PARIS (AP) — Far-right leader Marine Le Pen says she’ll run for the French presidency next year despite being sentenced Tuesday to wear a court-ordered electronic monitor for embezzlement.
The decision by the 57-year-old veteran of three presidential races sets up a fourth campaign like no other: potentially seeking votes while subject to monitoring and with a judge possibly deciding how, and for how long, the punishment is applied.
Le Pen said she will appeal the ruling to France’s highest court and that the process will suspend the sentence that she be electronically monitored for a year.
“I will therefore campaign without an electronic bracelet,” she said in a television interview Tuesday night. “Tonight, I am a candidate for the presidential election.”
Appeals court clears her pathway for another run
The appeals court ruling earlier Tuesday cleared the way for Le Pen by shortening a ban handed down by a court last year that kept her from seeking public office for five years.
But it also said she must wear an electronic monitor, a constraint Le Pen previously said would make campaigning impossible.
But after huddling for hours with other leading figures of her National Rally party, Le Pen made clear Tuesday night that she believes she won’t be subjected to monitoring at all, and that her appeal to the Court of Cassation will vindicate her.
“My hands are clean,” she said.
The highest court previously said it would be able to rule before the presidential election, with the first round in April and a knockout round in May.
“I want to pursue all the legal avenues available to me so that I can defend my innocence,” she said.
A similar situation arose in former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s corruption case. An appeals court sentenced him in 2023 to serve part of his sentence under electronic monitoring. Sarkozy appealed to the Court of Cassation, which suspended Sarkozy’s sentence pending its review before ultimately upholding the conviction. He wore an electronic ankle monitor last year.
Appeals court confirms Le Pen’s guilt but reduces punishment
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The appeals court ruled that Le Pen oversaw years of misuse by her National Rally party of European Parliament funds by paying staff with money intended for European Union parliamentary assistants. She denied criminal wrongdoing but said during the trial that the party had made a “mistake.”
The ruling upheld guilty verdicts for all 11 accused, including Le Pen and other party members. The party itself also was declared guilty. The court ruled that it embezzled 2.8 million euros ($3.2 million) over more than 11 years.
“The facts are serious,” said the chief judge, Michèle Agi.
But the court scaled back punishments handed down by a lower court last year.
From five years handed down in March 2025, Le Pen’s ban on seeking office was cut to 45 months, with two-thirds of it suspended. Le Pen has already served 15 months of the ban, meaning that the potential obstacle is now removed.
The verdict also cut her prison sentence from four years, two of them suspended, to three years with two suspended.
Le Pen previously said that not being able to make a fourth run in 2027 would amount to “political death.”
Le Pen went straight to her party’s office
From the courthouse, Le Pen went to the National Rally’s headquarters in Paris, to consult her protégé Jordan Bardella and others. Bardella, a European Parliament lawmaker, would have been Le Pen’s replacement as the party’s presidential candidate if she had decided that electronic monitoring prevented her from running.
But a Le Pen has been on ballot papers at every presidential election since 1988: four times for her father and three times for her.
Her embezzlement conviction leaves her open to attacks from critics and potential election opponents. But she quickly sought to turn the verdict into a campaign message, making the point that the court ruling restored the option for voters to cast ballots for her next year.
The party was called the National Front when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded it in 1972. It ditched that name in 2018, part of Marine Le Pen’s efforts to broaden her appeal by moving away from her polarizing father’s legacy. His associations with people who collaborated with France’s Nazi occupiers in World II and his multiple hate-speech convictions, including Holocaust denial, made the National Front anathema to many voters.
The court, in written notes detailing the verdict, made clear that it had the 2027 election in mind. It noted “the voter’s freedom of choice” and said the ban from seeking elected office that Le Pen has already served repaired harm done to public integrity by her wrongdoing.
“Disregarding this would undermine the principle of freedom to stand for election, an essential condition for the democratic expression of universal suffrage,” the court said.
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Associated Press journalists Nicolas Vaux-Montagny in Paris contributed to this report.