Marine Le Pen returned to court this week to contest her conviction last spring for misusing EU funds. Convicted of diverting more than €4 million (£3.5 million) meant for Brussels affairs in order to pay her staff, the leader of the National Rally was fined €100,000 (£86,600) and disqualified from politics for five years with immediate effect.

The appeal will last a month and the verdict is expected in June. If Le Pen is successful, she will be able to run in next year’s presidential election; if she fails to overturn or drastically reduce the sentence, her protégé, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella, will represent the National Rally.

Le Pen struck a more conciliatory tone when she addressed the court at the start of the appeal. Gone was the bullish denial of her initial trial, replaced instead by a softer defence. ‘I wish to state at the outset that, if any offence was committed, I want the court to understand that we had absolutely no sense of doing anything wrong whatsoever,’ she announced.

She and the other ten members of her party, all of whom are appealing their sentences, pointed a finger at Brussels. ‘The European parliament did not warn us of anything, as it could have done,’ explained Le Pen, who insisted that ‘I firmly believe we never concealed........

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