French appeals court trims Le Pen's ban, leaving a narrow path to a 2027 run
A Paris appeals court on Tuesday reduced Marine Le Pen’s ban from public office from five years to 45 months, with 30 of those months suspended, and reworked the prison term in the case over a fake-jobs scheme at the European Parliament. The remaining sentence is to be served under home confinement with an electronic monitoring bracelet, backdated to the original March 2025 lower-court verdict.
The practical effect is that Le Pen, leader of the National Rally, is no longer categorically barred from the 2027 presidential contest — the ineligibility that the first ruling imposed would have kept her off the ballot. But the conditions cut against a national campaign: she argued that a candidate “needs to be completely free to move around,” and signaled she would hand the candidacy to her deputy, 30-year-old Jordan Bardella, if the ankle tag proved disqualifying in practice.
The ruling leaves the far right’s 2027 strategy unresolved rather than settled. A Le Pen candidacy hemmed in by monitoring, or a switch to Bardella, are now the two live options, and the party will weigh which better preserves its polling strength. Le Pen was set to address the decision in a prime-time TF1 interview.