French Appeals Court upholds Marine Le Pen’s conviction but restores her right to run in elections

French Appeals Court upholds Marine Le Pen’s conviction but restores her right to run in elections

A Paris appeals court sentenced the far-right leader to house arrest and a 100,000-euro fine for a decade-long embezzlement scheme, but ruled that barring her from future elections would undermine democratic freedoms.

A French appeals court on Tuesday upheld the embezzlement conviction of far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her party over the misuse of European Parliament funds, but adjusted her sentence to preserve her right to run for future office.

The Paris Court of Appeal found Le Pen, 11 other individuals, and her National Rally party—formerly the National Front—guilty of diverting European funds intended to pay European parliamentary assistants to staff working for the national political party in France. 

The funds were diverted for 11 years and the financial damage suffered by the European Parliament was assessed at 2.8 million euros ($3.2 million). The defendants were ordered to reimburse the amount to compensate the institution.

The court noted the fraud was systematic, operating between 2004 and 2016. Defendants knew the employment contracts "did not correspond to reality" and allowed the party to illegally finance its operations using European money, the court said.

The appeals court sentenced Le Pen to three years in prison, with two years suspended, and fined her 100,000 euros ($114,400), according to the court’s penalty annex. The remaining one year of her prison sentence will be served under house arrest with an electronic monitoring bracelet rather than in a prison cell.

The court also handed her a 45-month period of ineligibility to hold public office, with 30 months suspended. However, the judges ruled that the time she has already served under this ban since March 31, 2025, has sufficiently repaired the breach of integrity.

Enforcing further ineligibility, the court stated, would undermine the democratic principle of freedom of candidacy and the voters’ right to choose.

The decision marks a major adjustment to Le Pen’s penalty, which previously threatened to end her political career. In a lower court ruling, she had been handed an ineligibility sentence that effectively blocked her 2027 presidential bid.

The scheme was driven primarily by Le Pen and her father, the historical leader of the party, with the active help of the party’s treasurer and other European lawmakers, according to the court. Other prominent party figures convicted in the appeal include Louis Aliot and Nicolas Bay.

The verdict comes against a backdrop of broader legal scrutiny surrounding far-right factions in Europe. In a separate development, EU prosecutors recently raided a far-right European Parliament group over alleged fraud, OCCRP previously reported.

The original investigation into Le Pen’s party was triggered in March 2015 after the president of the European Parliament reported the suspected misuse of funds.

The defendants have 10 days to file a final appeal to the French Court of Cassation, the country’s highest court.