By Juliette Jabkhiro and Elizabeth Pineau
PARIS, July 7 (Reuters) - French far-right leader Marine Le Pen announced on Tuesday that she will run for president in 2027 after an appeals court shortened her ban on holding public office.
Le Pen's presidential hopes had been in limbo since March 2025, when she received a five-year electoral ban for using money from the European Parliament to pay wages for staff at her anti-immigrant National Rally (RN) party in France.
On Tuesday, the Paris appeals court upheld Le Pen's conviction for misusing European Parliament funds but reduced the ban on running for office, clearing the way for the 57-year-old to stand in next year's election.
LE PEN DECIDES TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT
The RN leads opinion polls for next April's election. And Le Pen, who has three times failed to win the presidency for the far-right in 15 years at the helm, is gambling that voters can overlook the guilty verdict.
"Tonight, I am candidate in the presidential election," she said in a prime-time interview on TF1 TV, hours after the ruling.
Le Pen had over the past months said she would not run for the presidency if the court put her under electronic monitoring because it would interfere with campaigning and undermine her credibility.
Her party had already started preparing for the possibility that her 30-year-old protege Jordan Bardella would be its candidate instead of her.
She told TF1 on Tuesday that she will appeal Tuesday's ruling to France's highest court, the Cour de Cassation, and that, until that court delivers its own ruling, she will not need to wear an electronic tag during the campaign, although the appeal court ruled she would wear one for a year.
LE PEN FOUND GUILTY, BUT CAN BE CANDIDATE
Tuesday's judgment made Le Pen ineligible to hold public office for 45 months rather than 60, with 30 suspended. As the ban has been running since last year's ruling, the required 15-month ban has already been served.
The court said that, although it had confirmed Le Pen's guilt, it had also taken into account "the voter's freedom of choice, a prerequisite for the expression of democratic suffrage".
It also shortened her jail term to two years suspended and one, rather than two, with the electronic tag.
RN LEADS OPINION POLLS
Le Pen and Bardella currently lead opinion polls for the election. The RN has become the largest single party in the National Assembly, although France's parliament remains split among three main blocs: the far right, the hard left and the centre.
Greens leader Marine Tondelier said that "in a normal world where the RN had even the slightest shred of morality, (Le Pen) would give up ... because you can't decently stand for election after being convicted of misappropriating public funds."
Le Pen's conviction stems from charges that RN figures misused funds intended for assistants in the European Parliament. In 2025, the judges found she had played a central role in the scheme, a finding she disputed. Tuesday's ruling confirmed she was guilty of embezzling public money.
(Reporting by Juliette Jabkhiro and Elizabeth Pineau, additional reporting by Makini Brice, Nicolas Delame, Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Kevin Liffey)
