Le Pen Cleared to Run in 2027 French Presidential Election

A Paris court clears the path — but with strings attached

A Paris appeals court ruled on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, that far-right leader Marine Le Pen may stand in France’s 2027 presidential election, while upholding her 2025 conviction for the embezzlement of European Union funds and ordering her to wear an electronic monitoring tag for a year. The ruling shortens but does not erase the legal punishment handed down in March 2025, leaving the three-time presidential candidate to decide in the coming hours whether to press on with a fourth bid or hand the candidacy to her protégé, Jordan Bardella (CBS News, France 24, AP via Times of Israel).

What the court actually changed

The lower court in March 2025 had sentenced Le Pen, now 57, to a five-year ban on running for public office and four years in prison — two suspended and two to be served under house arrest with an electronic tag — over a scheme that paid National Rally staff with money earmarked for European Parliament assistants between 2004 and 2016 (CNN, CBC). The appeals judges, led by chief magistrate Michèle Agi, kept the guilty verdict and the finding that €2.8 million (about $3.2 million) of public funds had been misappropriated, but reduced the electoral ban to 45 months, of which 30 are suspended. Because the ban has been running since the original March 31, 2025 ruling, the 15 unsuspended months have already been served, clearing the legal bar to a 2027 candidacy (CNN, Times of Israel/AP, CBC).

The court also reduced the prison term from four years to three — two suspended and one under house arrest with the tag — and set a fine of about €100,000 ($114,000). The house-arrest sentence and the fine had been suspended during the appeal and were reinstated on Tuesday. Prosecutors had asked the appeals court to maintain the original five-year ban and to impose four years in prison, three suspended (France 24, Times of Israel/AP).

Le Pen’s response and the campaign constraint

As she left the courtroom, Le Pen was smiling and said nothing to reporters, heading straight to National Rally headquarters in central Paris (Times of Israel/AP, CBC). She was due to address the country in a prime-time TF1 interview at 8 p.m. local time on Tuesday evening, when she was expected to announce whether she intends to run (CBS News, CBC).

Her dilemma is concrete. Last week, on the LCI news channel and in a separate televised interview, she said that campaigning under house arrest, with a magistrate required to authorise each move, was “not possible.” “When you are a presidential candidate, you need to be completely free to move about,” she told LCI (CNN, France 24). “I can’t depend on a magistrate to allow me to go to a rally.”

There is, however, a procedural opening: Le Pen may ask the sentencing judge to lift the electronic tag after several months for good behaviour. CBS News and CNN both note that any such request would most likely be heard in January 2027, in time for the final stretch of an election whose first round is scheduled for April 2027, with a runoff on May 2, 2027 (CBS News, CNN).

The wider case

The convictions go beyond Le Pen herself. The original 2025 trial found the National Rally party, then known as the National Front, guilty along with 24 European lawmakers, assistants and accountants of operating a system to divert EU parliamentary funds to pay party staff in France. Eleven defendants — including Le Pen, several co-defendants and the party itself — appealed (France 24). On Tuesday, the appeals court upheld guilty verdicts for all 11, with punishments scaled back (Times of Israel/AP). According to CNN, four other RN politicians who served in the European Parliament were also convicted of misappropriation of public funds, and other defendants were found guilty of complicity or of receiving property through the misused funds.

Prosecutors alleged that after Le Pen took over the party leadership in 2011 she “professionalised” a system first introduced haphazardly by her late father and party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, who died in 2025, according to a separate BBC obituary item flagged by BBC News (France 24, BBC). Le Pen has rejected the charges, calling the case a “witch hunt”, and during the appeal she denied that the RN ran a system of embezzlement, saying the party acted in “complete good faith” (France 24, AP via Times of Israel). Chief judge Agi, after reading the verdict, said “the facts are serious” (Times of Israel/AP).

Reactions: allies, opponents, the Élysée

Le Pen’s lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, said outside the court that he was “partially” happy with the outcome, calling it a “good start” and pointing to what he framed as a “considerable shift” in the sentences, especially the shortening of the electoral ban (France 24, CBS News, AP). From the Élysée, President Emmanuel Macron — who is constitutionally barred from running again after two terms — said from an official trip to Syria that “what is healthy for democracy is for the president not to comment on court rulings” (CNN). Greens leader Marine Tondelier said that “in a normal world where the RN had even the slightest shred of morality, [Le Pen] would give up … because you can’t decently stand for election after being convicted of misappropriating public funds” (CBC).

The longer trajectory of the far right in France

Le Pen has reached the second round of a French presidential election three times — in 2017 and 2022 under her own leadership, after her father shocked the French establishment in 2002 by reaching the runoff against Jacques Chirac, where he won less than 18% of the vote (CBS News). Macron beat her comfortably in 2017 and by a tighter margin in 2022, when CBS News reports the gap closed to roughly 18 percentage points. Under Le Pen’s leadership the party has rebranded — from National Front to National Rally — and steadily gained ground in European, legislative and presidential votes, with its best-ever parliamentary result coming in the 2024 snap legislative elections (CNN, CBS News).

Where the polling and the reporting diverge

Both Reuters-style polling summaries and the latest surveys cited by CBS and CNN show Le Pen and Bardella effectively tied at the top of the first-round race, with no other major party close. CBS News, citing Ipsos BVA, puts both at “31–36%”; CNN, citing an IPSOS–La Tribune poll from April, has Bardella at 34% and Le Pen at 32%. France 24, drawing on a Harris Interactive Toluna survey from May, says Le Pen could win a runoff against either hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon or centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal or Édouard Philippe, while noting that other polls suggest Philippe, who is courting right-wing voters, could win a runoff against the far right. The same AFP-sourced France 24 piece quotes Mélenchon as warning that Le Pen is “very intelligent” and “won’t be an opponent we can sneer at” — a rare point of implicit agreement between ideologically opposed camps that Bardella would be the easier opponent in a runoff.

There is less agreement on what to do operationally. CBC reports that Le Pen faces an “intense debate” inside the RN about whether she can really campaign under the bracelet, noting that a sentencing judge will set the hours she can be away from home and that weekend restrictions are usually tighter, but legal experts quoted there say the tag would “complicate” rather than “make impossible” a nationwide campaign. CNN reports that Bardella has confirmed he would stand in for Le Pen “if necessary” while publicly continuing to call for her to be permitted to run; the BBC’s live news page notes he has been described as a “blank canvas” who could become France’s youngest president.

What to watch next

The next concrete milestones are tightly packed. Le Pen’s TF1 interview at 8 p.m. Paris time on Tuesday will be the first formal signal of her intent (CBS News, CBC). Any subsequent request to lift the electronic tag would in principle be heard around January 2027 (CNN, CBS News). The campaign itself is now scheduled against the backdrop of the first round on April 18, 2027 and a runoff on May 2, 2027, with Macron barred from seeking a third term (CNN). Beyond dates, three questions will shape coverage: whether the RN ultimately fields Le Pen, Bardella or both in some form; whether an appeal to France’s Cour de cassation — which CNN and AP flag as a possible further legal avenue — is mounted; and whether the “Republican front” of mainstream parties that has blocked the far right in past runoffs holds together in 2027 in a race that, as the BBC puts it, the National Rally has reached “the cusp of electoral success”.