PARIS, July 7 (Reuters) - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced on Tuesday that she will run for president in 2027, after an appeals court shortened her ban on running for office, even as it upheld her conviction for embezzling EU funds to pay party staff.
She also said she would appeal the conviction.
Le Pen immediately launched her campaign website and urged voters to back her, creating an unprecedented situation in France, with a lead candidate heading to the ballot after a guilty verdict for a public-funds-related offence.
"Tonight, I am a candidate in the presidential election," Le Pen said in a prime-time interview on TF1 TV, hours after the ruling. "The French will have the last word."
Le Pen, who is leading in opinion polls, said she was taking Tuesday's judgement to the country's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, which has the effect of suspending the ruling, including its requirement that she wear an electronic ankle tag. She reaffirmed that she had done nothing wrong.
The 57-year-old'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. The RN had started preparing for the possibility that Le Pen's 30-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, would be its candidate,
BAN HAS ALREADY BEEN SERVED
Tuesday's judgment made 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 appeal 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."
The RN leads opinion polls for next April's election. And Le Pen, who has three times failed to win the presidency for the far-right in 15 years at the helm, is gambling that voters can overlook the guilty verdict.
"There is no longer any scenario in which I will not run in 2027," she said defiantly on TF1.
Le Pen over the past months had said she would not run for the presidency if the court put her under electronic monitoring because it would interfere with campaigning and undermine her credibility.
But she told TF1 that her appeal to the Cour de Cassation meant she would not need to wear the electronic tag.
In any case, the Cour de Cassation has previously said that, in case of an appeal, it would try to rule on the Le Pen case before the election.
RN LARGEST SINGLE PARTY IN NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
The RN has become the largest single party in the National Assembly, although France's parliament remains split among three main blocs: the far right, the hard left and the centre.
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. Tuesday's ruling confirmed she was guilty of embezzling public money.
(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro and Elizabeth Pineau; Additional reporting by Makini Brice, Nicolas Delame, Gabriel Stargardter, Dominique Vidalon and Michel Rose; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Mark Porter)
