French far-right leader Marine Le Pen said she would run for president in the 2027 election in an interview with broadcaster TF1 on Tuesday, her first public remarks since a French appeals court upheld her conviction for misusing EU funds.
Tuesday’s ruling had left the door open for Le Pen to run in the 2027 presidential election for the fourth time. Le Pen and her party have been favoured to lead in the first of the two rounds of elections.
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.
On Tuesday, the Paris appeals court upheld Le Pen’s conviction for misusing European Parliament funds but reduced the ban on running for office, clearing the way for the 57-year-old to stand in next year’s election.
President of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) parliamentary group Marine Le Pen (R) poses with French journalist Gilles Bouleau (L) prior to an interview on the evening news broadcast of French TV channel TF1. Photo: Christian Hartmann/AFP via Getty Images
She previously said that not being able to make a fourth run in 2027 would amount to “political death”.
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.
The verdict also cut her prison sentence from four years, two of them suspended, to three years with two suspended.
Still, the remaining year of prison time, to be served at home with an electronic monitor, remains a potential hurdle.
How often Le Pen will be allowed to go out wearing it, and other details about the monitoring, are not yet known. – Additional reporting from Associated Press
