French court opens door for Marine Le Pen to run for president, with ankle monitor

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was cleared on Tuesday to run for president in 2027 by an appeals court that shortened her sentence for misusing EU funds but ordered her to wear an electronic tag for a year.

Le Pen’s presidential hopes had been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year electoral ban for using money from the European Parliament to pay wages for staff at her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party in France.

That party leads opinion polls for April’s election. But Le Pen, who has three times failed to win the presidency for the far-right in 15 years at the helm, must now decide whether to gamble that voters can overlook a custody regime that will require her to return home each night for most of the campaign.

The court upheld Le Pen’s conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds but chose to substantially shorten what had been a five-year ban on running for public office.

It also shortened the 57-year-old’s jail term to two years suspended and one, rather than two, with an electronic tag that confines her to her home at night.

It is now up to Le Pen to say whether she will pursue her long-held goal of becoming modern France’s first far-right president or hand the baton to her 30-year-old protégé, Jordan Bardella.

She is due to give a prime-time TV interview on TF1 at 8 p.m. local time, in which she may make an announcement on her political future.

She previously said she would not run for the presidency while under electronic monitoring because it would interfere with campaigning and undermine her credibility.

As she left the courtroom, Le Pen was smiling but did not say a word. She left immediately for RN headquarters.

Campaigning with ankle monitor

Tuesday’s judgment makes Le Pen ineligible to hold public office for 45 months rather than 60, with 30 suspended. As the ban has been running since last year’s ruling, the required 15-month ban has already been served.

The court said that, although it had confirmed Le Pen’s guilt, it had also taken into account “the voter’s freedom of choice, a prerequisite for the expression of democratic suffrage.”

Whether Le Pen should run despite the tag is likely to trigger intense debate within the RN, which has spent months preparing for two possible futures: one led by Le Pen and another by Bardella.

A sentencing judge will set out the hours when Le Pen can be away from her home and what time she must return at night. Restrictions on weekends are usually tighter. But Le Pen could ask for the tag to be removed after a few months for good behaviour.

Legal experts said the tag’s restrictions would complicate a nationwide campaign, but probably not make it impossible.

Polls have consistently shown both RN figures as strong contenders to reach a presidential runoff.

Some recent surveys have even suggested Bardella would outperform Le Pen in the first round, although there are doubts within the party whether the rising star has enough experience to see him through what is likely to be a bruising campaign.

Greens leader Marine Tondelier said that “in a normal world where the RN had even the slightest shred of morality, [Le Pen] would give up … because you can’t decently stand for election after being convicted of misappropriating public funds.”

Le Pen’s conviction stems from charges that RN figures misused funds intended for assistants in the European Parliament. In 2025, the judges found she had played a central role in the scheme, a finding she disputed.

That verdict sparked condemnation from Le Pen’s allies in France and abroad, who accused the judiciary of influencing democratic competition. Her opponents argued that elected officials must be held to the same standards as anyone else.