The Paris appeal court has upheld Marine Le Pen’s conviction for misusing EU funds but shortened her sentence, clearing the path for her to run in the April 2027 French presidential election.
A five-year ban on holding public office has been reduced and backdated to March 2025, and the court said it now considered the penalty had already been served.
However, the leader of the hard-right National Rally (RN) has been given a one-year term wearing an electronic ankle tag under house arrest, although that would not necessarily stop her running either.
Le Pen has said repeatedly she would not run for president if she had to wear an electronic tag as she would not feel “totally free” to campaign.
She is expected to announce whether she will stick with that decision in a national TV appearance tonight at 20:00 (19:00 BST) – and hand her candidacy to her protege, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella.
Marine Le Pen leads the opinion polls with under 10 months to go. She has run for the presidency three times already, and has lost twice in a row to Emmanuel Macron, who cannot run again. Macron has declined to comment on the verdict.
In her last TV interview a week ago the National Rally leader signalled her conditions for running for president to the judges as well as the broader public.
She would not campaign for the presidency while wearing a tag, she told news channel LCI, because “when you’re a presidential candidate you need to have total freedom of movement… I can’t rely on a judge to allow me to hold a campaign rally or go to a market”.
The court’s response, delivered months after her appeal was heard in January and February, made clear the judges were not standing in her way.
They had weighed up the sentences of ineligibility for public office against the “freedom of candidacy” and the “free choice of electors”, they explained.
It was for the court to assess whether the punishment was proportionate, but running as a candidate and the right to vote was part of the democratic process, they said.
However, they found Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzling funds meant for members of the European Parliament from 2004-16 and using the money to pay for party staff.
While the fake jobs scheme had been driven by her father, National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, the court made clear she had continued the practice with the help of party colleagues including European Parliament members.
