France appeals court opens door for Le Pen presidential run, with ankle tag

Appeals court rules the far-right leader ineligible to hold public office for 45 months.

A French court has opened the door for far-right leader Marine Le Pen to potentially run in the 2027 presidential election but said she must wear an electronic tag.

A Paris appeals court on Tuesday ruled Le Pen was guilty of misusing public funds but reduced the ban on her holding elected office to 45 months, with 30 suspended. The other 15 months were expected to be backdated from the initial verdict by a lower court in March last year.

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She must now decide whether campaigning in 2027 with a monitoring bracelet as part of her sentence to be served at home is possible.

A lower court last year sentenced Le Pen, 57, to a five-year ban from public office and two years in prison over a fake jobs scam at the European Parliament.

The three-time presidential candidate hopes to run in the race to replace outgoing centrist President Emmanuel Macron next year.

Le Pen has said that if the sentence prevented her from campaigning, she would hand the reins over to her 30-year-old lieutenant, Jordan Bardella, leader of their National Rally (RN) party.

“When you’re a presidential candidate, you need to be completely free to move around,” she said last week in a televised interview.

“I can’t depend on a magistrate to allow me to go to a rally.”

Le Pen is due to give a prime-time TV interview on TF1 at 8pm local time (1800 GMT), “where she says she will reveal whether or not she will be running for president”, said Al Jazeera’s Natasha Butler, reporting from Paris.

Recent opinion polls suggest that both Le Pen and Bardella “have a very good chance of possibly winning the 2027 election”, Butler said.