PARIS: After months of uncertainty, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen will learn on Tuesday from a Paris appeal court whether an electoral ban for illicit party financing will prevent her running in next year’s presidential election. Le Pen’s presidential hopes have been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year ban from public office for embezzling more than €4 million ($4.6 million) from the European Parliament. She denies guilt and appealed. If the court upholds the ban, effectively barring the 57-year-old from making her fourth tilt at the presidency, her 30-year-old protege Jordan Bardella will become the candidate for her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party, the frontrunner in surveys. Le Pen has spent more than a decade transforming the movement founded by her father Jean-Marie from a fringe nationalist party into what many view as a government-in-waiting, and such a verdict would be bitter for her personally. But opinion polls suggest that if she has to step aside, party president Bardella, for all his lack of political experience, would still win the election’s first round and qualify for a run-off of the top two candidates.
DETAILS OF LE PEN VERDICT WILL BE CRUCIAL
