Paris court upholds Le Pen's embezzlement conviction

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How has America shaped the world? I'm Asma Khaled, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As the United States marks its 250-year anniversary, we've been exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the US has shaped the modern world. And today on the show, we answer your questions about this moment and what to expect in the years to come. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:42Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. Coming to you live from London, I'm Regine Vaidynarvan. President Trump's arrived at this year's NATO summit in Turkey and Prince Harry's here in London, where a verdict is due imminently, in his case against a tabloid publisher. But first, we begin this hour with breaking news from another courtroom in France, where a judge has upheld far-right politician Marine Le Pen's conviction on embezzlement charges. The Court of Appeals judge in Paris sentenced her to three years of imprisonment, with two suspended, one with an electronic tag. But the fate of one of France's most dominant political figures from the National Rally Party hangs in the balance.

1:27The ruling means she can still stand in next year's presidential race if she chooses to. But it's still unclear whether she will. Well, our correspondent Hugh Schofield is at the court in Paris. Hugh, just bring us up to date on what's been happening where you are. Well, you put it very well there, Ginny. there is no juridical or legal ban on her running now, but there may be a practical one. I'll explain that. The Appeal Court has reduced her sentence. She got a five-year ban on public office at the original trial a year and a half ago. That has now been reduced to, in effect, 15 months. 15 months is, coincidentally or not, almost exactly the period that has elapsed since that original sentence, so it's already time served.

2:12So, in effect, this appeal court has lifted the ban on her standing. But it has also confirmed this other part of her sentence, which was a period of jail. It's not jail anymore. It's home confinement with an electronic tag. There's a year of that. And the problem is that Marine Le Pen has, on several occasions in the last week, said if this is part of her sentence, that she's not able to leave her home freely and has to report and has an electronic tag and so on, then she won't be a candidate because she wouldn't be fully at liberty and it would hinder her movements. So in that case, she would hand over to her famous protégé and deputy, in effect, Jordan Bordella.

2:59But, you know, we don't know now whether she's going to go ahead with that because there's another factor, which is that often this period of a year with an electronic tag can be reduced with good behaviour. So maybe it'll only be six months in practice, in which case it would end at the end of the year and she'd be free for four months to campaign next year. All of this has been thrown into the pot. And this afternoon, she and Jordan Bardella, her young 30-year-old deputy, are going to be thrashing it out. And we'll just have to wait and see towards the end of the afternoon which way they decide.

3:32We will know, I think, that by the end of the day, which of them is going to be the candidate, but it has not been decided by this court case. Indeed. And Hugh, I wonder if you could just remind us of the charges that she was convicted on. Yes, I mean, the charges were of embezzling, in effect, or siphoning off European parliamentary money, not for some benefit, but for party benefit. The party, her party rally has always been, until recently, short of funds. And what it did was to hire staff members of the party as parliamentary assistants in Brussels and Strasbourg so that they would draw salaries paid by the European taxpayer, but would in effect do no work as European parliamentary assistants, but would be on the payroll of the party back in Paris.

4:23and that's what happened. They're not the only party who have done this. A lot of others have abused the system this way as well. But the court here has decided that it was systematic and needed to be punished quite severely. Okay, Hugh Schofield, thank you very much for bringing us up to date on what we know so far from the court there. And we've just heard that a€100 ,000 fine has been confirmed along with those three years of imprisonment to suspended and as we were saying there with Hugh, one year with an electronic bracelet. Let's go live now to Bruno Golmish, a member of the far-right National Party, a former MEP for them, who was also found guilty alongside Marine Le Pen in 2025 of embezzling funds from the EU institution.

5:08He was sentenced to three years in prison, two of them suspended, and he was fined 50 ,000 euros and barred from running for public office for the next five years. And I understand that that sentence has also, that conviction, been upheld. Welcome to NewsHour, Mr. Golnish. What's your reaction to the events? Well, although I'm an old man, I'm still quite indignant because all this derives from a pure political manoeuvre from our, I should say, opponents, but they are in fact enemies. Mr. Goldnish, it's the court in Paris that's not political. It's a court in Paris. Yes, but you know, the beginning is, how do you say, the complaint, the Caesar of French justice has been the fact of former socialist president, Mr.

6:23Schultz, who was, in fact, guilty of real embezzlement. I wonder if we could just focus on the charges, if we may, that you and Ms. Le Pen were... Please, please, let me give my opinion, otherwise not use that. And we are perfectly innocent. That's for sure that our assistance worked with our party rather than with the Communist Party. But that was absolutely the common use. And there was absolutely no law preventing this. And this was perfectly peaceful, public, well known of the administration of the European Parliament. So it's a mere manoeuvre to prevent Mrs. Le Pen to rule for presidential elections.

7:18But she still can, can't she? I mean, that's the point. But Mr Garnish, she still can run. No, no, no. Yes, she still can run. She still can. So your accusations of politicisation are kind of a different point. A bracelet on her leg. It's the most hypocritical decision of justice. I've been a lawyer. I've been an attorney. I never saw such a hypocritical judgment. Mr. Golnish, may I say, if you are a lawyer, let me repeat what the judge said. He said the facts are serious. They took place over 11 years across three parliamentary terms, despite warnings from the European Parliament. Yes, but the French judicial is not fair, is not independent.

8:11You say that as someone who's a lawyer yourself then? Let me answer you. It's played with political prejudice. And this is absolutely well known in France. And I may say so. I do not. I hope I will be prosecuted for contempt of court. And I will explain myself publicly. This judgment is a mere scandal because as one high-ranking socialist member of the European Parliament told me, with such motives, they could send to the court 500 members of Parliament each time. OK, let's move on to Marine Le Pen. We don't know whether she's going to run or not. You say that she might end up campaigning with a bracelet on, but she still can campaign.

9:12She's still able to run. Do you think she should be the candidate or are you in favour of Jordan Bardella as the future of your party? No, I think the decision is her. But what would you prefer? Who would you back? I think the decision is her. I'm not in contact with her right now. I think I will respect her decision, whatever it be. But I think, you know, as I told you, it's the most hypocritical decision to say, Well, you can be a candidate, but you can be a candidate with a bracelet in the leg and you will have to come back home every night under police control. It's stupid. It's crazy. Really, it's crazy.

10:01It has absolutely nonsense. Mr. Golnisch, thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on that verdict today. And just to remind our viewers that Bruno Golnisch got three years suspended sentence as well, was fined one year of ineligibility, but that's ineffective because of time already served. Well, let's move on to some broader thoughts on what we've heard from that court in Paris. I'm joined now by the political consultant Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, who teaches political communications at Science Po in Paris. Welcome to NewsHour. You heard all of that from Mr. Golnitch. What do you think is going to come next?

10:43Most probably, Marine Le Pen will be a candidate in the next presidential election in France. She declared, she stated previously that she wouldn't be a candidate if she would be put under electronic surveillance with an electronic bracelet. But you can see that her lieutenants and part of the far-right press in Paris are starting to say that it's not so important. So my guess is that she will be a candidate and Jordan Bardella will campaign alongside her. And that's the very beginning of the French presidential campaign. We can see that now. How are the national rally doing in the polls at the moment?

11:22It is very high. Actually, Jordan Bardella scores higher in popularity than Mayen Le Pen. So that's a little bit of a predicament for the Rassemblement National since Marine Le Pen was not the most well-positioned candidate anymore and Jordan Bardella was indeed stronger than she is. And you have to understand that most of the electorate on the far right, they have been thinking about it for months and they started to get used to the fact that Jordan Bardella would be the candidate. So it's a huge change for them. And it's also an ideological shift since Jordan Bardella is much closer to the thesis of the American far right.

12:06And Marine Le Pen is more social in her approach. And what's interesting as well is the appeal that Jordan Bardella has with younger voters using platforms like TikTok. In some ways, do you think there could be a bit of a fight between the two then about who might end up taking the candidate role? I think there is already an ideological fight between the two because that's not the same far right. And indeed, Jordan Bardella embodies what we start to call a tiktocracy, a new way to be a candidate and be popular and maybe be elected tomorrow. We started to see that in Eastern Europe recently, in Romania, for instance, we saw that meteoric raise in popularity of TikTok candidates.

12:57It didn't happen in France yet. So that was the first time it was happening. And the fact that Marine Le Pen is back in the race is a sign that, you know, France in a way is resisting that. OK, thank you very much for your thoughts there. Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, a political consultant, joining us live from Paris on that story. We do have a live page on the BBC News website which has updates from the court in Paris with more on that decision there. Paris caught upholding Marine Le Pen's embezzlement conviction, but clearing the path for her to run in next year's presidential election.

13:39Coming up here on NewsHour, we hear from a Ukrainian woman who survived a secret Russian detention center in occupied Ukraine. For three years and 13 days of my life, my soul and body were crippled. I don't remember what an ordinary life is anymore. We are talking about rape, sexual slavery, torture, and that these are not accidental acts of violence, but a clearly organized policy, which Russia uses as a tool of war. Some of the other headlines we are watching this hour, and the French appeals court, as we mentioned there, has upheld the sentence of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen in a ruling which means that she won't be able to run for president next year.

14:22President Trump has arrived in Turkey for a crucial NATO summit, where allies' defence budgets and support for Ukraine are in the spotlight.

14:39This is Regine Vaidynarvan with NewsHour. For decades, China was the most populous nation in the world, before India overtook it in 2023. China's birth rates declined to a record low. Now that process will gather pace in the coming decades. By the end of the century, it will have hundreds of millions of fewer people. Miki Bristow looks at why that's happening, what the government's doing and what it might mean for the country.

15:07Hanno is reading with her two-year-old son in their flat in Beijing. Just like his mother and father and millions of other Chinese people, her toddler is an only child and likely to remain so. I think one child is enough for me and for my family. I grew up in a single child family and I have many friends and classmates to play with, so I don't really feel lonely. So Anna, I'm not using her real name because every topic in China is sensitive, is happy with one child. But for her government, that's not enough. They want parents to have two or three children. That's because the country's population is falling over the next few decades.

15:48it will collapse. That seems at odds with what many think they know about China, and it has too many people. The Chinese government once thought so too. That's why it brought in the one-child policy. The children of China may now get brothers and sisters. It took a while, but Chinese officials realised they'd made a mistake with their calculations, and ten years ago they abandoned the one-child policy, expecting couples to suddenly start having more children. That didn't happen, as Professor Wang Feng from the University of California, Irvine, explains. One child was an abnormal norm imposed by the government.

16:32But with 35 years of the one child policy, the only children growing up, they felt, it's fine. I'm the only child. I don't need to have two children. The rising cost of living is also pushing couples to have fewer children.

16:50Lauren, again I'm not using her real name, is a single mother living with her 12-year-old son Robert in Shanghai, one of China's most expensive cities. Financially, it's on my own, so I have to cover everything, I have to work and I have to keep an eye on his studies. What kind of house do you have? How many bedrooms is that?

17:15And do you sleep in, do you mind me asking, do you sleep in the living room and Robert sleep in the bedroom?

17:31A bunk bed? Yeah. The authorities have held mass weddings like this one to encourage others to tie the knot. To make childbirth less painful, hospitals are being forced to offer women epidural anaesthetics and then there's money, cash handouts to have more children. So far, none of it has worked. China isn't the only place with a falling fertility rate, but the scale of its coming population decline is immense. We're talking hundreds of millions of fewer people by the end of the century. One expert thinks it could fall to as low as 330 million. Here's Professor Wang again. I think the Chinese leaders and the Chinese people have basically come to accept that China's population will get smaller and smaller.

18:21We're looking at a new technological revolution, AI and automation, robotics, to sustain economic growth. Fewer children and a collapsing population will have consequences, not just for China's capacity to generate economic growth, but for its ability to project itself across Asia and the rest of the world. In the future, China won't be able to rely on its vast stock of people for wealth and power. That's Mickey Bristow there.

18:58For Prince Harry, whose mother Princess Diana was famously hounded by the tabloid press, taking on sections of the British media, who he sees as dishonest, has been a personal crusade. Today his long-standing courtroom battle with Associated Newspapers, owners of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, came to an end. In the last few minutes we've learnt that Prince Harry, along with six other defendants, including Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, have lost their case. They claim the newspapers used unlawful methods to gather stories about them, allegations which have been strenuously denied by the publishers.

19:34Well, let's go straight to the court in central London and join our correspondent Helena Wilkinson. Helena, good to talk to you. Just tell us more about what we've heard from the judge. Yes, we had that judgment in the last few moments from the judge confirming, I mean, as you mentioned, Prince Harry, one of seven high-profile complainants, suing Associated Newspapers Limited, the publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, all of them have lost their privacy case against the publisher. And the judge dismissed their claims after he said that the claimants had failed to prove the allegations.

20:14A significant blow for Prince Harry and the other claimants. the trial was held here at the Royal Courts of Justice earlier on. In a summary of his ruling, Mr Justice Nicklin concluded the allegations that were being made were serious and therefore required more convincing evidence before being proven. And he said in his summary, the seven claimants, including Prince Harry, could not rely on suspicion even where understandable. He said they had to prove information had been obtained unlawfully The judge also refused to make a finding as to whether what became known as unlawful information gathering had become widespread and habitual and instead decide the merits of each individual claim.

21:01So he went through all of the articles that all the claimants put forward to back their case. But today, all seven of them have lost their case. Their claims have been dismissed. And Helena, there have been a series of legal battles that Prince Harry has taken against different publishers. Others have been more successful. Where does this leave him in terms of, as I described in the introduction, his crusade against the British tabloids? Well we know and as he rightly say this is the third big court battle that Prince Harry has taken on and it's never been about money he said for him it's always been about accountability for what he sees as press action press intrusion into his life we don't expect him to take any other cases on none are in the pipeline at the moment but a significant blow Prince Harry is actually just under two miles away from where we are at Chatham House, giving a speech about the Invictus Games at the moment.

22:05We understand that Prince Harry is not expected to give a reaction to this judgment on camera. Let me just bring you one line from a reaction from Associated Newspapers Limited to that judgment. It has said it welcomes today's judgment, which it says is an overwhelming victory for the Daily Mail and its journalists and for a free press generally. And Helena, Prince Harry is in the UK for other reasons as well, isn't he? He is. He arrived in the UK last night. You will have heard the back and forth about whether he was going to be staying at Buckingham Palace. in the end he is not going to be staying at the Royal Residence but he is here for a number of charitable events throughout the week both here in London and elsewhere.

22:55It's not clear yet whether his wife, the Duchess of Sussex and their two children will join him later on in the week but they are not here in London with him. Okay, Helena Wilkinson live in central London at the Court of Appeals. Thank you very much for that update And if you want to get more information and background on that case, you can go to the BBC News website. We have a live page there with regular updates and reactions. So do go to bbc.com slash news or wherever you normally reach the BBC. That's it for this section. This is NewsHour.

23:39How has America shaped the world? I'm Asma Khalid, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As the United States marks its 250-year anniversary, we've been exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the U.S. has shaped the modern world. And today on the show, we answer your questions about this moment and what to expect in the years to come. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

24:14Welcome back to NewsHour. Now let's bring you a story from Kenya where a group of women known as the EcoMamas are leading marine conservation, restoring mangroves and coral reefs and even farming octopus. Now, many of them never went to formal school, but they have received specialist training through NGO partnerships. Their work is reviving fragile ecosystems and boosting the ocean economy their communities rely on. From Lamu, Jorogo, Mugai reports. It is 6.30 in the morning in Mtangawanda village on Pate Island, one of the 65 islands that make up the Lamu Akipelago. The tide has retreated. A group of women walk along the ocean shore cutting bundles of tiny mangrove seedlings for planting.

25:02They are called Icomamas, and they help marine conservation efforts along this coastline. Zulfa Hassan is one of them. Fish stocks have declined, and the mangrove forests have been badly damaged. People cut down mangroves to produce lime, destroying large areas of the forest. Mangrove timber was also exported to Arab countries. Climate change has only made the situation worse.

25:29Lamu's islands are surrounded by mangrove forests, coral reefs and rich fishing grounds that have sustained communities for generations. The mangrove's tangled roots hold the shoreline together and provide safe nurseries where young fish, crabs and other marine life begin their lives. But lately, mangrove forests have been cut and fish stock has decreased. Coral reefs are also struggling to survive. I began planting mangroves in 2018. Since then, we have planted more than 200 ,000 mangrove trees, restoring over 20 hectares of coastline. We've restored about 75 % of the mangrove forest. Seeing it come back to life fills me with pride.

26:15Today, the mangroves are thriving and the forest is healthy once again.

26:23A short boat ride away in Shanga Ishakani village, Mwanasha Mwana is rebuilding a different part of the ocean. She is known as Mama Matumbawe, mother of corals. By day, she teaches at a local primary school on the island. But before going to class, just before sunrise, she dives into the ocean carrying small fragments of coral. Piece by piece, she secures them onto damaged reefs, hoping they'll grow into thriving underwater habitats. When we restore coral reefs, we first build structures using cement here on the shore. Then, we go out to the healthy coral reefs in the sea, carefully collect small coral fragments, attach them to those structures, and return them to the ocean.

27:12Because the coral is alive, it grows gradually over time. It can take about a year and a half to two years. But if the corals thrive and aren't affected by bleaching, they continue to grow well. As they recover, fish return to the reefs and in turn, the local economy improves.