It was hard to know what to make of the ruling at first. France had been holding its breath, waiting to see what would happen to Marine Le Pen and, as a result, to the country at the next presidential election in 2027.
Before the announcement, it felt like the result would be straightforward. The Paris court of appeals could either overturn the previous ruling, which had found her guilty of diverting over £2 million of EU funds to spend them on party matters, or it could decide that she really was guilty.
It was, the country assumed, black or white. Marine Le Pen could either be told that she was a free, or free enough woman, in which case she would be able to run for the presidency, or she could keep her conviction and let her second-in-command Jordan Bardella take over and be the Rassemblement National’s candidate next April.
In the end, the ruling, which came in at lunchtime on Tuesday, mostly confused everyone. Marine Le Pen is still guilty, as were her various collaborators, but her sentence is now shorter than the original one.
She was banned from running for office for 15 months – a drastic reduction compared to the original ruling – meaning that she can, in fact, run next year if she wants to. Crucially, Le Pen was also sentenced to spend a year under house arrest, forcing her to wear an electronic tag. She had previously said that she wouldn’t run for president while tagged.
Le Pen remained inscrutable as the verdict came, and the country had to wait, breathlessly, for a statement she said she would make later that evening. Over on TV channel TF1, she eventually handed France the news: she would, after all this, still be running for president and be appealing the new sentence.
“The appeal to the court of cassation suspends the effects of the judgement, so I will campaign without an electronic ankle bracelet”, she explained. According to Le Monde newspaper, the court – the highest in the land – will probably hand out its verdict at the beginning of 2027, in the months or even weeks leading to the country’s big day on April 18
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There are a few different ways in which to look at this. In a way, Le Pen’s decision can be seen as a shrewd one: she is, after all, one of the country’s most talented campaigning politicians. Her popularity has only ever grown with time – something most political figures could only dream of. Jordan Bardella, on the other hand, is promising but extremely young, at only 30.
He also raised some eyebrows even within the far right when he announced his relationship to Princess Maria Carolina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, an heiress and European aristocrat. Can a self-confessed man of the people really be dating the glitzy, overly Instagram-friendly member of an ancient royal family? He may be ready eventually, but Le Pen remains her party’s best asset, even now.
Another option is to wonder if, like Nigel Farage, she may not have made a dangerous misstep. It is entirely possible that she really will be found guilty, at the very point at which the campaign will be heating up.
Could she really be a credible candidate wearing an ankle monitor on the campaign trail in that case? Le Pen is popular, but she is yet to win over a majority of French voters; playing it safe is something she must do, and this ruling may prevent her from doing so.
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It is also notable that, over the past few months, Bardella has been developing his own brand of Rassemblement National politics, from visiting Poland when his mentor is famously pro-Russia, to going against the grain on the party’s policy on retirement age. They’re currently acting like very close allies, and two people thrilled to be campaigning together, but can this uneasy alliance hold, when Bardella was allowed to be his own man for so long?
Mostly, though, the main conclusion anyone sensible would have drawn from the proceedings was: oh good heavens, how is this not over yet? The Le Pen legal circus has now been in town for so long it’s hard to remember a time before it, and her decision to keep kicking the can into the long grass means that France is yet to free itself of the party’s tribulations. It is, more than anything else, unbelievably tiring.
Le Pen probably knows this, and believes that any publicity is good publicity, and the spotlight being kept on her means that it isn’t shining on any of her rivals. Can it really work or will the French simply find themselves too exhausted to keep backing her? We have nine long, long months to find out.
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