Le Pen to Stand for President Despite Embezzlement Ruling
Marine Le Pen has said she will run in France’s 2027 presidential election, days after an appeals court convicted her party of embezzling €2.8m in European Parliament funds and ordered her to wear an electronic monitor for a year. Crucially, the ruling cut an earlier ban on holding office to a length she has largely served, clearing her path to stand. Le Pen said she would appeal to France’s highest court, a step that suspends the tag: “I will therefore campaign without an electronic bracelet,” she told French television.
The verdict was supposed to end her career and may instead have relaunched it. An earlier court had barred Le Pen from office for five years, a sentence that would have ruled her out of 2027; the appeal reduced the ban to a length she has effectively already served, removing the obstacle at the moment it looked insurmountable. Her National Rally was found to have paid party staff for more than a decade with money earmarked for parliamentary assistants in Brussels, a scheme the court valued at €2.8m — but the political mathematics now favour her. France’s far right leads many national polls, and a candidate who can cast a conviction as establishment persecution has a ready-made campaign narrative. The lowering of the office ban, not the bracelet, is the decisive fact. Watch whether the appeal to the Cour de cassation holds, who else the National Rally readies should it fail, and how the mainstream parties respond to her return.