A French appeals court on Tuesday delivered a mixed verdict to Marine Le Pen: it kept her criminal conviction in place, but eased the punishment enough that, on paper, she can run for president in 2027. Whether she actually does is now, oddly, partly up to her, because the sentence comes with a condition she has flatly rejected.
What the court decided
The Paris Court of Appeal upheld the finding that Le Pen and others in her party, the National Rally, misused European Parliament money, in a scheme prosecutors said ran from 2004 to 2016 and paid party staff in France with funds meant for parliamentary assistants, CNN reported. But it scaled back the penalties. The ban on holding public office, originally five years and imposed with immediate effect, was reduced so that the operative period is 15 months dating from her March 2025 conviction, which means it would lapse before the 2027 campaign, Al Jazeera reported. Her prison term was also cut, to a shorter sentence in which the part to be served would be spent at home under an electronic ankle monitor rather than in jail, alongside a fine.
The catch
That ankle tag is the sticking point. Le Pen has said she cannot mount a presidential campaign while wearing one, arguing that a candidate must be free to travel and appear where she chooses rather than depend on a magistrate's permission, NBC News reported. So while the ruling removes the formal bar to her candidacy, it attaches a condition she says makes running impractical, an unusual situation in which a leading contender has been cleared to stand but insists the terms are unworkable.
Both sides
For Le Pen and the National Rally, the outcome is a partial vindication: the harshest element, the immediate five-year ban that had frozen her ambitions, is gone, and they maintain the party acted in good faith and that the prosecution overreached. For the prosecution and the court, the core finding stands: a serious misuse of public funds, confirmed on appeal, with a real sentence attached. Supporters cast the case as the judiciary thwarting the will of voters; critics say it is simply the law applying to a politician as it would to anyone else. Both readings are now part of French political debate.
What happens next
Le Pen can take the case to France's highest court, the Cour de cassation, and is expected to do so; that court has signalled it would aim to rule before the 2027 election. If her party concludes the conditions are too constraining, attention would turn to her 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, long seen as the National Rally's alternative standard-bearer. For now, the picture is deliberately unsettled: Marine Le Pen is, technically, back in the race, on terms she says she will not run under, with one more legal round still possible before French voters have their say.
