After French justice has reduced Marine Le Pen's sentence in the case of embezzlement of European funds, the leader of the National Rally (RN) has announced that she will run again in the presidential elections, which will be held in April 2027. Luc Rouban, director of the National Centre for Scientific Research at the Centre for Political Research of Sciences Po, analyzes in conversation with ARA the consequences of the ruling for the far-right party.The Court of Appeal insists on the need to respect "the elector's freedom of choice". Can we speak of a judicial system that, in the face of political and media pressure from the Le Pen affair, adjusts its doctrine on the ineligibility of convicted political officials?

The far-right French leader Marine Le Pen will be a candidate in the 2027 presidential elections. It was unlikely that after the forceful sentence that condemned her to four years in prison and five years of disqualification in March 2025 for embezzlement of public funds could run for president, but an unexpected judicial plot twist will make it possible. "The French will have the freedom to choose. They will have the last word," Le Pen assured this evening in an interview on TF1 in which she announced that she will run for president despite being convicted.The leader of the National Rally also stated that she will appeal to the Court of Cassation – the equivalent of the Spanish Supreme Court – the sentence that has convicted her, a fact that adds uncertainty to her presidential candidacy. If the high court ends up confirming the verdict, Le Pen will have to campaign and participate in the presidential elections under house arrest and with an electronic ankle bracelet. If she were elected president, she would move to the Elysée with the electronic bracelet. It would be an absurd situation with no precedents.French justice has made public this Tuesday a tailor-made ruling so that Le Pen can be a candidate in the presidential elections. The Paris Court of Appeal has confirmed the first-instance conviction, but has shortened her prison and disqualification period, which left the door open for Le Pen to run in the elections, scheduled for the spring of next year. The court has imposed a sentence of three years in prison, of which only one is firm.House arrest

However, Le Pen will not enter any penitentiary center: she will have to serve the 12 months under house arrest with an electronic bracelet. The convicted person, however, could request a reduction of the house arrest, and if the judge accepts the request, she would only have to serve six months. In any case, if the future candidate appeals the decision, it is most likely that the sentence will be suspended until the Court of Cassation rules. It is expected to do so in January 2027 and, a priori, it would be then when the far-right leader would have to begin her house arrest. The high court only rules on the legality of the sentence, not on the merits.Regarding the disqualification – which is the key to Marine Le Pen's political future – the court has sentenced her to 45 months of disqualification, of which only 15 are final. As she was convicted in the first instance on March 31, 2025, she has already served the disqualification sentence. Legally, she has a clear path to be a candidate. This is the major new development in Tuesday's decision. The number two of RN –Jordan Bardella is the formal president– has benefited from a recent reform aimed at alleviating prison overcrowding, which provides that a part of prison sentences remain suspended and do not have to be served within penitentiary centers. But the court has also taken into account the political situation and its desire not to interfere in a presidential election. The president of the court, Michèle Agi, has made it clear, emphasizing that the ruling has taken into account the guarantee of "the elector's freedom of choice, an indispensable condition for the expression of democratic suffrage." And she added: "Ignoring this would violate the principle of freedom of candidacies, an essential condition for the expression […] of universal democratic suffrage." In other words, it acknowledges that the ruling has been issued in such a way that Le Pen, despite being convicted, can be a candidate.Bracelet campaign

Before the ruling became public, Le Pen had conditioned her candidacy on not being convicted of any crime and not wearing an electronic bracelet. "When one is a candidate for the presidential elections, one must have absolute freedom of movement and cannot depend on a magistrate to authorize you to go to a rally in Romorantin or to a market in Hénin-Beaumont," Marine Le Pen said last week on the LCI channel. The electronic bracelet greatly limits the movements of the convicted person: a movement perimeter is established and they must comply with house arrest schedules.

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The French return to the polls this Sunday to elect their local representatives. France is holding the first round of municipal elections, votes that don't usually carry national weight. However, this time, the proximity of the presidential elections—scheduled for spring 2027—will mean that the results will be interpreted through the lens of national politics. Marine Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN), a party that has traditionally had a weak local presence, wants the municipal elections to be its springboard to the Élysée Palace. Le Pen and her right-hand man—and likely presidential candidate if she is definitively barred from running—Jordan Bardella, want to translate their strong showing in the recent legislative and European elections into more mayoralties. This won't be easy because the RN's limited local presence means it can't field candidates in a significant number of municipalities. There's an anecdote that perfectly illustrates the situation: Bardella won't be able to vote for a candidate from the party he leads because Garches, the municipality of 17,000 inhabitants where he lives on the outskirts of Paris, doesn't have a candidate from Réagrupament Nacional.

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With the five-year ban on National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, which will rule her out of the 2027 presidential race, all eyes are now on Jordan Bardella. He is Le Pen's designated candidate to take her place. She has been preparing him for this moment for years. The far-right leader was aware that her ban could come, and in the last year she has ceded the spotlight to Bardella, an MEP and current leader of the party in Brussels. He is also the party's president. In France, he is already part of the political and media scene, but outside the country, he is still largely unknown. Who is Le Pen's successor?

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