Marine Le Pen’s political future at stake with ruling on electoral ban imminent

The ruling will determine whether the far-right National Rally’s presidential candidate will be Le Pen or her youthful protege, Jordan Bardella. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen The ruling will determine whether the far-right National Rally’s presidential candidate will be Le Pen or her youthful protege, Jordan Bardella. Photograph: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images Marine Le Pen’s political future at stake with ruling on electoral ban imminent Leader of France’s far-right National Rally and a contender for the presidency set to hear appeal decision on Tuesday Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right figurehead and a leading contender for its presidency, will learn on Tuesday whether she can run in next year’s election when a Paris appeals court rules on her attempt to overturn a ban on holding elected office . The ruling will determine whether the far-right National Rally (RN) will be led by Le Pen, 57, or her young protege, Jordan Bardella, 30 in next year’s general elections. With her party comfortably ahead in the polls, Le Pen, who came third in the 2012 race and lost runoffs to Macron in 2017 and 2022, has insisted she is prepared for any eventuality. “I’m not scared,” she said this week. “If I can run, I will – as long as I can campaign.” But her allies concede her ineligibility would be a major blow. “It would be a kind of personal grief if it happened,” one RN lawmaker, Thomas Ménagé, told reporters. In a bombshell verdict that reverberated far beyond France, a lower court in March last year handed Le Pen a five-year ban from public office and a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended, for embezzling European parliament funds. Along with 24 former MEPs, assistants and accountants, as well as the party itself, the three-time presidential candidate was found guilty of operating a system that used European parliament funds to employ RN staff in France between 2004 and 2016. View image in fullscreen The ruling will determine whether Le Pen (right) or Jordan Bardella (left) will run in the race to succeed Emmanuel Macron. Photograph: Tom Nicholson/Reuters Le Pen claimed her party was the victim of a “witch-hunt” and, with 11 others, appealed, denying during the second trial that her party had any system to embezzle the several million euros concerned and saying that it had acted in “complete good faith”. Prosecutors argued she “professionalised” a way of diverting EU funds pioneered by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, after taking over the party from him in 2011. They want her five-year ban maintained and her jail term set at four years, with three suspended. The Guardian view on the French presidential election campaign: only the far right will profit from division | Editorial Read more Observers have outlined several possible outcomes. Le Pen’s best-case scenario – deemed by most analysts the least likely – would be acquittal. She acknowledged “a mistake” during the appeal trial, saying some staff paid as EU