Marine Le Pen ‘wants to talk politics’, but can she drown out the legal noise? | Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen’s decision to run for president of France in 2027 despite her legal troubles has led her rivals to be compared to Donald Trump.
Just when the US president felt that his voter base did not care much about legal investigations against him, the French far-right leader shouted “guilty!” He shrugged his shoulders at the leftist protesters shouting. As he launches his presidential campaign on a market trip in western France on Wednesday. The previous day, an appeals court had upheld his conviction for embezzlement of European parliament funds.
Centrist Gabriel Attal said Le Pen was taking her presidential campaign hostage. “This sounds like the same reflexes, the same rhetoric as Donald Trump,” he said. “There’s a twice-convicted politician here [at her first trial in 2025 and on appeal this week] someone who was accused of embezzling public funds and is now waging a sort of judicial guerrilla war to stay afloat.”
Le Pen, the 57-year-old leader of the far-right anti-immigration National Rally Party (RN), said she would run for president because the only thing that matters is the election. “The French people will decide,” he said.
On Tuesday, Le Pen was found guilty by appeal judges of playing a central role in orchestrating a fake job scam of unprecedented size and duration.
But appeals judges also shortened Le Pen’s initial ban on running, giving her time to make a fourth bid for the presidency. Due to the high number of votes for his party, he thinks his chances are good after losing twice to Emmanuel Macron in the final round in 2017 and 2022.
The real challenge for Le Pen was that the appeals court sentenced her to a year in prison, wearing an electronic tag that would monitor and limit her movements to and from her home. This would obviously hamper his ability to campaign, preventing late-night rallies or restricting his ability to travel outside France.
Le Pen’s response was to appeal to the highest court, questioning one point of the legal process. This move effectively suspends his sentence, ensuring that no tags will be put on him before the next court decision in a few months.
But it leaves a cloud of uncertainty over two rounds of voting in April and May. The question remains whether Le Pen will lose her appeal and face the electronic tag in the final stages of the campaign.
For decades, Le Pen’s far-right, anti-immigration party was seen by its critics as a danger to democracy that promoted racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim views. Now his opponents say the embezzlement case will add another level of criticism and taint the campaign.
Le Pen, who has been trying to purify the party’s image for 15 years while maintaining her strict stance on immigration, thinks that her base will support her. Snap polls found that a majority of his party’s core voters approved of his candidacy.
But to have a chance in the presidential final round, he needs to reach far beyond his voter base. He needs the bourgeois, high-income voters of the traditional right won by his market-friendly 30-year-old protégé and party chairman, Jordan Bardella. This may be more difficult now. Bardella was expected to replace Le Pen if she failed to run, but Bardella will now campaign alongside her as a potential future prime minister.
When Le Pen was found guilty and banned from running after her first trial in 2025, Trump supported her and called it a “witch hunt” by “European leftists.” Le Pen had said that the “tyranny of the judges” wanted to prevent her from participating in the presidential race, which she could have otherwise won.
Le Pen’s phoenix-like return as a candidate this week was held up by her party as proof of her strength to fight against the odds. However, he may now have difficulty determining his own election agenda.
Wednesday’s tour of the market ended with a barrage of questions from journalists about the embezzlement case. “I won’t spend the campaign on legal analysis, I want to talk politics,” he said. But it remains to be seen whether their strict policies will quell the sustained commentary about the case.
