France's Marine Le Pen says she will appeal conviction, run for president in 2027

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced on Tuesday that she will run for president in 2027 and fight her conviction after an appeals court shortened her ban on holding public office.

Le Pen's presidential hopes had been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year electoral ban for using money from the European Parliament to pay wages for staff at her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party in France.

On Tuesday, the Paris appeals court upheld Le Pen's conviction for misusing European Parliament funds but reduced the ban on running for office, clearing the way for the 57-year-old to stand in next year's election. The court also said Le Pen would need to wear an electronic bracelet for a year.

LE PEN DECIDES TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT

The RN leads opinion polls for next April's election. And Le Pen, who has three times failed to win the presidency for the far-right in 15 years at the helm, is gambling that voters can overlook the guilty verdict. She also insists she has done nothing wrong. 

"Tonight, I am a candidate in the presidential election," she said in a prime-time interview on TF1 TV, hours after the ruling. "The French will have the last word."

Le Pen over the past months had said she would not run for the presidency if the court put her under electronic monitoring because it would interfere with campaigning and undermine her credibility.        

But she told TF1 that she will appeal Tuesday's ruling to France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, and that, until that court delivers its own ruling, she will not need to wear an electronic tag during the campaign.

Legal experts have been debating the impact of a possible appeal to the Cour de Cassation, and not all agree with Le Pen's views. When asked about that on TF1, Le Pen said legal experts were wrong.

In any case, the Cour de Cassation has previously said that, in case of an appeal, it would try to rule on the Le Pen case before the election. Any decision close to the vote, due in the spring of 2027, could risk disrupting the party's presidential election strategy.

LE PEN FOUND GUILTY, BUT CAN BE CANDIDATE

Over the past months, the RN had started preparing for the possibility that her 30-year-old protege Jordan Bardella would be its candidate.

But Tuesday's judgment made Le Pen ineligible to hold public office for 45 months rather than 60, with 30 suspended. As the ban has been running since last year's ruling, the required 15-month ban has already been served.

The appeal court said that although it had confirmed Le Pen's guilt, it had also taken into account "the voter's freedom of choice, a prerequisite for the expression of democratic suffrage."

It also shortened her jail term to two years suspended and one, rather than two, with the electronic tag.    

RN LEADS OPINION POLLS    

Le Pen and Bardella currently lead opinion polls for the election. The RN has become the largest single party in the National Assembly, although France's parliament remains split among three main blocs: the far right, the hard left and the centre.     

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."    

Le Pen's conviction stems from charges that RN figures misused funds intended for assistants in the European Parliament. In 2025, the judges found she had played a central role in the scheme, a finding she disputed. Tuesday's ruling confirmed she was guilty of embezzling public money.