Paris —
France’s Court of Appeal has cleared the way for far-right leader Marine Le Pen to run in next year’s presidential election, but she is likely to be confined to her home with an ankle monitor after the court upheld her conviction for misappropriating EU funds.
The court said the amount of public funds misappropriated amounted to 2.8 million euros ($3.2 million). The court ruled that Le Pen must serve three years in prison. However, he was suspended for two years and ordered to wear an electronic monitoring tag and work from home for one year.
The appeals court also effectively reduced her ban from running for office to just 15 months (technically 45 months ban, 30 months suspension) and fined her 100,000 euros ($114,000).
The ruling means she could run in France’s 2027 presidential election despite wearing an electronic ankle monitor, but that would make campaigning logistically difficult and likely to create political problems for her party, the National Rally (RN). The first round of voting will take place in April and the second round in May.
Le Pen previously said she would not be able to stand for election if she had to wear an ankle tag.
“When you’re a presidential candidate, you have to have complete freedom of movement, but that’s not the case when you’re wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet,” she told French news channel LCI last week. However, Le Pen will be eligible to ask the court for a reduction in sentence in January 2027.
The 2027 race was already shaping up to be one of the most uncertain and consequential in recent French history, with the question of whether the woman widely considered the favorite to run had been in question for more than a year before the appeals process was frozen.
Four other RN politicians who served as members of the European Parliament were also found guilty of misappropriation of public funds by the Court of Appeal on Tuesday, and other defendants were also found guilty of receiving property through collusion or misappropriated funds.
Asked about the news on Tuesday during an official visit to Syria, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “What is healthy for a democracy is that the president does not comment on court decisions.”
Le Pen was originally expelled from public office on March 31, 2025, when a Paris court found her and other RN MPs guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds to pay salaries to French party workers rather than to their original parliamentary aides. Her initial ban on running for public office was for five years and, controversially, went into effect shortly before her appeal was heard.
Speaking on French television the night of last year’s conviction, Le Pen denounced the verdict as a “political” decision aimed at keeping her out of the 2027 election campaign, calling it “a fateful day for our democracy.”
This first ruling also provoked a furious reaction from nationalist allies at home and abroad, reinforcing an anti-establishment narrative that elites were colluding to keep them out.
“Marines,” then Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán posted. Elon Musk and the Kremlin rallied to her defense. US President Donald Trump echoed this, calling it a “witch hunt.”
Le Pen took over the reins of the National Front (then known as the RN) in 2011, credited with “demonizing” her father’s far-right party. Her father, Jean-Marie, has been convicted multiple times of violating French laws against Holocaust denial and hate speech, and was a symbol of the far-right nationalist party. Marin made it his mission to bring nationalists into the mainstream.
Her father shocked all of France by making it to the 2002 presidential runoff. She reached the same heights twice, losing to Mr. Macron in 2017 and 2022.
Her biggest success was the party’s electoral foray, with the relaunched RN winning some seats in European and French parliamentary elections and achieving its highest ever ranking in the 2024 snap parliamentary elections.
Her young protégé, 30-year-old Jordan Bardera, has been RN’s official leader since 2022 and is seen as helping to distance the party from its founder’s harmful views and increase its appeal to younger voters.
An April IPSOS-La Tribune poll suggested that Mr. Bardera would garner slightly more popular support (34%) as president of the country than Marine Le Pen (32%). But both men are polling higher than any other major French politician.
Even when Le Pen took over the reins of Bardera’s party, she was the undisputed far-right figurehead and presumed presidential candidate.
Despite the party’s insistence on Bardera’s innocence, clear preparations are still being made for him to potentially run to replace Macron, who is term-limited.
Bardera called for Le Pen to be able to contest the presidential election, but acknowledged that he would stand in for Le Pen if necessary. This year, he published a book outlining his vision for France titled “What the French Want.” Given his youth and strong presence on TikTok (he has 2.3 million followers), he is not a man to ignore as a political prospect.
Le Pen has repeatedly supported her colleagues even as her own political future remains uncertain. In an interview in late 2025, she told La Tribune de Dimanche: “Bardera can win for me.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
