PARIS — An appeals court on Tuesday cleared a possible path for Marine Le Pen to stand in next year’s presidential election — but under conditions she previously said she would not accept.
The three-judge panel that heard the far-right leader’s appeal upheld her conviction for embezzling European Parliament funds but, crucially, tossed her immediate five-year ban on running for office and replaced it with a shorter one that, technically, allows her to run.
However, Le Pen was sentenced to a year of house arrest, and as recently as last week she said she would not run for president while wearing an ankle bracelet.
“If the idea is to allow me to run for office but prevent me from campaigning freely, that won’t work,” Le Pen said in an interview on Wednesday. “I believe that when you’re a presidential candidate, you need to have complete freedom of movement. That’s not the case if you’re wearing an electronic ankle monitor.”
The conditions of Le Pen’s house arrest, which could allow her to travel for work, will be determined at a later date by a separate judge.
The decision was unexpected and appeared to confuse Le Pen and others from her party, the National Rally, who were in court when the ruling was delivered.
Presiding Judge Michèle Agi did not explain why Le Pen’s ineligibility period had been reduced. But Agi said the court concluded that the defendants had swindled European taxpayers out of an estimated €2.8 million by hiring assistants who spent most of their time on domestic party politics rather than their official European Parliament duties. Agi added Le Pen bore significant responsibility as a party leader.
Le Pen is expected to address her future during a primetime interview at 8 p.m. She did not speak after leaving the Palais de Justice in central Paris, but her lawyer called the court’s decision “a good start.”
After court, Le Pen and some of her closest lieutenants headed to their party headquarters to meet with Jordan Bardella, her 30-year-old protégé and potential replacement as presidential candidate.
Should Le Pen stand down, it would be a massive personal blow. She has already run for president three times, but polls show the National Rally has never had a better chance of winning the presidency than it does next year.
Opinion polls indicate that Bardella is slightly more popular than Le Pen, but his age and limited experience have sparked concerns among party insiders about whether he can withstand the rigors of a presidential campaign or is ready to take the reins of one of the most powerful offices in the world.
The French presidency concentrates sweeping executive authority in the hands of a leader who oversees the globe’s seventh-largest economy, commands a nuclear-armed state and holds a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council.
But there are differences in how Le Pen and Bardella would govern the country.
Le Pen’s catch-all brand of economic policies, which includes the defense of much of the French welfare state, has long been met with disdain by conservative and business circles which deemed it unserious.
Bardella, on the other hand, has tried extending his party’s appeal to a broader right-wing electorate by striking a more pro-market tone.
