French prosecutors have asked a judge to sentence Marine Le Pen to five years in prison and a five-year ban from political office over embezzlement charges. Le Pen, 56, the leader of the right-wing populist National Rally (RN) party, has been accused of using EU parliament funds to hire assistants to work on RN party matters. She is on trial with 24 other senior party leaders, all of whom have denied the allegations.

The ban on holding office would take effect immediately, without waiting for an appeals process, and would apply to all 25 defendants. Under French law, the misuse of public funds automatically prohibits a person from holding elected office. Paris prosecutor Nicolas Barret is arguing the case for the French government.

Le Pen, who has emerged as the frontrunner to oust President Macron in the 2027 presidential election, said that prosecutors were out to undermine her presidential ambition, as the five-year ban would prevent her from running in the next cycle, the Telegraph reported.

"I think the prosecution's wish is to deprive the French people of the ability to vote for whom they want," Le Pen told reporters outside the French capital after the hearing, as per the BBC. She called the requested sentence an "outrage."

The prosecution has faced opposition from across party lines, with Marcon's former interior minister Gerald Darmanin condemning the prosecutors and stating that Le Pen should be "fought at the ballot box, not elsewhere."

The estimated cost of the alleged embezzlement is £3.6m, according to Patrick Maisonneuve, the counsel for the European Parliament.

In addition to the prison sentence and ban from political office, the RN leader is also asked to pay a fine of £249,000. 

Prosecutors argued that Le Pen oversaw a scheme for a number of years in which RN staff members from Paris were "taken on" as EU parliamentary aides in Brussels. These RN staffers rarely visited the EU parliament and played no part there, according to the court's argument.

Le Pen has contended that the Brussels assembly's employment of parliamentary assistants resulted in their inherent involvement in politics, as this was the primary attraction to the position.