By Flavia PERINA
Marine Le Pen is back in the game for the French presidential elections of 2027 and with her she is seeking a second life, all of European sovereignty. The court that two years ago convicted her of embezzlement of European funds has apparently acted precisely to prevent Le Pen from playing the role of martyr that would favor her party and her successor, Jordan Bardella.
But beyond the court case, the decision highlights two important elements. The first is the extraordinary resilience of the sovereign world, which has gone through failures, internal crises and major scandals without being significantly damaged in terms of electoral support. The second is the ability to regenerate, which has transformed radical right-wing entities, often carriers of proposals that border on the anti-democratic narrative, into popular forces that consistently fluctuate between 20 and 30 percent of the vote.
These are no longer transient phenomena, but rather a lasting presence of ten, fifteen, or twenty years. These are realities that politics must confront.
Le Pen’s judicial victory marks the resurrection of the first and most important nationalist leader of the European Union, a woman who has been on the scene with intelligence and determination since 1986, the heir to a completely marginalized party that she managed to transform into a decisive player in French politics. By a peculiar coincidence, the other historical partner of continental sovereignty, Nigel Farage, was also resurrected on the same day, brought down by a financial scandal over five million undeclared pounds. He risked expulsion, but played on the offensive: he resigned from Parliament and at the same time announced that he would run in the by-election in Clacton.
It will be the popular vote, he said, that will rehabilitate his name and restore his right to be a protagonist of British politics, where Reform UK consistently ranks at the top of the polls.
He too has been in politics since 1992, more than three decades. He has won, lost, left politics, returned and radically changed the political landscape of his country. The second life of the European sovereignists begins precisely from these two parallel stories, in a somewhat surprising way, considering the blows that marked the year 2026 for the new nationalists. They were considered politically finished when the boomerang effect of Donald Trump’s presidency crashed over the Western world at every latitude, forcing the old friends of the MAGA movement, Le Pen and Farage, first and foremost, to distance themselves from it.
They were considered finished again when their most compromised figure, Viktor Orbán, the only one who had maintained an openly pro-Putin and pro-Trump stance, lost the elections in spectacular fashion.
They were considered finished even when their main enemy, Europe, began to show new signs of vitality and to seek a common strategy to defend itself, trade and develop. Yet they are still there: plagued by major scandals and clouded by serious suspicions of shady dealings with powers outside Europe, but still alive, energetic and very combative.
Their unwavering persistence confirms the burden they represent on the future of Europe and on efforts to provide a common response to American retreat and Russian aggression on the borders of the European Union.
If Le Pen, next April, in her fourth attempt, manages to achieve this objective and win the French presidency, then goodbye to the coalition of the willing, goodbye to trains to Kiev, goodbye to cooperation on weapons, on artificial intelligence, on crisis response; goodbye to the famous Franco-German axis and, with it, the only engine that has managed to push the European Union in a certain direction for years.
If Farage continues his triumphant march, goodbye to the attempt to bring Britain and Europe closer together in the name of common interests in trade and defense. And so a natural doubt arises, which is gaining more and more ground among anyone who wants a stronger and more self-sufficient Europe: are these really political geniuses? Or are their opponents those who have not lived up to the role that history has assigned them? (The Press)