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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has been cleared to stand for president next year after appeals court judges shortened her sentence, even as they upheld her conviction of embezzling funds from the European parliament.
A panel of three judges sentenced the leader of the Rassemblement National to three years in prison with two suspended and one that can be served under electronic monitoring.
It also shortened an electoral ban that had taken effect immediately and would have prevented her from running in the 2027 election to replace President Emmanuel Macron.
It remains to be seen whether Le Pen will decide to run. Last week she said she would not do so if she were forced to wear an electronic bracelet, as it would limit her freedom to campaign.
Le Pen huddled with her lawyers in the courtroom after the verdict and exited the back of the courthouse without speaking publicly. She and other RN officials were expected to head to their headquarters to discuss next steps.
She is expected to speak later on Tuesday to clarify the matter of her participation in the election.
If Le Pen were to exit the presidential election, it would dramatically shake up a contest in which she had been polling far ahead in all hypothetical first-round match-ups.
The 30-year-old Jordan Bardella, whom she has groomed as her chosen successor for years, would run in her place.
He is popular with the party’s working-class base as well as with young and affluent voters, though doubts remain over whether the wider electorate will be willing to send him to the Élysée Palace given his relative inexperience.
However, a recent Ifop poll showed Bardella hitting 34 per cent in the first round, 4 points higher than Le Pen, suggesting he could capture voters that have eluded her.
Le Pen has unsuccessfully run for president three times since 2012. Her father Jean-Marie Le Pen — who founded the Front National party, which she later rebranded to “detoxify” its xenophobic image — ran five times.
The investigation into the RN’s financing began in 2015 when the European parliament filed a complaint alleging that the party had misused EU funds by hiring staffers who were tasked with working on French national politics rather than their duties in Brussels.
Le Pen and 23 allies including nine former members of the European parliament were tried in 2024, with French prosecutors alleging they misappropriated roughly €4.4mn in taxpayer money from 2004 to 2016.
Prosecutors accused Le Pen of taking money allotted to MEPs in Brussels and spending it inappropriately, such as on a bodyguard and a personal secretary for her father.
At the time, the RN was a smaller party, with just eight elected members in the French National Assembly compared with 138 now, and struggled to secure bank loans.
A Paris criminal court convicted all the former MEPs and some staff members in March 2025 for operating the “fake contracts” scheme, but singled out Le Pen for piloting it.
Le Pen, who has maintained her innocence, appealed against the decision.
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