PARIS (AP) — Marine Le Pen’s appeals trial over alleged misuse of European Parliament funds is set to end on Wednesday, with one of the overriding questions: Can France’s far-right leader run for president next year?
Le Pen, 57, is challenging a March 2025 verdict that found she and more than 20 other members of her National Rally party misused European Parliament funds to hire aides between 2004 and 2016 and banned her from holding elected office for five years.
She denies accusations that she is at the center of a fraudulent system aimed at embezzling EU funds.
The outcome of the appeal trial will be announced at a later date, possibly before the summer.
That’s why the outcome of a five-week trial in the Paris Court of Appeal could change the course of France’s 2027 presidential election.
Le Pen’s presidential ambitions may hinge on case
Le Pen was widely considered the top contender to succeed centrist President Emmanuel Macron in the 2027 election until a Paris court banned her from holding public office over accusations of misuse of public funds.
She has emerged as a contender in runoffs with Macron twice, in 2017 and 2022, and her National Rally party has topped opinion polls in recent years.
The appeals trial is a second chance for an acquittal, which would clear the way for her presidential bid.
If convicted, Le Pen could be banned from holding elected office. In that case, she said, her 30-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella would run.
Bardera’s popularity has surged in recent years, but some observers have pointed to his relative lack of experience, particularly in international and economic affairs, as a potential weakness in a presidential bid.
Le Pen accused of diverting EU parliament funds to her party
Le Pen’s appeal has been joined by 10 other officials convicted last year, as well as the party itself.
They are seeking to overturn Le Pen’s conviction for misusing funds for European Parliament aides between 2004 and 2016, when she was a member of the European Parliament.
Prosecutors say she hired several EU parliamentary aides but made them work for her party. Investigations revealed that some of them had no contact with EU parliamentarians at all, and one of them violated parliamentary rules by acting as Le Pen’s bodyguard.
Appeal trial offers second chance
In March 2025, a Paris court ruled that Le Pen was at the center of a “fraudulent system” that her party used to steal EU parliamentary funds worth 2.9 million euros ($3.4 million). She was sentenced to a five-year ban from holding elected office, two years of house arrest with an electronic bracelet, and two years of probation.
Le Pen denounced a “democratic scandal” while anti-corruption campaigners argued her conviction proved no one is above the law.
Advocacy group Transparency France pointed out that the verdict came after years of investigations and a lengthy trial, and that Le Pen and other party members were free to defend their positions.
The house arrest sentence was suspended until the appeal was resolved.
The earlier verdict is not expected to affect the trial that ends on Wednesday and is set to resume. In France, criminal defendants have the right to request a higher court to reopen the case after conviction.
Le Pen tells court she believes she followed parliamentary rules
During her appeals trial, Le Pen acknowledged that some employees were paid as EU parliamentary aides worked for her party, then known as the Front National, but insisted she believed such work was allowed and had never tried to hide it.
“That was the mistake: there must have been aides who, depending on the circumstances, must have done little, substantial or nothing in the interest of the party. Look,” Le Pen told the three-judge panel.
She also accused EU parliamentary officials of failing to warn her party that the way it recruited staff might break any rules.
“We never hid anything,” she insists.
Prosecutor says Le Pen must have known recruitment breaches
Prosecutors argued that funding employees with EU funds was unfair to other domestic parties and that Le Pen, a lawyer by training, could not have failed to notice the differences between aides’ actual work and the contracts they signed.
“Public funds are being sucked away drop by drop until a river forms,” said Stéphane Madoz-Blanchet, a prosecutor who condemned “a system” led by Le Pen.
“The embezzlement was deliberately and carefully concealed,” he said.
Another prosecutor, Thierry Ramonatxo, said the alleged misappropriation of public funds was a “very serious breach of integrity” and had allowed the party to gain a concrete advantage “at the expense of the European Parliament by making significant savings”.
They asked the court to ban Le Pen from holding elected office for five years and sentence her to a year of house arrest with an electronic tag.
