Paris, France – Marine Le Pen, the veteran French far-right leader and three-time presidential candidate, will learn her fate on July 7, 2026, when a Paris court rules on her appeal in the European Parliament embezzlement case. At stake: her eligibility to run in the 2027 presidential election.
In March, the Paris Criminal Court found Le Pen guilty of embezzling an estimated €4.1 million through parliamentary assistants who operated for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) party. The court sentenced Le Pen to five years of immediate ineligibility to hold office, four years in prison – two of which are to be served without parole – and a fine of €100,000.
The politician has appealed both the court’s decision and the punishments it ruled.
Many different scenarios could play out following Le Pen’s upcoming court date. All charges could be dropped as her lawyers have argued the conduct amounts to a breach of trust rather than misappropriation of public funds – a lesser legal classification that, under French law, would not carry the same automatic ineligibility penalty.
At a minimum, a two year sentence of ineligibility would de facto forfeit her candidacy in the 2027 presidential election. Similarly, should the court order a year of house arrest with an electronic ankle monitor – as it did for former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s corruption sentence – Le Pen will likely withdraw from the race, having said she has no intention of running a limited campaign.
In the least likely scenario, the former RN leader could be sentenced to up to two years of ineligibility without provisional enforcement, meaning no ankle monitor or other immediate restriction. This would leave her free to campaign ahead of the first voting round in April 2027.
Regardless of the outcome, the most important factor remains her popularity among voters. The debate whether her trial is political has consumed much of the trial’s public discourse and, in a staunch demonstration of her disapproval of the court’s ruling in March, Le Pen walked out of the hearing room before he sentence. “A political decision” and “a denial of democracy” she stated shortly afterward.
A June 2026 poll conducted by independent French polling and market researcher Odoxa found six in ten French respondents do not believe the justice system will be biased against Le Pen. Only 40% think her first-instance conviction reflects particularly harsh treatment for political reasons, versus 59% who see it as consistent with how any defendant would be treated in like circumstances.
Combined with rising support for the RN’s second-in-command, Jordan Bardella, this suggests Le Pen’s potential ineligibility may matter less to the party’s electoral chances than it might seem.
Bardella’s nomination as a fallback candidate could even work in RN’s favor: the same Odoxa poll found his approval rating has nearly doubled in four years, overtaking Le Pen’s – from 21% in June 2022 to 40% in June 2026 – while her own rating barely moved, from 36% to 39% over the same period.
“The student managed to surpass the teacher in less than a year,” said president and cofounder of Odoxa, Gail Sliman.
As it stands, Le Pen’s hearing may prove the perfect media distraction from Bardella’s ascension as the next far-right French leader.
Featured image: Marie Le Pen via X.
