Marine Le Pen’s political future at stake with ruling on electoral ban imminent

Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right figurehead and a leading contender for its presidency, will learn on Tuesday whether she can run in next year’s election when a Paris appeals court rules on her attempt to overturn a ban on holding elected office.The ruling will determine whether the far-right National Rally (RN) candidate to succeed the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, will be the veteran Le Pen, 57, or her youthful protege, Jordan Bardella, 30.With her party comfortably ahead in the polls, Le Pen, who came third in the 2012 race and lost runoffs to Macron in 2017 and 2022, has insisted she is prepared for any eventuality.“I’m not scared,” she said this week. “If I can run, I will – as long as I can campaign.” But her allies concede her ineligibility would be a major blow. “It would be a kind of personal grief if it happened,” one RN lawmaker, Thomas Ménagé, told reporters.In a bombshell verdict that reverberated far beyond France, a lower court in March last year handed Le Pen a five-year ban from public office and a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended, for embezzling European Parliament funds.Along with 24 former MEPs, assistants and accountants, as well as the party itself, the three-time presidential candidate was found guilty of operating a system that used European Parliament funds to employ RN staff in France between 2004 and 2016.The ruling will determine whether Le Pen (right) or Jordan Bardella (left) will run in the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron. Photograph: Tom Nicholson/ReutersLe Pen claimed her party was the victim of a “witch-hunt” and, with 11 others, appealed, denying during the second trial that her party had any system to embezzle the several million euros concerned and saying that it had acted in “complete good faith”.Prosecutors argued she “professionalised” a way of diverting EU funds pioneered by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after taking over the party from him in 2011. They want her five-year ban maintained and her jail term set at four years, with three suspended.Observers have outlined several possible outcomes. Le Pen’s best-case scenario – deemed by most analysts the least likely – would be acquittal. She acknowledged “a mistake” during the appeal trial, saying some staff paid as EU aides had worked in France, but said she believed such work was allowed.The court could also find Le Pen guilty, but shorten the ban on holding elected office to two years or less, or lift it altogether. Because the lower court ordered the ban to take immediate effect, Le Pen has been serving it since 31 March last year.A ban of two years or less, therefore, would expire before the first round of the vote, due on 18 April 2027 – although that does not mean she would definitely run, since any jail term or electronic monitoring would severely hinder her ability to campaign.“If I’m allowed to be a candidate, but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely – then you understand, that wouldn’t be possible,” Le Pen told French television last week. “I can’t be dependent on a judge to authorise me to campaign.”National Rally supporters at a country fair in Lievin, northern France, on Saturday. Photograph: Tom Nicholson/ReutersThe appeals court could also order any electoral ban to take immediate effect, as the lower court did. In theory, Le Pen could then appeal to France’s highest court, the court of cassation, which has previously said that it would rule before the election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHowever, she has previously said she would be unlikely to take her appeal further, arguing that the uncertainty would jeopardise her party’s chances. “You can’t launch a presidential campaign at the last minute,” Le Pen said during the appeal trial.Polls suggest that both Le Pen – who transformed the RN from a fringe nationalist movement to the single biggest party in France’s parliament – and Bardella would comfortably win the first round of the 2027 election to reach the runoff.However, the RN’s leftwing and centrist political opponents believe Bardella’s relative lack of experience and lack of “brand” will come under heavy scrutiny if he is the party’s presidential candidate, and could prove a significant handicap.He has recently had to answer media questions – and criticism from within the RN – on how his high-profile romance with Princess Maria Carolina de Bourbon-des Deux Siciles will be perceived ⁠by the working-class voters the party still heavily relies on.While party officials insist Bardella and Le Pen are united and would campaign as a team whoever is the RN candidate, tensions have emerged between the two, notably over economic policy, with Bardella advocating a much more free-market ‌line.Polls are divided over the potential outcome of the second round, with some suggesting Le Pen would win against the radical left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon as well as the centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe.However, others have suggested that Philippe – who is also courting centre-right voters – would emerge victorious in a runoff against either far-right candidate.