French court allows Le Pen to run for president in 2027 — with a big caveat

PARIS (CN) — The extreme-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen will be able to run in France’s 2027 presidential elections after the Court of Appeal of Paris delivered a critical ruling on Tuesday, though there was a decisive twist: She would have to campaign with an electronic bracelet.

The appeals court upheld a roughly $114,000 fine for embezzlement, but adjusted her original prison term to three years with two suspended and one to be served with the electronic bracelet. The judges also adjusted her ineligibility to run for office to 45 months, 30 of which will be suspended.|

While the sentence means Le Pen can run, she has previously rejected the idea of campaigning with an ankle bracelet. She’s set to speak on French TV channel TF1 Tuesday at 8 p.m. (2 p.m. EDT), where she’s expected to confirm or renounce her candidacy.

In March 2025, Le Pen and 23 members of her National Rally party, known as the RN, were found guilty of embezzlement in a scheme investigators said rerouted $24,500 monthly paychecks meant for parliamentary assistants in Brussels to party lawmakers. The court estimated the amount totaled almost $5 million between 2004 and 2016.

Le Pen was sentenced to four years in prison — two suspended and two to be served at home with an electronic bracelet — and the roughly $114,000 fine. But the most shocking element was a five-year ban on running for public office effective immediately, rendering her ineligible to run in the 2027 presidential elections.

On Tuesday when Le Pen walked into the courtroom, heads turned in the audience and silence was overtaken by murmurs. Chandelier lights were switched on. Courtroom artists flipped open their sketchpads as Le Pen nodded to audience members in the front of the room, taking a sip of water before leaning an arm back on the table behind her.

When the court called her forward, Le Pen stood motionless with her hands resting on the podium, listening attentively. She returned to her seat with the smallest hint of a smile and journalists whispered frantically from a seating area above. When the session ended, Le Pen was surrounded by lawyers gesticulating passionately.

The timing of this trial and appeal have coincided with an unprecedented surge in Le Pen’s popularity. The National Rally, which was founded by her late father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, as the National Front in 1972, had long been considered taboo because of his overtly antisemitic and xenophobic rhetoric.

After succeeding her father as the head of the party in 2011, Le Pen launched a de-facto normalization campaign to repair its image — and it has been working. This is largely because of the National Rally’s new president, the 30-year-old Jordan Bardella, a fresh face who doesn’t bear the family name riddled in decades of controversy. He has been largely credited with softening the party’s image, and his 2.3 million TikTok followers speak to Bardella’s appeal to a younger generation.

Before Tuesday’s ruling, it was widely established that Bardella would run if Le Pen couldn’t. Now, the situation is less clear, but the ball is in her court; on Tuesday night, she could announce that she’ll back him for the role. As of now, both have a real shot at the presidency.

“The RN, whether it’s Le Pen or Bardella, is leading in all of the opinion polls — this is a moment in French political history,” Ludovic Renard, a political scientist at Sciences Po Bordeaux, said. “[Tuesday] has been on everyone’s calendar for months, ever since she decided to appeal.”

The March 2025 verdict was unprecedented in France, and sparked widespread debate over the intersection of the political and judicial spheres.

“Listen, it’s truly historic because we have never seen such a situation before an election that would prevent the front-runner from running,” Luc Rouban, a senior research fellow at Sciences Po Paris, said. “It’s completely unique, that’s for sure.”

Critics, including Le Pen herself, argued the original verdict undermined a citizen’s freedom of choice in presidential candidates.

Gilbert Casasus, a prominent political scientist, thinks that in general, the judicial system should intervene as little as possible in politics to because it risks blurring the line between two separate powers. In this case, however, he believes it was justified.

“What shocks me in this matter is that the [National Rally] … has always, since its creation, made its slogan ‘we are clean people, the political class is completely corrupt, we want to restore morality, we want to restore order,’” he said. “And those who have given speeches saying that they’re the moralizers who are the most honest, the most wonderful, the most extraordinary — these people who lecture others on morality are the very people who broke the law.”

The case has played a central role in the French political discourse for months. In the country’s two-round voting system — where the top two candidates go into a runoff if one doesn’t initially win more than 50% of the vote — experts and polls predict the National Rally has already secured a spot.

However, it’s less clear if Le Pen or Bardella would have a better shot. The opponent could be a determining factor.

Rouban believes either could beat the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, since his views have been so controversial that much of the center-left has cut off ties with his party, France Unbowed.

But it could be more complicated if Édouard Philippe, the leading right-wing candidate, makes it into the runoff. French President Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister would likely be able to pick up votes from the center, left and those still weary of casting a vote for the RN, according to Rouban.

Bardella has some obvious weak points that would likely be exploited by any opponent; critics say that he lacks the experience to lead since he’s never served in any executive position.

“There is a serious problem of political legitimacy in France,” Casasus said. “I am absolutely speechless when I see that France could elect a president of the Republic who does not possess the intellectual qualifications to govern this country — at some point you have to prove yourself.”

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