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Marine Le Pen's path to the French presidency remained uncertain Tuesday after an appeals court found her guilty of misusing European Parliament funds but significantly reduced her sentence, clearing her in principle to contest next year's election while leaving her future candidacy in doubt.
The Paris appeals court upheld Le Pen's conviction over a scheme in which European Parliament funds were used to employ National Rally staff in France, but cut her ban from public office to 15 months and replaced a prison term with a one-year sentence to be served under electronic monitoring.
The original lower-court ruling had imposed a five-year ban on holding office and a two-year sentence, which would have barred the 57-year-old from the April-May 2026 presidential race entirely.
Because the revised ban dates from March 2025, it is expected to have already expired, opening the door for Le Pen to run.
Yet the ankle tag requirement introduced a new complication: Le Pen has signaled she may decline to stand if the monitoring conditions restrict her movements on the campaign trail.
"When you're a presidential candidate, you need to be completely free to move around," she said in a televised interview last week. "I can't depend on a magistrate to allow me to go to a rally."
Le Pen left the courthouse Tuesday with her head bowed. She is expected to announce her decision later in the day.
The case concerns a scheme that prosecutors say ran from 2004 to 2016, in which European Parliament funds were diverted to pay National Rally staff working in France rather than for the EU institution.
The first trial found Le Pen guilty alongside 24 former European lawmakers, assistants and accountants, as well as the party itself, which was also convicted.
Prosecutors argued that after Le Pen assumed the party leadership in 2011, she "professionalised" a system of diversion that her late father, party co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, had introduced in a more haphazard fashion.
At the appeal trial, she denied the existence of any organized scheme and maintained her party had acted in "complete good faith."
During the original proceedings, the judges received death threats, and Le Pen characterized the prosecution as a "witch hunt."
Her lawyer, Rodolphe Bosselut, said he was "partially" satisfied with Tuesday's outcome, describing the reduction in the office ban as "an extremely important point" and noting what he called "a considerable shift in the sentences."
Prosecutors had sought to maintain the five-year ban and pushed for a four-year term with three years suspended, more than double what the court ultimately imposed.
Should Le Pen decide the electronic monitoring makes a campaign untenable, she could hand the candidacy to Jordan Bardella, the 30-year-old leader of National Rally and her closest political lieutenant.
The party finds itself at a historically strong position ahead of the vote, with recent polls placing the far right at the front of the first round.
Survey results on the crucial second-round runoff, however, are less settled.
Some polling has shown Bardella performing marginally better than Le Pen in head-to-head projections, though opponents have argued the veteran politician would be the more formidable adversary.
Hard-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon acknowledged as much, saying of Le Pen: "This woman is very intelligent, she's not here by chance. And if she does also run for a fourth time, she won't be an opponent we can sneer at."
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A Harris Interactive Toluna survey of more than 1,700 registered voters, conducted in May, projected Le Pen winning the runoff against Melenchon and centrist former prime ministers Gabriel Attal and Edouard Philippe, if she is permitted to compete.
Other polling, however, suggests Philippe, who has been actively courting right-wing voters, could defeat the far right in a head-to-head final round. The divided picture leaves National Rally's path to the Elysee Palace contingent, at least in part, on whether Le Pen herself chooses to be the one walking it.
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