Marine Le Pen will run for election in 2027. Will she have to wear an electronic tag?

Marine Le Pen leaves after the verdict in the appeal trial of RN former or actual members on charges of embezzlement of European public funds in a case of alleged European Parliament fake jobs at Paris Court of Appeal on 7 July. Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Marine Le Pen leaves after the verdict in the appeal trial of RN former or actual members on charges of embezzlement of European public funds in a case of alleged European Parliament fake jobs at Paris Court of Appeal on 7 July. Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images Marine Le Pen will run for election in 2027. Will she have to wear an electronic tag? Court clears way for RN leader to be presidential candidate after she was found guilty of overseeing a scheme that misused more than €4m of EU money Don’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up here So she’s running. Written off by many after her conviction last year for embezzling public funds, Marine Le Pen, France’s far-right figurehead, insisted yesterday there was “no scenario in which I will not be a candidate” for the French presidency in next year’s elections. Hours earlier, a Paris appeals court had confirmed she was guilty of overseeing a scheme that misused more than €4m of EU money. But the court cleared a way for Le Pen to mount her fourth tilt at France’s highest office, and she has taken it. Her decision, which involves taking her case to the country’s highest court, is fraught with risk and raises as many questions as it resolves – the chief of which is how voters will react to a candidate convicted of a serious white-collar felony. But all that is for later. Right now, Le Pen’s move launches France’s 2027 presidential election in earnest, with the far-right leader, 57, running on what she called a “dream ticket”, with her protege (and potential future prime minister), 30-year-old Jordan Bardella . Many had written Le Pen off after her lower court conviction in March 2025. Along with 23 others, she stood accused of running a system that used €4.4m of money meant for European parliamentary assistants to pay staff of her National Rally (RN) party in France. The court found she played a “central role” in the scheme and sentenced her to a five-year ban from public office, plus a four-year prison term with two suspended – scuppering any run for France’s top job in next spring’s election, seen as her party’s best ever chance to win. The appeals court upheld the guilty verdict. But crucially, it reduced the length of both her ban on holding public office and the part-suspended jail term. It handed Le Pen a 45-month ban from office, of which 30 months were suspended. Since that ban began straight after the lower court decision, Le Pen has already served it. However, it also ruled that she must serve three years in jail – two of them suspended, with the third under house arrest with an electronic ankle tag. Le Pen had repeatedly said she would not run if tagged, which would requir