Court upholds embezzlement conviction, imposes fine and electronic monitoring while shortening effective disqualification.
On Tuesday, the Paris Court of Appeal sentenced Marine Le Pen to a 45-month ban from holding public office, although 30 months of that sentence are suspended unless she reoffends. In practice, that provision reduces her ban to 15 months and allows the far-right leader to run in the 2027 presidential election.
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Le Pen was also sentenced to pay a fine of 100,000 euros and to three years in prison, two of which were suspended, meaning she will have to serve one year under electronic monitoring under conditions to be determined by the judge responsible for enforcing the sentence.
The conditions and timetable for that year during which she will have to wear the electronic monitoring device will be crucial in determining whether Le Pen will run for president, as she had said she would not campaign if she were required to wear the device.
Because the court considers that Le Pen has already served 15 months of her disqualification sentence since March 31, 2025, the date of the first-instance ruling, she is legally eligible to run in the presidential election scheduled for April 28 and May 2 of 2027.
The Paris Court of Appeals on Tuesday deemed French far-right leader Marine #LePen guilty of misusing #EU funds, requiring her to serve a one-year period under house arrest while wearing an electronic bracelet.
Her time being barred from public office was reduced from five… pic.twitter.com/vJbJlSIzfF
— FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) July 7, 2026
The National Rally leader left the courthouse without saying a single word to the media. Le Pen is expected to provide more details about her candidacy, or whether she will be replaced by her political protege, Jordan Bardella, in a television interview scheduled for 8 p.m. local time.
The presiding judge, while reading the portion of the ruling concerning Le Pen, emphasized that a political leader must set an example by complying with the law.
The judges found her, the other 11 defendants and her party guilty of embezzling more than 2.8 million euros that the European Parliament allocated to pay parliamentary assistants but that were actually used to pay employees working for the political party.
“The court confirmed the embezzlement of public funds suffered by the European Parliament; it recognized the creation, over many years, of an organization whose purpose was the misappropriation of public funds. This was clearly a serious offense,” said European Parliament attorney Patrick Maisonneuve.
“They stole money from European taxpayers and French citizens… We have been saying this for years, and it has now been confirmed twice,” he added, referring to Tuesday’s appellate ruling and the 2025 first-instance judgment.
If those convicted do not appeal to the Supreme Court, that “means that Marine Le Pen and the National Rally accept their conviction for embezzlement of public funds and acknowledge that they are indeed guilty of that embezzlement of public funds,” Maisonneuve explained.
“And every citizen can ask this question: Can someone run in a presidential election after being definitively convicted of embezzlement of public funds and European public funds?” he pointed out.
teleSUR/ JF
Source: EFE
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