Fresh doubt over Marine Le Pen presidential bid as court orders electronic tag

A French court of appeal has upheld Marine Le Pen’s ⁠conviction ⁠for embezzling European parliament funds but shortened her ban ⁠on running for elected office, potentially reopening a narrow path for the far-right ​leader ‌to run ‌in the 2027 presidential race.

However, ‌the court also handed Le Pen a three-year jail term, with two years suspended and one year in which she must wear ​an electronic ankle tag for monitoring. This could make a presidential campaign politically ⁠and logistically difficult.

Le Pen, who heads the anti-immigration National Rally (RN) party, has previously suggested she would not run if she were handed an adjusted custodial sentence in which her movements were restricted or she had to wear an electronic tag.

“If I’m allowed to be a candidate but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely, then you understand that wouldn’t be possible,” Le Pen said in an interview last week.

Her position was not immediately clear after the verdict. A different judge will consider at a later date the exact workings of any electronic tag or monitoring for Le Pen.

The far-right figurehead, who appeared in court with allies from her party’s parliament group, is expected to consider her position and make an announcement later on Tuesday, possibly on TV news, whether she will run for France’s highest office next spring.

The Paris court decided that Le Pen, 57, had played a central role in orchestrating a fake-jobs scam of unprecedented size and duration to embezzle European parliament funds and funnel the money to paying her party in Paris between 2004 and 2016.

Le Pen, whose period of ineligibility to run for public office was shortened to 15 months, with the remaining 30 months suspended, was also given a €100,000 (£85,000) fine.

Jordan Bardella, 30, who as party president already handles the day-to-day running of the RN, had been on standby as a potential replacement presidential candidate if Le Pen was unable to run.

Le Pen had said before the verdict that if necessary she would support Bardella, her protege, with “energy, confidence and conviction”, adding: “We never give up.”

Polls in recent months have suggested that Bardella, who also heads the far-right Patriots for Europe grouping in the European parliament, could make the final-round runoff in the presidential race. Some polls show support for Bardella exceeding that of Le Pen.

If Le Pen does not stand, next year’s election would be the first presidential vote in nearly 30 years not to have a member of the Le Pen family running: either Marine Le Pen or her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who made the final runoff in 2002.

Le Pen had hoped to run for president for a fourth time next spring when Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office end. She has twice been beaten by Macron in the final run-off, in 2017 and in 2022, when she increased her score to more than 41%.

Le Pen had been considered one of the top contenders for the 2027 presidency until last March when, after a first trial, she was barred from running for election for five years with immediate effect after being found guilty of the extensive and long-running fake jobs scam at the European parliament.

She appealed against last year’s verdict and a fresh trial at Paris’s court of appeal was held this year, as she fought for her political future. She told the court that there was no “system” set up by her party to misuse European parliament funds and that “we don’t have the feeling of having committed the slightest crime”.

But state prosecutors summing up the case said Le Pen had been at the centre of a “thought-out”, “centralised” and almost “industrial” system to embezzle European parliament funds.

They told the court that taxpayer money allocated to members of the European parliament to pay their assistants based in Strasbourg or Brussels was siphoned off by the party from 2004 to 2016, to pay its own workers in France, in violation of the parliament’s rules.

The staff in France had no connection to work undertaken at the European parliament, prosecutors said. The loss to European funds was estimated at €4.8m (£4.2m). The party, then called Front National, made substantial savings through the system, the prosecutors said. The system was well documented in email exchanges and party papers.

During the appeal trial, the state prosecutor, Thierry Ramonatxo, criticised Le Pen for her public attacks on the judiciary after last year’s verdict, when she said a “tyranny of judges” wanted to stop her running in a presidential race that she could otherwise win.

Ramonatxo said judges simply apply the law voted for by the people’s representatives in parliament. He said Le Pen had “made a choice to attack judges on the political stage rather than to reflect upon what she had been reproached for”.

He added: “Speaking of a ‘tyranny of judges’, of a ‘violation of the state of law’ or of ‘political assassination’ is not part of the judicial debate in a democratic society. It is not part of a debate of ideas but rather is aimed at discrediting all judicial actions in their entirety.”

Ramonatxo said that her choice was dangerous and that judges had been exposed to death threats because of these attacks.

At the original trial, 24 party members were convicted. Le Pen and 10 others appealed. Le Pen’s sentence at that trial had prompted anger on the international populist right. Donald Trump called it a “witch-hunt” by “European leftists”.

Le Pen herself had told La Tribune Dimanche after the first trial: “There was a time when you could take a bullet. Now you can take a judicial bullet. In reality, that means your death.”