed in other countries such as Romania. What is happening against [Le Pen] is a declaration of war from Brussels, at a time when the belligerent impulses of Von der Leyen and Macron are terrifying. We are not intimidated, we are not stopped: full speech ahead, my friend!
President Trump and Elon Musk have described the French court’s decision as an assault on democratic principles. Speaking at a White House event, Trump called Le Pen’s conviction a serious matter that directly parallels his battles with the American courts. He stated:
That’s a big deal … I know all about it. And a lot of people thought she wasn’t going to be convicted of anything. And I don’t know if it means conviction, but she was banned for running for five years and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country. That sounds very much like this country.
The Leader of the UK Reform Party in the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage, characterised the banning of ‘right-of-centre’ politicians by the judiciary as a ‘trend’. In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán faces similar relentless attacks and mounting pressure to be excluded from EU decision-making. The Hungarian leader posted a bold message on his X account: ‘Je suis Marine!’ signalling unwaning support. Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjártó went even further, condemning what he called a coordinated effort to eliminate nationalists from political life:
The Court verdict in France said it all: this is what “liberal democracy” really means. Patriots can be pushed aside at all costs – through court rulings, external interference, or even assassination attempts. Meanwhile, pro-war Brusselites can do whatever they like. Erase texts about overdue vaccine orders worth tens of billions of euros? No problem. Steal phones and get away with insider trading? Apparently fine – just ask the leader of Hungary’s EPP delegation. Rules don’t apply when you are on the “right” side.
As can be seen, political vilification and ostracism are not just happening to Le Pen. There is a concerted plan against nationalist or patriotic leaders by the elitist authoritarians who control the EU. Across Europe, nationalist leaders find themselves under siege and they are justifiably concerned about their security. For example, in Slovakia, an assassination attempt targeted anti-war Prime Minister Robert Ficker.
The involvement of courts and their proclivity to eliminate right-of-centre candidates is a disturbing development – a trend – that potentially distorts democracy because it portends that the ruling elites will only accept candidates that meet their expectations. It is all right to reject politicians at the ballot box but the judicial ‘trend’ of banning them, especially when they have a real chance of being elected, is profoundly disturbing.
Political forces in the EU aid these ‘progressivist’ causes. Indeed, these forces deliberately ensure that right-of-centre politicians are excluded from governmental power, even if they win the election. This is evidenced by ensuring that Geert Wilders would not become the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, and by ostracising the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in Germany. The globalists who control German politics have made sure that this popular nationalist party did not participate in forming the new government. These authoritarian politicians even sought to ban the party before the elections. As reported, ‘a cross-party group of 124 MPs on the initiative of CDU politician Marco Wanderwitz, moved a motion aimed at asking the Karlsruhe Constitutional Court to examine whether the AfD is unconstitutional, with a view to a possible ban’. It came at a time when the party, which is only 12 years old, was steadily gaining ground and garnering over 20 per cent of voting intentions in the parliamentary elections.
Le Pen’s party, the National Rally, may or may not be guilty of embezzlement, but if so, it behoves the European Parliament to investigate these practices. However, it is puzzling as to why these allegations are mostly directed to right-of-centre parties, as if the left is the repository of moral and saintly political behaviour. The logical conclusion is that political authorities may have influenced the decision of the judges in the Le Pen case. Nevertheless, the political climate is such that left-of-centre judges are more than willing to render controversial decisions will align with the political agenda of the left.
More importantly, this judicial ‘trend’ raises the question of whether unelected judges should be involved in the political process, even imposing penalties that dramatically affect the political landscape. Are judges equipped to disqualify a candidate from running in an election? Even if the judiciary were qualified to do this, their decisions may be misguided attempts at manipulating democracy. This would be the case if their manipulation were to result in a sympathy vote for the National Rally which may well see its President, Jordan Bardella, to become the President of France in 2027. Of course, the fate of Le Pen remains uncertain since the Court of Appeals has since indicated it might deal with the case well before the election; this would make it possible for Le Pen to be a candidate if cleared of embezzlement allegations.
The involvement of the judiciary in the political process constitutes a violation of the separation of powers doctrine so eloquently stated by another Frenchman, Baron Louis de Montesquieu. Curiously, on June 15, 2020, CEPS published an article entitled, Why Europe should harden its soft power to lawfare. In this article, the European think tank suggests that laws should be used globally to promote the ideology of legal warfare. It is proposed that EU oligarchs should adopt the Chinese concept of legal warfare, using the law as an instrument against recalcitrant politicians. The article recommends that, ‘To defend its interests in the international arena, the EU should consider more hard-nosed ways of instrumentalising the power of law.’
As indicated before, the concept of ‘legal warfare’ has already been utilised to block Călin Georgescu in Romania, where the country’s Constitutional Court proclaimed that his candidacy does not meet the conditions of legality. Not surprisingly, the Russian Government’s Spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, rightly denounced the court ruling in Romania as a ‘gross violation of democratic norms’, a stance that aligns with those correctly accusing EU oligarchs of suppressing nationalist movements.
The globalist agenda of EU oligarchs is unpopular and ultimately undemocratic. This helps explain why they are deliberately using lawfare. Because people are naturally inclined to believe that the court system is fair, they have adopted the strategy of branding as ‘illegal’ any actions of nationalist politicians. Of course, the more they do so, the more they discredit the system, and delegitimise the EU institutions. The use of lawfare is therefore a recipe for disaster because it undermines confidence in the democratic legitimacy of the EU.
In the United Kingdom, Professor David Betz, a respected academic and government advisor, argues that the United Kingdom will see mass unrest because of a politicised judiciary, Specifically, he argues that the United Kingdom is ‘explosively configured’ for a civil war within five years. In addition to a politicised judiciary, the reasons for his assessment are ‘asymmetric multiculturalism’ which involves positive discrimination of the white majority.
Many also blame the porous, open border policy of successive governments for the demise of democracy, the two-tier justice system, the leniency shown to gangland murderers and the wholesale violence on the streets, the suppression and indeed elimination of free speech which sees people being accosted by police for supposedly criticising the government, the arrest of a peaceful protester whose only crime is to wear a poster which invites people to talk to him, and finally the constant discrimination suffered by white males who have difficulty finding a job because excessive resources are spent on the protection of criminals and illegal immigrants. There is also the indoctrination of children in schools and students in universities, and the spectacular decline in living standards, mainly because of the obsessive pursuit of net zero emissions policies. These events and circumstances have caused resentment and elevated the likelihood of a catastrophic event happening.
What is happening around the civilised world reminds us of the prophetic words of Winston Churchill, wartime Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who said in November 1947 in the UK House of Commons:
Many forms of government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
It is easy to agree with Churchill’s sentiment that democracy is the worst form of government, but should we tolerate the courts exacerbating this development by banning populist politicians?
Gabriël A. Moens AM is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and served as pro vice-chancellor and dean at Murdoch University.
Augusto Zimmermann is a professor of law and served as associate dean at Murdoch University. He is also a former commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia.
Zimmermann & Moens are the authors of The Unlucky Country (Locke Press, 2024).
