Marine Le Pen has been cleared to stand in the French presidency in the 2027 election, despite an appeals court upholding a 2025 embezzlement conviction against her. But she can only do so wearing an electronic tag — something she previously said was “not possible.”
She was originally sentenced last year to five years of ineligibility to run in presidential elections, but the appeals court reduced that time to 45 months, with 30 suspended and 15 to be served. She has already been ineligible for the period of time required under the revised sentence, making her eligible to run in the April 2027 national election.
Le Pen did not immediately voice her intentions for the election. She was expected to speak at 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday (2 p.m. Eastern).
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Her National Rally party, previously known as the National Front, was found guilty in 2025 of embezzling European Union funds to pay staff members between 2004 and 2016.
She was also ordered last year to pay more than $100,000 in fines and to serve four years in prison, two of which were suspended and two of which would be served under house arrest with Le Pen wearing an electronic tracking tag.
The house arrest and fine were suspended during the appeals process, but were reinstated by the court’s ruling on Tuesday. The judge reduced the sentence to three years’ prison instead of four, with two years suspended and one with an electronic tag under house arrest.
Le Pen has previously said she would not run for office if she had to campaign under house arrest while wearing an electronic tag.
“If it is a matter of allowing me to run as a candidate while effectively preventing me from campaigning with complete freedom, you will surely understand that that is not possible,” she said last week.
“When you are a presidential candidate, you must be completely free to move about,” she said, adding that she cannot “depend on a magistrate to authorize [her] to hold a rally in Romorantin or visit a market in Hénin-Beaumont.”
She may request for the electronic bracelet sentence be reduced to six months, which would mean she could campaign freely in the new year.
Le Pen’s lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said after the verdict was delivered that he was “partially” happy with the verdict, calling it a “good start.”
Le Pen, along with eight current or former members of her party, had faced up to 10 years in prison for the embezzlement scheme. A dozen others who served as parliamentary aides for National Rally also received guilty verdicts.
It was assumed that Le Pen would cede her presidential ambitions to her party’s 30-year-old president, Jordan Bardella, if she was barred from standing.
Speaking to RTL radio Tuesday, Adelaide Zulfikarpasic, of pollster Ipsos BVA, said Le Pen and Bardella had “more or less the same score in the polls.”
Both candidates have been polling far ahead of the other parties in surveys gauging support ahead of the first round of general election voting, garnering between 31-36%, according to Ipsos BVA.
The rise of the French far-right
Presidential elections in France involve two rounds of voting. In the first round, on April 18, 2027, people will vote for their preferred candidate from among about a dozen parties. Voters will then return to the polls on May 2 and cast ballots for one of the top two candidates to emerge from round one.
For years, the so-called Republican Front — an unofficial coming-together of people from all political backgrounds in the second round of national elections — has effectively prevented the election of far-right candidates.
Le Pen’s party, however, has been steadily gaining support in recent years, and many analysts believe next year could see its rise to leadership.
Le Pen herself made it to the second round in both 2017 and 2022, something that had seemed unthinkable in the years after her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, a convicted antisemite, founded the party in 1972. Two years later, he won just 0.74% of the vote in his first bid for the presidency.
In 2002, however, he sent shockwaves through the French establishment when he got through to the second round of voting in a run-off with Jacques Chirac. He ultimately obtained less than 18% of the vote, but more than five million people cast ballots for him.
The next time the party made it to the second round was 2017, when current President Emmanuel Macron beat Le Pen by a wide margin. In the 2022 election that margin narrowed to 18%, however, raising the prospect of Le Pen’s party winning in 2027.
Macron is not able to run again next year as he has already served for the maximum two terms.
“Never, in my memory as a pollster, has the Rassemblement Nationale been measured at such a level at this stage of a presidential election,” pollster Zulfikarpasic said of the rise of Le Pen’s party.