PARIS (AP) — A Paris appeals court cleared the way Tuesday for popular far-right leader Marine Le Pen to possibly run for the French presidency next year but said she must wear an electronic monitor after finding her guilty of embezzling public funds.
Le Pen previously said campaigning while wearing a monitor wouldn't be possible. She now has the option of changing her mind, in light of the verdict that her lawyer described as a partial victory.
“It's
a good start,” said the lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut.
The 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 had denied criminal wrongdoing but said during the trial that the party had made a “mistake.”
Le Pen, 57, left the courtroom without addressing television cameras. She’s expected to share her thoughts Tuesday evening in a television interview.
The appeals court upheld guilty verdicts for all 11 accused, including Le Pen and other party members. The party itself also was declared guilty.
However, the court scaled back the punishments handed down by a lower court last year.
Crucially for Le Pen's presidential ambitions, it reduced her ban on seeking elected office. She previously said that not being able to make a fourth run in 2027 would amount to “political death.”
From five years handed down in March 2025, the ban 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 effectively removed.
The verdict also cut her prison sentence from four years, two of them suspended, to three years with two suspended.
Still, the remaining year of prison time, to be served at home with an electronic monitor, remains a potential hurdle.
How often Le Pen will be allowed to go out wearing it, and other details about the monitoring, aren't yet known. Conditions will be determined by another judge in the coming weeks or months.
After at least six months of wearing it, the judge could allow Le Pen to remove it as a reward for good behavior that would include her paying the 100 million euro ($114 million) fine the appeals court included in her sentence.
Le Pen previously said that electronic monitoring could bar her pathway to the presidency.
“If I’m allowed to be a candidate but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely, then you understand that wouldn’t be possible,” she said in an interview last week.
If she decides that she cannot run, her protege Jordan Bardella would replace her. Bardella, 30, is the president of the anti-immigration National Rally party that Le Pen previously led.
From the courthouse, Le Pen went to the National Rally's headquarters in Paris, where Bardella was seen earlier in the day. The party faces a potentially difficult decision choosing which might be better placed to run in 2027.
Bardella, a European Parliament lawmaker, lacks Le Pen's experience and it would be his first presidential election campaign.
A Le Pen has been on the ballot papers at every presidential election since 1988: four times for her father and three times for her.
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.
Le Pen has steered her party’s growth in popularity as it sought to become more mainstream. It has been the largest single party in parliament’s National Assembly since 2024, although it doesn't have a majority in that sharply divided lower house.
But her embezzlement conviction would leave her open to criticism from potential election opponents.
The court said Le Pen’s party 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, in written notes detailing the verdict, pointed out “the voter’s freedom of choice” and said the 15 months of ban from seeking elected office that Le Pen has served have 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.
The judge had been expected to spend several hours reading out the full verdict. Instead, the proceedings were over in less than 40 minutes in the courtroom without air conditioning, on a day when Paris temperatures surpassed 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). Table fans provided a slight breeze.
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Associated Press journalists Nicolas Vaux-Montagny in Paris and Samuel Petrequin in London contributed to this report.
