Far-right politician Marine Le Pen has confirmed her plans to appeal the rulings that this week saw her banned from running for president in 2027, with a decision on the appeal expected by the summer.
If the appeal is successful, Ms Le Pen will once again be permitted to run, in what would be her fourth attempt at the presidency.
In the ruling of March 31, Ms Le Pen was banned from holding public office for five years with immediate effect, ordered to wear an electronic bracelet for four years (two years suspended), and fined €100,000.
The court ruled that former lawyer Ms Le Pen was “at the heart of a system that misused EU funds since 2009”.
Ms Le Pen - as well as 24 other RN members - was accused of using some €4.1 million of EU-allocated funds to pay European parliamentary assistants for MEPs, when in fact they were working for the Front National (FN), which became the RN in 2018.
While the ban means that Ms Le Pen cannot stand in the presidential election she is permitted to remain as MP for Pas-de-Calais until the next parliamentary election, due to a legal exception.
Yet, it has been speculated that if Ms Le Pen is unable to run for office, RN President Jordan Bardella - who is not implicated in the affair - would step in to replace her as the RN’s 2027 presidential candidate.
Appeal plans
But Ms Le Pen has been clear on her plans to appeal the decisions from the start, and in a statement on March 31, her lawyer Me Rodolphe Bosselut confirmed this.
Already on April 1, the Paris Cour d’appel (Court of appeal) announced that three appeals had been referred at this stage relating to the FN's parliamentary assistants. It said that it would “examine this case within a timeframe that should allow a decision to be made in the summer of 2026”.
A second trial at the Cour d’appel - which would probably also include appeals of Ms Le Pen’s sentences - would be held by early 2026 at the latest, with the decision likely to be handed down several months before the election.
“This is very good news [and] I want to see the confusion caused by the judgement,” said Ms Le Pen to Le Parisien.
Mr Bosselut, speaking on BFMTV, criticised the long deadline of the appeals court.
He said that the appeal plans were “above all a rejection of the first decision”. He added that “the first decision is so difficult to defend in that it was disproportionate” and the appeal shows that “the judicial institution feels the need to try to make amends by setting an absolutely extraordinary hearing date”.
“Usually the hearing date is not within these time limits,” he said.
‘An attack on democracy’ or ‘the rule of law’?
Many right-leaning world leaders have already come out in support and defence of Ms Le Pen.
Read more: What do Trump and other world leaders say about Le Pen office ban decision?
Some have suggested that the court’s findings amounted to an “abuse” of the legal system (White House adviser and tech billionaire Elon Musk).
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro said the case was “left-wing judicial activism”, while former Republicains president Eric Ciotti called it “an outrageous judicial cabal” and Tom Van Grieken of Belgium’s right-wing populist political party Vlaams Belang said it was an “attack on democracy”.
However, left-wing politicians have said that now is the time for Ms Le Pen to “respect the judicial system” (Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the Communist Party), and that the court had “shown that the rule of law applies to everyone, regardless of polling numbers” (Daniel Freund, German Green MEP).
François Ruffin, Independent left-wing MP and militant filmmaker even said that “Marine Le Pen and her 20 accomplices are not victims, they are guilty…[and] Marine Le Pen was the most vindictive on this issue, and [previously] called for lifelong ineligibility for all elected representatives convicted while in office”.
This is true; in 2013, Ms Le Pen called for extreme toughness against elected officials convicted of tax corruption, fraud and embezzlement of public funds, and for them to be barred from office for life. However, speaking to Le Parisien, she said that her case was very different.
She said: “There is no contradiction with what I said in 2013…The embezzlement of public funds has always been: ‘I take public money and put it in my pocket’. And that is unforgivable. That is not the case with the matter at hand.”
In response to a question about whether her definition of “embezzlement” was vague and narrow, she disagreed.
She said: “The misappropriation of public funds has evolved from a jurisprudential point of view to a point where it has become senseless. The misappropriation of public funds used to be taking public money for personal gain.”
She continued to declare her “innocence” and has called the court’s ruling a “political decision”.
Reactions to the appeal
In terms of Ms Le Pen’s plans to appeal, some politicians have also spoken out about her plans, and the response to her conviction.
The Communist Senator Ian Brossat has said on Public Sénat that “the comments…aimed at defending Mrs Le Pen since Monday have nothing to do with defending democracy”.
“They are solely to do with a social class issue,” he said. “Part of the political class, part of the French bourgeoisie cannot accept that one of their own could be convicted. I find it perfectly normal that when you have embezzled €4 million, when you are considered guilty of the alleged offences, you should be punished.”
And Laurent Wauquiez, leader of the Les Républicains MPs, said that the appeal would be “a good thing”.
“The sooner the decision is final, the sooner we will know, the better it is for our democratic debate,” he said on TF1. “The fact that there is this appeal quickly, that we can know whether or not her conviction is upheld - I think that is the healthiest thing today, and it is the best answer.”
Xavier Bertrand, LR president of Hauts-de-France, said it is “unthinkable” that the legal system would “create a new law to save Ms Le Pen”. He said this in response to Mr Ciotti’s proposal to “delete” the exécution provisoire law, which bans Ms Le Pen from office for five years.
The public view
In terms of reactions from the public in France, the response has been - as expected - highly divided.
The RN has claimed that it has welcomed 10,000 new members to the party since Marine Le Pen's conviction on Monday, and 300,000 signatures on its petition, entitled “Sauvons la démocratie, soutenons Marine! (Save democracy, support Marine!)”.
However, a survey by Elabe for BFMTV, published on Monday, showed that:
68% believe that the law that allows for the conviction for embezzlement of public funds, as in the case of the leader of the RN, is fair
57% said that they believe that the court's decision to be logical, in view of the charges against the defendants.
