Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right figurehead and a leading contender for its presidency, will learn today whether she can run in next year’s election when a Paris appeals court rules on her attempt to overturn a ban on holding elected office.The ruling will determine whether the far-right National Rally (RN) candidate to succeed the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, will be the veteran Le Pen (57), or her youthful protege, Jordan Bardella (30).With her party comfortably ahead in the polls, Le Pen, who came third in the 2012 race and lost run-offs to Macron in 2017 and 2022, has insisted she is prepared for any eventuality.“I’m not scared,” she said this week. “If I can run, I will – as long as I can campaign.” But her allies concede her ineligibility would be a major blow. “It would be a kind of personal grief if it happened,” one RN lawmaker, Thomas Ménagé, told reporters.In a bombshell verdict that reverberated far beyond France, a lower court in March last year handed Le Pen a five-year ban from public office and a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended, for embezzling European Parliament funds.Along with 24 former MEPs, assistants and accountants, as well as the party itself, the three-time presidential candidate was found guilty of operating a system that used European Parliament funds to employ RN staff in France between 2004 and 2016.Le Pen claimed her party was the victim of a “witch-hunt” and, with 11 others, appealed, denying during the second trial that her party had any system to embezzle the several million euro concerned and saying that it had acted in “complete good faith”.Prosecutors argued she “professionalised” a way of diverting EU funds pioneered by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after taking over the party from him in 2011. They want her five-year ban maintained and her jail term set at four years, with three suspended.Observers have outlined several possible outcomes. Le Pen’s best-case scenario – deemed by most analysts the least likely – would be acquittal. She acknowledged “a mistake” during the appeal trial, saying some staff paid as EU aides had worked in France, but said she believed such work was allowed.The court could also find Le Pen guilty, but shorten the ban on holding elected office to two years or less, or lift it altogether. Because the lower court ordered the ban to take immediate effect, Le Pen has been serving it since March 31st last year.A ban of two years or less, therefore, would expire before the first round of the vote, due on April 18th, 2027 – although that does not mean she would definitely run, since any jail term or electronic monitoring would severely hinder her ability to campaign.“If I’m allowed to be a candidate, but am effectively prevented from campaigning freely – then you understand, that wouldn’t be possible,” Le Pen told French television last week. “I can’t be dependent on a judge to authorise me to campaign.”The appeals court could also order any electoral ban to take immediate effect, as the lower court did. In theory, Le Pen could then appeal to France’s highest court, the court of cassation, which has previously said that it would rule before the election.However, she has previously said she would be unlikely to take her appeal further, arguing that the uncertainty would jeopardise her party’s chances. “You can’t launch a presidential campaign at the last minute,” Le Pen said during the appeal trial.While party officials insist Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen would campaign as a team whoever is the RN candidate, tensions have emerged between the two. Photograph: Firas Abdullah/EPA