Many had written off Marine Le Pen, said Katya Adler on BBC News. They thought the de facto leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) had run out of political road after being convicted in March 2025 of helping to embezzle more than €4 million in EU parliamentary funds, which the RN diverted to pay for its own staff.
And since her punishments include a five-year ban from holding office, it seemed likely that her charismatic 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella, would have to take her place in the 2027 presidential election.
But Le Pen has a habit of defying the odds. And so it proved last week, when the Court of Appeal confirmed her conviction, but reduced her period of ineligibility to 15 months, allowing her to compete next April.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Latest Videos From
‘Risky gamble’
There was one large caveat, however: she would have to wear an ankle tag for 12 months as part of her three-year jail sentence, two of which are suspended. This made some doubt that she’d run. But just six hours after the ruling, Le Pen “came out swinging”. In a TV interview, she said yes, she would run for president, and no, she wouldn’t have to wear a tag, at least not until the Court of Cassation has ruled on her final appeal. Ever defiant, she has styled herself as “a phoenix rising from the ashes”.
Barring Le Pen from standing would have had “devastating consequences” for French democracy, said Jean-Éric Schoettl in Le Figaro (Paris). True, she has been convicted of wrongdoing, but even so, it should be left to the French people to decide whether they want her as president or not.
The judgment was a tightrope act, said Olivier Beaud in Le Monde (Paris). By reducing Le Pen’s sentence and letting her stand, the court has freed the judiciary from accusations of political meddling. But at the same time – and this is the really important point – it has upheld her conviction for a grave criminal offence.
Le Pen is not out of the woods by any stretch, said Julien Lécuyer in La Voix du Nord (Lille). Her “risky gamble” could backfire. The Court of Cassation has now said that it will rule on her case at some point before the election. If it upholds last week’s verdict, Le Pen could, in theory, be forced to wear an ankle tag on the campaign trail. Such physical proof of her criminality would be a godsend to her rivals.
Wingman Bardella
The RN is currently well ahead in the polls, said The Economist (London), but its path to the Élysée Palace faces pitfalls beyond the legal saga. One is the potential for infighting. Until his mentor’s sudden reprieve, the highly popular Bardella had assumed he was going to be the RN’s presidential candidate. So he has been pushing his own vision of the path the RN should follow, a path which differs from Le Pen’s. Being a more business-friendly politician, he balks at her plan to reduce the pension age for some workers to 60. Such differences will “inevitably strain” their relationship in the coming months, for all that Le Pen insists they are united.
Yet the truth is she cannot win without him, said Clea Caulcutt on Politico (Brussels). In what was “either a stroke of genius or a sign of desperation”, she had him constantly at her side last week. She was “all smiles” at the RN rally in La Flèche; he was “more stone-faced”, as if “adjusting to his new role as wingman”.
Le Pen’s candidacy sheds light on the “true nature” of the RN, said Le Monde. It’s a family concern. A Le Pen has stood in all but one election since 1972, the year her late father Jean-Marie founded what was then called the National Front. And the family retains its tight grip: Le Pen’s niece is her comms director; her brother-in-law is her main adviser.
The only thing different about the party today is Le Pen’s double conviction, which exposes the rot at the heart of it. So much for the RN’s old slogan “Clean hands and head held high”; so much for Le Pen’s 2013 proposal to give lifetime bans to politicians guilty of embezzlement. The RN poses a “serious threat” to France, and its opponents must wake up before it’s too late.
