Marine Le Pen can still run in France’s 2027 presidential election despite the Paris Court of Appeal upholding her conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds on Tuesday, after judges softened her electoral ban and left the National Rally figurehead facing a political rather than automatic legal obstacle to her candidacy.
The court fined Le Pen €100,000 and sentenced her to three years in prison, two of them suspended, with the remaining year to be served under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. It also reduced her electoral ban to just under four years, suspending 30 months of it.
The ruling did not lift the ban outright. Instead, it reduced the immediately enforceable part of it. Since Le Pen’s original ineligibility penalty had applied since her March 2025 conviction, the active portion may expire before the first round of the presidential election on 18 April 2027.
That means the verdict does not automatically remove her from the race, even though the conviction was upheld. The more immediate problem is political and practical: Le Pen has previously said she would not run for president if required to wear an electronic bracelet, arguing that such a restriction would make campaigning impossible.
Le Pen was first convicted in March 2025 over a long-running case concerning parliamentary assistants paid with European Parliament funds while allegedly carrying out work for the National Rally, then known as the National Front, between 2004 and 2016. The lower court had sentenced her to four years in prison, including two suspended, imposed a €100,000 fine, and handed down a five-year ban from public office with immediate effect.
Le Pen has denied wrongdoing and presented the case as a politically motivated attempt to remove her from the presidential race. Her defence argued that the dispute concerned the interpretation of parliamentary work rather than deliberate fraud, while prosecutors and judges in the first instance said the party had used EU funds to finance domestic political staff.
The ruling lands less than a year before a presidential election in which Le Pen remained one of the strongest candidates. A June Ifop-Fiducial poll put her at 32 per cent in first-round voting intentions, while an earlier Elabe survey placed her around 34 per cent. Having reached the presidential run-off against Emmanuel Macron in both 2017 and 2022, Le Pen has long been considered the National Rally’s natural candidate for 2027.
Macron is constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, leaving an unusually open race at a time when the traditional party system remains fragmented. The National Rally has therefore prepared a succession scenario around Jordan Bardella, its 30-year-old party president and Le Pen’s most prominent protégé.
Bardella’s polling has strengthened the case for him as a fallback candidate. The same June Ifop-Fiducial survey placed him between 35 and 37 per cent, ahead of Le Pen, while an Elabe poll gave him up to 37.5 per cent, compared with 34 per cent for Le Pen. An Odoxa survey last November also showed him polling around 35–36 per cent and winning every tested second-round scenario.
‘The verdict therefore leaves the National Rally’s 2027 strategy unresolved’
Bardella, however, is also facing legal scrutiny. EU prosecutors have examined allegations that European Parliament funds were misused for media training linked to his preparation for the 2022 presidential campaign. Separately, anti-corruption group Anticor has sought an investigation into claims that Bardella held a fake European Parliament assistant job in 2015, allegations denied by the National Rally. The former Identity and Democracy group, which included RN, is also under investigation over alleged misuse of EU funds between 2019 and 2024.
The verdict therefore leaves the National Rally’s 2027 strategy unresolved. It preserves a possible legal path for Le Pen, but raises questions over whether she can—or will—campaign while under electronic monitoring, and whether Bardella would provide a viable alternative or instead become the target of another legal crackdown.
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