Could Marine Le Pen, Cleared To Run for President, Be Preparing To Cede the Race?

Marine Le Pen is standing firm: she will run in the 2027 presidential election, now that the Paris Court of Appeal, in a ruling handed down on Tuesday afternoon, has cleared the way for her to do so.The earlier verdict, delivered in March 2025, has been upheld in its essentials. Madame Le Pen is still found guilty of having organised, in her capacity as president of the National Front, later renamed the National Rally, a “system” that paid the party’s own staff in France by diverting public funds earmarked for the assistants of its members of the European Parliament in Brussels.Some 4.4 million euros had been misused in this way — though none of it, the court found, went towards personal enrichment.In 2025, Madame Le Pen had been sentenced to four years’ imprisonment (two of them to be served under electronic tagging at home), a 100,000-euro fine and a five-year ban from holding public office. That last penalty was to take effect “immediately,” even while she appealed, which would have barred her from running for president in 2027.National Rally leader Jordan Bardella speaks to the press and supporters July 7, 2024 at Paris. Carl Court/Getty ImagesThe new ruling confirms her conviction. Yet she is now sentenced to a 100,000-euro fine, three years in prison — two of them suspended and one year of custody to be served under electronic tagging — and to 45 months of ineligibility to run for office, as opposed to the five year ban imposed previously.On this final count, however, the firm portion of the ban is deemed to have already run its course, with two-thirds, or 30 months, of the penalty suspended. That clears her to stand for the fourth time in a presidential election in 2027.Madame Le Pen remains subject to electronic tagging for twelve months. Although she had previously warned that such a constraint would prevent her from campaigning properly, she declared, in the wake of today’s ruling, that she was maintaining her candidacy. She has nonetheless appealed once more — this time to France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation.In the background looms the prospect of an alternative candidate for the National Rally: the party’s current president, Jordan Bardella.Marine Le Pen, left, and Emmanuel Macron prior to a televised debate May 3, 2017. Eric Feferberg/pool via APFirst floated as a fallback should Madame Le Pen prove ineligible, he has become the political discovery of the year. While Madame Le Pen leads every poll for 2027, averaging between 32 percent and 35 percent of voting intentions, Monsieur Bardella reaches at times 37 percent — more than double the score of the next-strongest contender, the center-right former prime minister, Édouard Philippe.The appeal of Monsieur Bardella, 30, owes much to his youth, to his gifts as a debater, and to his personal charm (he has made public his life with an Italian model and princess, Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, 23, a descendant of the kings of Naples).Yet his appeal also rests on the fact that he is bound not to the historic, hard-right National Front but to today’s National Rally, the party Madame Le Pen has managed to “de-demonise.”Many analysts reckon that Monsieur Bardella is better placed than Madame Le Pen to strike alliances with the mainstream right — alliances that could allow him, in 2027, to win not only the first round but the second: the only one that counts. Against this backdrop, Madame Le Pen may be maintaining her candidacy only the better to step aside, when the moment comes, in favour of her heir apparent.

Could Marine Le Pen, Cleared To Run for President, Be Preparing To Cede the Race?

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