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Far-right leader Marine Le Pen leaves the courtroom after the verdict of her appeal trial, in Paris, France, Tuesday, July. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
By The Canadian Press

Le Pen says she’ll run for French presidency next year despite court-ordered monitor

Jul 7, 2026 | 6:06 AM

PARIS (AP) — Far-right leader Marine Le Pen says she’ll run for the French presidency next year despite being sentenced Tuesday to wear a court-ordered electronic monitor for embezzlement.

The decision by the 57-year-old veteran of three presidential races sets up a fourth campaign like no other: potentially seeking votes while subject to the monitoring and a judge’s determination of how, and for how long, the punishment is applied.

Le Pen said she will appeal the ruling to France’s highest court and that the process will suspend the sentence that she wear the monitor for a year.

“I will therefore campaign without an electronic bracelet,” she said in a television interview Tuesday night. “Tonight, I am a candidate for the presidential election.”

The appeals court ruling cleared the way for Le Pen to run again by shortening a ban handed down by a court last year that kept her from seeking public office for five years.

But the appeals court also said she must wear an electronic monitor. Le Pen previously said that campaigning while wearing one wouldn’t be possible. But she made clear Tuesday night that she now believes that she won’t be subjected to monitoring at all, and that she’ll be vindicated in her appeal to the Cour de Cassation.

“My hands are clean,” she said.

The Court of Cassation prevously said it would be able to rule before the presidential election. Its first round is in April.

The appeals court ruled that Le Pen oversaw years of misuse by her National Rally party of European Parliament funds by paying staff with money intended for European Union parliamentary assistants. She had denied criminal wrongdoing but said during the trial that the party had made a “mistake.”

Both prison sentence and ban have been shortened

The appeals court upheld guilty verdicts for all 11 accused, including Le Pen and other party members. The party itself also was declared guilty.

However, the court scaled back the punishments handed down by a lower court last year.

From five years handed down in March 2025, the ban was cut to 45 months, with two-thirds of it suspended. Le Pen has already served 15 months of the ban, meaning that the potential obstacle is effectively removed.

Le Pen previously said that not being able to make a fourth run in 2027 would amount to “political death.”

The verdict also cut her prison sentence from four years, two of them suspended, to three years with two suspended.

How often Le Pen will be allowed to go out wearing the monitor, and other details about the monitoring, aren’t yet known. Conditions will be determined by another judge in the coming weeks or months.

After at least six months of wearing it, the judge could allow Le Pen to remove it as a reward for good behavior that would include her paying the 100 million euro ($114 million) fine the appeals court included in her sentence.

Le Pen went straight to her party’s office

From the courthouse, Le Pen went to the National Rally’s headquarters in Paris, where her protege Jordan Bardella was seen earlier in the day. The party faces a potentially difficult decision choosing which among the two might be better placed to run in 2027.

Bardella, a European Parliament lawmaker, lacks Le Pen’s experience and it would be his first presidential election campaign.

A Le Pen has been on the ballot papers at every presidential election since 1988: four times for her father and three times for her.

The party was called the National Front when her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded it in 1972. It ditched that name in 2018, part of Marine Le Pen’s efforts to broaden her appeal by moving away from her polarizing father’s legacy. His associations with people who collaborated with France’s Nazi occupiers in World II and his multiple hate-speech convictions, including Holocaust denial, made the National Front anathema to many voters.

Le Pen has steered her party’s growth in popularity as it sought to become more mainstream. It has been the largest single party in parliament’s National Assembly since 2024, although it doesn’t have a majority in that sharply divided lower house.

But her embezzlement conviction would leave her open to criticism from potential election opponents.

The court noted ‘the principle of freedom to stand for election’

The court said Le Pen’s party embezzled 2.8 million euros ($3.2 million) over more than 11 years.

“The facts are serious,” said the chief judge, Michèle Agi.

But the court, in written notes detailing the verdict, pointed out “the voter’s freedom of choice” and said the 15 months of ban from seeking elected office that Le Pen has served have repaired harm done to public integrity by her wrongdoing.

“Disregarding this would undermine the principle of freedom to stand for election, an essential condition for the democratic expression of universal suffrage,” the court said.

The judge had been expected to spend several hours reading out the full verdict. Instead, the proceedings were over in less than 40 minutes in the courtroom without air conditioning, on a day when Paris temperatures surpassed 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). Table fans provided a slight breeze.

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Associated Press journalists Nicolas Vaux-Montagny in Paris and Samuel Petrequin in London contributed to this report.

Sylvie Corbet, John Leicester And Samuel Petrequin, The Associated Press





by The Canadian Press