Marine Le Pen chose television to tell the French what her electorate wanted to hear: she will be a candidate for the Elysée for the fourth time. And it will be, he specified, “without wearing the electronic bracelet”. The formula is brutal, almost cinematic. A candidate for the presidency of the French Republic who must explain not her programme, not her vision of Europe, not her idea of France, but whether she will campaign with a judicial device on her ankle or not.
It is the perfect image of the French crisis. On the one hand, justice, which claims its right and duty to punish even the powerful. On the other, politics, which appeals directly to the people against the robes. Le Pen has already chosen his line: “I have faith in the French,” he said on TF1. They will, he added, “have the last word”. It is the classic language of populist leaders when the judicial battle becomes an electoral battle: transforming a sentence into a referendum on the system. Any reference to Italy is purely coincidental.
The Paris Court of Appeal found her guilty of misappropriation of public funds from the European Parliament. The punishment is heavy: a fine of 100 thousand euros, three years in prison, two of which are suspended and one to be served under house arrest with an electronic bracelet; plus forty-five months of ban from politics, thirty of which were suspended. The remaining fifteen are already discounted. Hence the paradox: condemned, but eligible. Surveilled, but still in the running for the Elysée.
The appeal to the Supreme Court suspends the execution of the sentence. And it is on this legal gap that Le Pen builds her new campaign. Previously he had made his candidacy conditional on not having to wear an electronic bracelet. Now he can announce the race without that image on him. But the political stigma remains. Because in this story the bracelet is more than a penal device: it is a symbol. It says how far the normalization of the French far right has gone and, at the same time, how far that normalization remains pierced by an unresolved moral question.
The sentence, 341 pages long, anticipated by some extracts from the newspaper Le Mondeinsists precisely on this point. The facts are considered serious because they continued for over eleven years, for three consecutive legislatures, despite the fact that the European Parliament had repeatedly strengthened its rules on the use of parliamentary assistants. The stolen money, over 2.8 million euros, was intended to support the work of MEPs. According to the Court, however, it was used to pay people who actually worked for the Front National, which later became Rassemblement National.
The distinction is crucial. According to the judges, there is no question of personal enrichment. The Court itself recognizes this. The point is another: the use of public funds to ease the party’s financial difficulties. A political shortcut, not a private bribe. But precisely for this reason the institutional wound is deep. Because it touches on the principle of equality between parties, the correctness of democratic competition, the trust of citizens in elected representatives.
Marine Le Pen is described by the Court in her dual role: MEP and president of a large national party. She would not have been the creator of the system, attributed to the season of her father Jean-Marie, but she would have endorsed and perpetuated it. It is here that the family and political events come together. The leader who dedicated years to cleaning up the image of the movement, to transforming the old National Front into a government party, finds herself stuck in a mechanism born in the parent company.
Yet, it is precisely from this condemnation that Le Pen attempts to draw political energy. She does not present herself as a defeated defendant, but as a candidate wounded by the system. Don’t retreat, relaunch. He invites the French to participate in the electoral campaign that is about to begin. He praises the partnership with Jordan Bardella, defined as «balanced, coherent and solid». He talks about a duo capable of bringing “a breath of fresh air” and changing the daily lives of the French.
It is the missed, or perhaps postponed, handover. Bardella is the political life insurance of the Rassemblement National, the man who guarantees continuity if the leader were to be stopped. But Le Pen does not intend to leave the scene. Indeed, he transforms the sentence into a test of strength: it is not the judges, he seems to say, who decide who can speak to the French people.
Here lies the most delicate issue. The Court claims that it had to reconcile two principles: on the one hand the repression of the misappropriation of public funds, on the other the freedom to stand as a candidate and the freedom of voters to choose. It’s a fine line, because when criminal law enters the heart of political competition, every decision produces a democratic consequence. Punishing too much can appear as political exclusion. Punishing too little can become a surrender to power.
The judges tried to keep the two things together. They confirmed the seriousness of the facts, but recognized the time that had passed, the absence of personal enrichment and the absence of recidivism. They hit Le Pen, but they didn’t expel her from the race for the Elysée. The result is a judicial compromise that becomes a political bomb: the candidate is convicted, but can run; she is guilty, but she can ask the French to acquit her at the polls.
It is a script already seen in Western democracies, but in France it takes on particular strength. Because the Fifth Republic has always had an almost monarchical idea of the presidency: the head of state as the embodiment of the nation, guardian of the institutions, symbolic summit of republican legality. Imagining a candidate for the Elysée with a sentence on her shoulders means cracking that old theater of power, where form counted almost as much as substance.
Le Pen knows it. And he knows that his strength does not come from his proclaimed innocence, but from his ability to transform every obstacle into identity fuel. His phrase — “I have faith in the French” — is a simple message: justice has spoken, now let the people speak. It is a direct challenge to the hierarchy of legitimacy. Law first or vote first? Public probity first or popular will first?
The ruling responds clearly: those who hold an elective office have a more rigorous duty of probity than others. Not less, but more. Because it handles public money, represents citizens, decides in the name of the general interest. It is the age-old argument of liberal democracy: consensus is not enough to remedy the violation of the rules. But it is precisely this argument that a growing part of European public opinion is struggling to accept today. Not because he loves corruption, but because he distrusts institutions that claim to determine who is morally qualified to govern.
Marine Le Pen fits into this crack. His candidacy does not erase the sentence, it incorporates it. He makes it a chapter of the campaign. The trial of the European parliamentary assistants thus becomes the trial of his presidential credibility. France will have to decide whether it considers that sentence an insurmountable barrier or an incident in a long political march.
The Court wrote that Le Pen’s behavior undermined citizens’ trust in parties, the electoral system and the democratic process. Le Pen responds by asking citizens to restore that trust through the vote. It is the perfect paradox of our time: democracy called to judge those who, according to the judges, have damaged democratic trust.
From now until 2027, the electronic bracelet will perhaps remain out of the scene. But his ghost will accompany every rally, every interview, every poster. Because in politics symbols weigh more than sentences, and this symbol is very powerful: it tells of a leader who presents herself as a victim of the system, while a Court describes her as responsible for a serious violation of public probity.
